Sourceforge has 13 years worth of data relating to Open Source projects. This is everything from SCM commit logs to issue tickets to site usage data. I’ve had lots of people say to me, wow, that data would be really useful if someone could get hold of that and do some data crunching on it. When I started at Slashdot, I was really interested in getting access to the database, so that I could do some data digging of my own. But since everything we do here is open, surely the data should be as well?
So I did a little asking around, and here’s what I found out.
Turns out we already make that data available, and have done for years. (The data is scrubbed to a certain extent, so that your information as a user of the site is not made public.) We provide a data dump to the University of Notre Dame, on a regular basis, for them to do just that with. You can also request that data from them. Instructions for doing so are on that website.
There’s also a wiki, where various information about the data is available.