🌿The Spore

Brought to you by the team at Organizational Mycology

🔨 Some things we’ve been working on

These days, we’re collaborating with open source organizations that have their roots in academia but are interacting with industry users and contributors more and more. Think here about data science teams using Jupyter tools, or chemical scientists using tools from the Molecular Sciences Software Institute (MolSSI). As we’ve done this work, we’ve started to think about ways that academic open source and industry don’t talk to each other as much as they could, and how building better relationships could be a win-win for both groups. 

These industry-OSS collaborations can be valuable to OSS projects because OSS projects often struggle to attract and retain contributors and maintainers, and interacting with industry OSS users offers a broader pool of skilled software developers than relying solely on academics. Likewise, industry players often use OSS tools and want more predictability in releases, new features, or better downstream interoperability; engaging directly with OSS projects can help them reach these goals with less time commitment and healthier feedback loops to core members of the OSS project.

What’s more, government and philanthropic funding streams are under threat, so OSS projects are motivated to explore alternative funding models. Industry users of OSS have a vested interest in seeing these projects survive, particularly in industries where proprietary software options don’t cut it. 

To start thinking through how we can make these industry-OSS relationships stronger and more sustainable, we started pulling together some ideas in yet another “10 Simple Rules” paper.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Speaking of industry-OSS partnerships, we spent some time supporting the Jupyter Board at the Linux Foundation Summit last week and had some really fantastic conversations with colleagues while talking about next steps for the Jupyter Foundation. Check out board member Chris Holdgraf’s blog on the topic: https://chrisholdgraf.com/blog/2025/more-contributors. 

We see a lot of connections between the challenges Jupyter is facing and the rest of the OSS community, particularly around the organizational challenges of growing contributor bases and balancing the needs of industry with the goals (and values) of OSS projects.   

Short updates 

🌐 For our CZI Open Science friends, we’ll be holding our monthly Open Science Community Call, Strategic Planning for Open Source Projects. Open source projects often operate under a great deal of uncertainty: Grants may or may not be funded, contributors and maintainers come and go, and upstream/downstream dependencies change. In this 60-minute call, we’ll discuss how co-producing a strategic plan with your core team and/or community can help navigate uncertainty and make your project more adaptable to both surprise and routine change. Join other members of the CZI community to discuss topics such as:

• What’s the difference between a strategic plan and a project roadmap, and how can they complement one another?
• How often should you assess and revise your strategic plan? 
• How can your strategic plan be useful beyond goal-setting, such as communicating plans to funders, inviting feedback from the community, or managing turnover on your project team?

We’ll also be joined by Chris Holdgraf of 2i2c and Project Jupyter, who spends a lot of his time thinking about strategy. Sign up for the call (and future calls), and learn more about Open Science Community Calls.