The Linux Foundation Member Summit

The success of an open source project is directly related to the utility it provides its community and to benefit from a project, people must know of it as well as how to either contribute to or use it. Many projects are launched with great promise but die a painful and public death from a dearth of developers and/or users. In this talk we take a pragmatic look at growing open source project success through education programs. We cover the ways training can drive awareness and create 'pull' for people to get involved as users or developers. This talk will expose attendees to the open source training and certification landscape, discussing resources available to projects, such as courseware development, self paced learning, open enrollment, and, in more mature projects, skills testing and certification. Upon completion, attendees will have a clear understanding of the possibilities and benefits of having a comprehensive education agenda for their open source project.

To simplify open source security for the long term, we will need some help from curation and automation. How can we – as an OSS community and industry – help drive this transition, without placing too much of the burden on maintainers? We’ll share our vision for the future, and explore a variety of solutions and examples.

As open source projects strive to deliver generative AI-powered features and functionality, they must set the stage for their communities to deliver progress against the right priorities. This panel discussion will explore how established projects can foster innovation from seasoned project contributors while encouraging new community members to collaborate and build together. Panelists from Aryn, Uber, and Amazon Web Services and the OpenSearch Project will share perspectives on practices that open source projects and contributors can use to bring GenAI innovations into production.

Mentorship is a powerful way to invite new contributors to the table – or repo, in the world of open source. An effective mentor can share their professional network, model problem solving skills, and offer advice on-demand for a wide range of topics – for example, writing issues and PRs, submitting conference proposals, or navigating a vast and unfamiliar codebase. Mentorship can also help grow communities; by integrating new contributors into the social and technical fabric of a project, they may be more likely to stick around. For those marginalized in tech, mentorship can also help cultivate a sense of belonging. Our academic OSPO has grown two very different mentorship programs in recent years: one pairs a globally distributed community of new contributors with academic open source research projects, and the other offers a high-touch contribution onramp to Historically Black College and University (HBCU) students via a hybrid in-person/remote format. Along the way, we’ve learned a number of lessons about what works… and also, what doesn’t! This talk will synthesize and share highlights in a generalizable way, while offering space for others to share their experiences, too.