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Our Mission

Open Source Observer is an open source public good maintained by Kariba Labs.

Our mission is to help internet economies measure the impact of open source software contributions to the growth and adoption of their platform.

Open source economies need network intelligence​

Every open source community or ecosystem is a distinct internet economy. Its citizens include developers, users, and governance participants. Like any economy, strategic investment is critical for sustaining growth, innovation, and maintenance.

However, current approaches to tracking and bootstrapping economic activity aren't very effective. Projects are rewarded for marketing and grant writing ability over impact. Foundations and ecosystem funds don't have the data they need to make smarter funding allocations.

In the same way that centralized businesses invest in business intelligence platforms, decentralized networks need network intelligence to measure the impact of their funding allocations.

A new kind of data warehouse for a new kind of data science​

We believe better visibility leads to better funding allocations. Open Source Observer gives funders the metrics they need to allocate funding based on impact.

Specifically, we help ecosystem funds:

  • Track the full downstream impact of grants programs on key ecosystem metrics like user growth and developer activity over time
  • Create reward functions that allocate funding to projects based on impact analysis
  • Deep dive well-known projects and discover hidden gems

We're putting all the metrics that funders need to inform better decision-making in one place, including:

  • Impact: trace a project's downstream contribution to end users, revenue, ecosystem growth, and sustainability by linking it to platform metrics
  • Activity: graph a project's team, momentum, and dependencies from GitHub and package managers
  • Financing: estimate funding and burn rates from grant metadata and analysis of public financial reports

At the same time, we're building a network of impact data scientists who can work with this data, connect new data sources, and extract meaning.

How can I contribute?​

We were hoping you'd ask! There are a variety of ways to contribute to Open Source Observer. The best place to start is here. If you are interested in joining the Data Collective, you can apply here. You should also join our Telegram and our Discord communities to stay informed of the latest updates.