Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference North America 2026

In the world of Open Source there are plenty of talks, resources, and guides about where to begin, and how to grow your project. But what happens at the end? How do you know when It Is Time? And how do you say goodbye with compassion and dignity?

In this talk, members of the CHAOSS.community and the Open Source Program Office at the Digital Service at CMS.gov will be sharing their latest practitioner’s guide on archival. This talk will be highlighting use cases from the private and public sector, and demonstrating how to use repository metrics, maturity models, and archival checklists for succession planning, stewardship, and sunsetting of Open Source projects.

Projects are not valuable solely based upon the utility of their results or outputs, they reflect the record of our progress. Archives provide transparency, accountability, and attribution. Archives build trust, reduce duplicate work, and reduce risk. The work saved in our archived repositories allows historians and practitioners to more accurately and completely understand the story of open source.