A Methodology to Categorize Rapidly Changing Projects of Open Source Software

The number and types of Open Source Software (OSS) are increasing year by year. The information technology (IT) industry uses OSS and utilize intellectual properties and human resources across organizational boundaries. In present OSS expands across industry boundaries and is used in more industries such as the energy industry, automotive industry, medical industry. In addition, some of OSS have been developed with new concepts. Some OSS organizations such as the Linux Foundation, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and the Japan OSS Promotion Forum provide categories, but contributors in them are also time-consuming to provide the latest information. Meanwhile, it is inconvenient for every Open Source Program Offices (OSPO), which oversees open source software management and strategy, to update manual OSS categorization frequently. Thus, OSPOs want to get a universal methodology to restructure OSS categories. This research provides the current categories of OSS and its methodology in order to build a consistent strategy. This methodology aims to be a methodology to support in the standardization of OSS categorization.