OSS Resources

Tools¶

ORB (UC Open Repository Browser)

• Explore the open source landscape across the UC system. ORB provides interactive dashboards showing repository statistics, impact metrics, sustainability indicators (including lottery factor), and security scores across all UC campuses. Built by Juanita Gomez at UCSC.

OSSPREY

• Is your open source project on a sustainable path? OSSPREY uses AI to forecast the health of open source projects and gives you concrete, evidence-based recommendations for what to do about it. Point it at any GitHub repository and get month-by-month sustainability forecasts, actionable suggestions ranked by impact, and interactive visualizations of your project’s social and technical networks. Built by the DECAL Lab at UC Davis.

Repo Templates¶

We have repo templates you can use to scaffold the writing of essential project docs, and guides below for using our templates:

• README Template Guide

• Contributing Template Guide

• Code of Conduct Template Guide

• License Template Guide

Education¶

UC OSPO Network Education

• Structured learning pathways for getting started with open source, contributing to projects, maintaining software, building communities, understanding licensing, and more. Browse by topic, role, or experience level.

Further Reading¶

The education site linked above covers tutorials and structured lessons comprehensively. Below are additional articles, guides, and references that complement those lessons.

• (Our own!) Growing Community Around Open Source Projects

• Forge Your Future with Open Source (book)

• Tools and practices for FAIR research software

• Solving the Maker-Taker problem | Dries Buytaert

• How to make reviewing pull requests a better experience

• “My code is s**t”: Negative automatic thoughts and outcomes of a behavioral experiment for code review anxiety

• Example Contribution Ladder (Astro’s governance model)

• (UC-specific!) UCoP’s guide to choosing a license