Open Source & Community

The TABS project is fully open source. Every line of code, every design decision, and every workflow configuration is publicly visible. This is a deliberate choice: a research project that documents technology adoption barriers should itself be a transparent example of how technology is adopted, built, and maintained.

Apache 2.0 License

The project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0, which allows:

• Commercial use — organizations can use, modify, and distribute the code freely
• Modification — anyone can adapt the code for their own projects
• Patent protection — contributors grant a patent license, providing legal clarity
• Attribution only — the only requirement is to include the license and copyright notice

We chose Apache 2.0 over MIT or GPL because it provides explicit patent protection — important for a project connected to academic research — while remaining maximally permissive for adoption.

Community Health Files

GitHub recognizes a set of standard community health files that appear automatically in the repository's navigation. TABS maintains all of them:

Academic Citation

The repository includes a CITATION.cff file that enables GitHub's "Cite this repository" button. Researchers can export citation metadata in BibTeX or APA format with a single click. This is especially important for a project that bridges academic research and open source development.

cff-version: 1.2.0
title: Technology Adoption Barriers Survey (TABS) Website
message: >-
  If you use this software, please cite it using the
  metadata from this file.
type: software
authors:
  - given-names: Clarke
    family-names: Moyer
    email: clarke@technologyadoptionbarriers.org
    affiliation: Technology Adoption Barriers Survey (TABS)
repository-code: https://github.com/clarkemoyer/technologyadoptionbarriers.org
url: https://technologyadoptionbarriers.org
license: Apache-2.0

Contribution Workflow

All contributions follow a structured Issue → Pull Request → Review → Merge workflow:

1. Open an issue — describe the change, bug, or feature request
2. Create a feature branch — use conventional naming (feat/, fix/, docs/)
3. Make changes — follow the style guide, naming conventions, and accessibility requirements
4. Open a pull request — the PR template auto-populates with checklists for testing, accessibility, and documentation
5. Pass CI — formatting, linting, unit tests, E2E tests, and accessibility checks must all pass
6. Code review — automated Copilot review plus human review for all changes
7. Squash merge — clean commit history on main

Issue Templates

TABS provides four issue templates to guide contributors:

Building in Public

Being open source means all project decisions are visible:

• Issues track all work — feature requests, bugs, and improvements are documented in GitHub Issues
• PRs show the process — code review comments, CI results, and iteration are all part of the public record
• Changelog documents releases — every version includes a detailed summary of changes
• Agent instruction files — AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, and GEMINI.md document how AI coding agents are configured for this project
• CI/CD is transparent — GitHub Actions workflows are visible in the repository