Category: Community Dialogues

For our final talk of the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025, Kaylea Champion explored how generative AI tools are disrupting open source cybersecurity—not through advanced attacks, but by flooding communities with “plausible slop,” or misleading, low-effort reports. She shared research on the burden this places on experts, who must balance welcoming newcomers with filtering out noise. Drawing on historical parallels and case studies, she proposed strategies to address these challenges and invited community input to shape future solutions.

This is the final of our 11 part series sharing highlights from the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025. Visit the FOSSY site for bio details and a full abstract.

Our tenth talk for the Science of Community Track at FOSSY 2025 featured Zixuan (Steve) Feng and Anita Sarma discussed how glue work —like maintaining code, updating docs, and supporting users—is essential to OSS success but often overlooked and undervalued. The talked about their teams 300+ OSS practitioner studies to define, trace, and elevate these contributions, offering practical strategies to recognize their impact.

This is the 10th of our 11 part series sharing highlights from the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025. Visit the FOSSY site for bio details and a full abstract.

Igor Steinmacher walked through lessons learned from a decade of OSS research for our 9th talk of the Science of Community Track. He explored long-term sustainability challenges in FOSS communities, including onboarding, maintainer burnout, and governance. He presented interventions like mentorship strategies, structured contribution paths, and the use of LLMs to support contributors and scale community engagement. Through case studies and longitudinal data, he offered a holistic vision for building more inclusive, resilient, and human-centered open source ecosystems.

This is the 9th of our 11 part series sharing highlights from the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025. Visit the FOSSY site for bio details and a full abstract.

The 8th presenter for the Science of Community track was Dawn Foster, who talked about the power imbalances in FOSS projects, and their potential for disruption. She explored real-world case studies and offered practical steps to help contributors make smarter, more sustainable choices.

This is the 8th of our 11 part series sharing highlights from the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025. Visit the FOSSY site for bio details and a full abstract .

Ben Ford wrapped up Friday as the sixth speaker in the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025, talking about the idea that the ecosystem is the product and the thing that you build and sell only exists to support it, something OSS companies might learn from.

You can check out Ben’s slide deck here.

This is the 6th of our 11 part series sharing highlights from the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025. Visit the FOSSY site for bio details and a full abstract.

In the fifth talk of the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025, Laura Langdon shared lessons learned from the early stages of building a network of academic Open Source Program Office’s (OSPO) across the University of California system. She discussed both the benefits and challenges encountered while developing this first-of-its-kind system-wide network. 

This is the 5th of our 12 part series sharing highlights from the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025. Visit the FOSSY site for bio details and a full abstract.

Our fourth speaker of the Science of Community, Cathy Richards, shared lessons learned from the Open Environmental Data Project (OEDP), focusing on how the toolkit translates open infrastructure into inclusive, practical frameworks that empower communities to use data for local action and advocacy. 

This is the 4th of our 12 part series sharing highlights from the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025. Visit the FOSSY site for bio details and a full abstract.

Mike Jang, the third talk of the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025, covered how open sourcing existing software is more than just “pushing a button”, it involves things like auditing security, sharing with your community, setting ground rules, and more. Jang shared insights on how to access a template repository, a checklist to follow, tips for hackathons, and how to understand the work required to move to open source. 

This is the 3rd of our 12 part series sharing highlights from the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025. Visit the FOSSY site for bio details and a full abstract.