Company Influence Metrics

About Key Projects

Purpose

The purpose of the key projects feature is to allow a company to view all of their business critical open source projects in one place, along with their health and the influence that the company has on these projects. This should help companies when evaluating open source projects so that they can decide to use a project, invest further into a project, or move away from a project.

Workspaces

Projects are sorted by flexible groups called "workspaces." A workspace is intentionally open-ended so that any team or list of projects can be organized as your company needs.

All companies start with a default workspace called "All projects with activity" that includes any projects where we have detected activity through co-contribution, documentation, collaboration, or meeting participation. There is also a default workspace called "Most active projects" that includes the projects with the most activity.

All companies start with an empty workspace called "Key Projects" where you can identify your business critical key projects that you want to track.

You may create any other workspaces for product teams, technology stacks, or anything else that you want to keep as a collection.

Anyone with Organization Dashboard access can create and edit workspaces and their projects, and anyone in the company can view other workspaces created by co-workers.

A project can be included in several workspaces.

Data Sources

LFX Insights is the main data source for code contributions, contributors, and maintainers. LFX provides data for events, training, meetings, boards, and committee activities.

A project can be viewed in Key Projects if it exists in LFX Insights. This includes all LF projects and a growing list of non-LF projects. As of Feb 2026, there are 10,000 non-LF projects included in LFX Insights, with hundreds more added monthly. You can request that projects be added here.

Projects cannot yet be tracked at the repo level.

About Influence

A company that is influential in an open source project has the power to shape its direction and future. High or low influence by itself is not a good or a bad thing, depending on the size of the project and how early or late it is in being adopted by a wide audience. It's not necessarily a good thing to have high influence; a project dominated by a single company may not see adoption as other companies are reluctant to rely on it and may choose a project with a wider distribution of contributors. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have low influence; a company that does not need to shape the future of a project can have no influence and not see a negative impact.

We break out technical influence and ecosystem influence to separate involvement with the code from involvement with the community. Ecosystem influence includes collaboration in documentation, events, training, boards, committees and meetings.

These influence levels are taken from this LF Research report written by Ibrahim Haddad, PhD.

• Silent Influence -- No participation of this type.
• Participating Influence -- A small but non-zero share of activities, showing intent to improve the project. A single commit is enough to move from "silent" to "participating" because the company has shown that they want to be involved. For some heavily-regulated industries, such as financial services, even one open source commit requires large amounts of coordination and approval.
• Contributing Influence -- A small-to-medium share of activities, showing commitment and continued improvement. This is the middle ground between "participating" and "leading."
• Leading Influence -- A medium-to-large share of activities, providing critical mass and showing serious dedication to building the project. A company with a leading share of influence is capable of moving the project in the direction of their choosing without critical dependence on other companies.

Measuring Technical Influence

1. Maintainers

• Input: Does this company have a maintainer?
• Scoring:
  • 0 = Limited (0 points)
  • 1 or more maintainers = Strong (3 points)

2. Contributors

• Input: What percentage of contributors work at this company?
• Scoring:
  • 0.0-0.9% of contributors = Limited (0 points)
  • 1.0-4.9% of contributors = Emerging (1 point)
  • 5.0-19.9% of contributors = Moderate (2 points)
  • > 20% of contributors = Strong (3 points)

3. Commit Activities

• Input: What percentage of commit activities are from this company?
• Scoring:
  • 0.0-0.9% of commit activities = Limited (0 points)
  • 1.0-4.9% of commit activities = Emerging (1 point)
  • 5.0-19.9% of commit activities = Moderate (2 points)
  • > 20% of commit activities = Strong (3 points)

4. PRs Opened

• Input: What percentage of PRs opened are from this company?
• Scoring:
  • 0.0-0.9% of PRs opened = Limited (0 points)
  • 1.0-4.9% of PRs opened = Emerging (1 point)
  • 5.0-19.9% of PRs opened = Moderate (2 points)
  • > 20% of PRs opened = Strong (3 points)

5. PR Merge Time

• Input: Does this company have a faster or slower PR merge time compared to the average?
• Scoring: Currently, we do not provide points for PR merge time.

