The record
On 7 April 2017, Battery Ventures general partner Dharmesh Thakker and executive-in-residence Max Schireson published the BOSS Index post, introducing the Battery Open-Source Software Index. The post, syndicated from TechCrunch and archived here because Battery's live page no longer resolves, states that the index covered 40 open-source projects identified from GitHub and the publication Datamation, with all underlying data current as of 9 February 2017. Projects were ranked using four measures, Google search activity, mentions on Stack Overflow, job postings on Indeed and Simply Hired, and GitHub forks, stars and watches, combined through a trimmed-mean calculation that discarded each project's highest and lowest individual-criteria score before averaging the rest. The post names Linux, Git and MySQL as the top three, with Docker, Elasticsearch, Spark, MongoDB, Redis, Jenkins, Vagrant, Kubernetes, Cassandra and several other named projects ranked further down the list.
What the documents establish
This is Battery's own tracking exercise, built from public data the firm gathered and weighted by its own chosen method, not an audited census of the open-source ecosystem. The post says the firm hoped to update the index quarterly. No later edition is discoverable on Battery's current site, and the firm's live homepage, retrieved 16 September 2026, carries no reference to the BOSS Index at all. That absence does not prove the firm abandoned the project for any stated reason; it establishes only that no continuation is visible now, and that the 2017 figures should not be treated as current.
The operating read
A methodology built from search volume, forum mentions, job postings and code-repository activity measures visible popularity, not commercial viability, and the 2017 post says as much directly: high user counts do not guarantee a good business. Editorially, a founder or investor using any single-firm open-source ranking, from Battery or elsewhere, should treat it as one lens on developer attention at one point in time, useful for spotting projects worth further diligence rather than as a ranked market map.
What to check before you decide
Before citing any open-source popularity index in a memo or pitch, check the following.
- Is the index still being updated, and does the version cited carry a clear as-of date for its underlying data?
- Does the ranking methodology combine metrics in a way that is disclosed and reproducible, or only summarized at a high level?
- Does the publisher have a portfolio interest in any of the ranked projects that the methodology does not adjust for?
A one-time index from a single venture firm is a useful historical artifact and a weak basis for a current investment or adoption decision; the two uses should not be confused.
Sources & their limits
These are the existing record’s sources and retrieval dates, preserved from the archive. Source statements, historical events and editorial interpretation are distinct.
- The BOSS Index: Tracking the Explosive Growth of Open-Source Software
States the BOSS Index methodology (Google search activity, Stack Overflow mentions, job postings and GitHub forks, stars and watches, combined by a trimmed-mean calculation), the 40-project scope, the 9 February 2017 data date, and the named project rankings; archived because the live Battery Ventures page no longer resolves.
- Battery Ventures homepage
Shows that Battery Ventures' current website, retrieved 16 September 2026, does not host or reference the BOSS Index, indicating the tracking exercise was not continued as a live, periodically updated index.