Kaylea Champion

There is a huge academic community of researchers focused on FOSS but much of this work has little impact in the communities that could benefit the most from it. How can you, as FOSS community members and leaders, get the most out of research? How can you find relevant research or researchers, assess research quality, or figure out what to do with research results once you find them? In these interactive, workshop-style session, experts will help practitioners learn to search, select, and unpack research. Additional topics will include publications, journals, and academic conferences FOSS practioners should pay attention to, partnering with academic researchers, as well as practical techniques for how to apply research to your own work.

Other people: Aaron Shaw Mako Hill

This session offers rapid talks by and for researchers. These short talks will provide brief insights into free and open source software development, use, and communities, as well as questions we need to be asking ourselves as community members and researchers.

Other people: Matthew Gaughan adam hyde Anita Sarma Shauna Gordon-McKeon

Debian maintainers work hard to produce quality packages -- but some widely-used projects may be quietly falling behind over time. In this talk, I'll describe my research to measure 'underproduction' in Debian: packages that are relatively low quality given their popularity. These underproduced packages are a source of software infrastructure risk. This talk is accessible to end-users as well as maintainers and developers. You'll walk away from the session with both my concrete results describing troubled packages and a way of thinking about at-risk software that you can apply to your own environment. After the talk, let's discuss your ideas about the possible sources and solutions to the challenges of underproduction.

Have you (or a group of friends) started a free software project? How about a usergroup or conference? Maybe you haven't yet, but are definitely considering it. Or, have you tried to start something new and found it didn't work out the way you wanted? Have you witnessed the rise and decline of projects and events, and are you willing to share your stories? Come to the FLOSS Founders BoF and discuss your experience! Alright, so this isn't just a meet and greet. Two researchers from the University of Washington studying founder decisions would like to reach out to the source to learn what works and what doesn't. We'll both be at DebConf this year and are interested in gaining perspective from people who are willing to participate in a group discussion, sharing their thoughts about the process behind how FLOSS things are founded, and how that foundation may in turn influence their development and sustainability. Hope to see you there!

Other people: Wm Salt Hale