Final Categorization - Technical Influence

• 0-3 points: Limited
• 4-7 points: Emerging
• 8-11 points: Moderate
• 12-15 points: Strong

Measuring Ecosystem Influence

1. Foundation Membership Level Scoring

• Input: Organization's membership level for a project
• Scoring:
  • None = Limited (0 points)
  • Silver = Growing (1 point)
  • Gold = Strong (2 points)
  • Platinum = Dominant (3 points)

2. Foundation Board Members Count Scoring

• Input: Organization's share of board member count vs total board members. This is only for the project's foundation.
• Scoring:
  • 0 board members = Limited (0 points)
  • 1 or more board members = Strong (3 points)

3. Project Committee Members Count Scoring

• Input: Organization's share of committee member count vs total committee members. This is only for the project.
• Scoring:
  • 0.0-0.9% of committee members = Limited (0 points)
  • 1.0-4.9% of committee members = Emerging (1 point)
  • 5.0-19.9% of committee members = Moderate (2 points)
  • > 20% of committee members = Strong (3 points)

4. Project Meeting Attendance Percentage Scoring

• Input: Organization's share of meeting hours attended vs total meeting hours for this project/foundation (Note: this metric counts towards both Technical and Ecosystem Influence)
• Calculation: (My hours attended / Total hours) × 100
• Scoring:
  • 0.0-0.9% of meetings = Limited (0 points)
  • 1.0-4.9% of meetings = Emerging (1 point)
  • 5.0-19.9% of meetings = Moderate (2 points)
  • > 20% of meetings = Strong (3 points)
• Note: Ignore duplicates (same meeting attended by multiple people from same org)

5. Project Event Attendance Percentage Scoring

• Input: Organization's share of events attended vs total events for this project/foundation
• Calculation: (My events attended / Total events) × 100
• Scoring:
  • 0.0-0.9% of attendance = Limited (0 points)
  • 1.0-4.9% of attendance = Emerging (1 point)
  • 5.0-19.9% of attendance = Moderate (2 points)
  • > 20% of attendance = Strong (3 points)
• Note: Ignore duplicates (same event attended by multiple people from same org)

6. Project Event Speaker Percentage Scoring

• Input: Organization's share of event speakers vs total event speakers for this project/foundation
• Calculation: (My speaker events / Total speaker events) × Type multiplier × 100
  • Type multiplier:
    • Keynote = 1.0
    • Not a keynote = 0.1
• Scoring:
  • 0.0-0.9% of speaker events = Limited (0 points)
  • 1.0-4.9% of speaker events = Emerging (1 point)
  • 5.0-19.9% of speaker events = Moderate (2 points)
  • > 20% of speaker events = Strong (3 points)
• Note: Ignore duplicates (same event attended by multiple people from same org)

7. Project Event Sponsorship Reach

• Input: Share of attendees for events sponsored AND level of sponsorship
• Calculation: SUM of all events where (Event attendees × Sponsorship level) where sponsorship level is (bronze/silver = 0.1, gold = 0.25, platinum = 0.5, diamond = 1)
• Scoring:
  • 0.0-0.9% of attendees = Limited (0 points)
  • 1.0-4.9% of attendees = Emerging (1 point)
  • 5.0-19.9% of attendees = Moderate (2 points)
  • > 20% of attendees = Strong (3 points)

8. Project Meetup Attendance

• Input: Organization's share of meetups (ignore Cvent LF events and look at Regfox/Bevy unofficial events) attended vs total meetups for this project/foundation
• Calculation: (My meetups attended / Total meetups) × 100
• Scoring:
  • 0.0-0.9% of attendance = Limited (0 points)
  • 1.0-4.9% of attendance = Emerging (1 point)
  • 5.0-19.9% of attendance = Moderate (2 points)
  • > 20% of attendance = Strong (3 points)
• Note: Ignore duplicates (same event attended by multiple people from same org)

9. Collaboration & Documentation

• Input: For this project, the Organization's share of collaboration in Jira, Confluence, GitHub comments, GitLab comments, Groups.io, Slack, Discord, and Discourse.
  • Weight of each item of collaboration (item can be a single commit, or input, or entry, or line, depending on the source):
    • Jira: 1.0
    • Confluence: 1.0
    • GitHub comments: 1.0
    • GitLab comments: 1.0
    • Groups.io: 1.0
    • Discord: 0.1
    • Discourse: 0.1
    • Slack: 0.1
• Calculation: (Count of my company's employee's collaborations / Total of all collaborations) × 100
• Scoring:
  • 0.0-0.9% of inputs = Limited (0 points)
  • 1.0-4.9% of inputs = Emerging (1 point)
  • 5.0-19.9% of inputs = Moderate (2 points)
  • > 20% of inputs = Strong (3 points)

10. Project Certified Individuals

• Input: Share of employees with certifications relevant to this project/foundation
• Calculation: Count
• Scoring:
  • 0.0-0.9% of all certified individuals = Limited (0 points)
  • 1.0-4.9% of all certified individuals = Emerging (1 point)
  • 5.0-19.9% of all certified individuals = Moderate (2 points)
  • > 20% of all certified individuals = Strong (3 points)

Final Categorization - Ecosystem Influence

• 0-5 points: Limited
• 6-11 points: Emerging
• 12-17 points: Moderate
• 18-27 points: Strong

Coming soon: Marketing share of voice and percentage of mentions