Accelerate your career and make an impact by launching and running a successful open source project. Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook
Key Features
Understand the method and rationale for launching an open source project
Explore best practices and insights for running an open source project
Leverage open source projects to advance your career
Book Description
Open source is ubiquitous in our society, with countless existing projects, and new ones emerging every day. It follows a "scratch-your-own-itch" model where contributors and maintainers drive the project forward. Through Open Source Projects - Beyond Code, you'll learn what it takes to develop a successful, scalable, and sustainable open source project. In this book, you'll explore the full life cycle of open source projects, from inception, through launch, to maturity, and then discover how to sunset an open source project responsibly. Along the way, you'll learn the concepts of licensing, governance, community building, ecosystem management, and growing maintainers and contributors, as well as understand how other open source projects have been successful or might have struggled in some areas. You can use this book as an end-to-end guide or reference material for the future. By the end of this book, you'll be able to accelerate your career in open source. Your newly acquired skills will help you stay ahead of the curve even with the ever-evolving nature of technology.
What you will learn
Explore what is open source and how you can use it to accelerate your career
Start an open source project while exploring its key considerations
Grow, support, and manage a vast community of developers and users
Build and maintain a mature and sustainable project
Enable mass users and developers to downstream productization and outreach
Use open source as a portfolio to build your career
Understand when to end a project and conduct it responsibly
Who this book is for
This book is for software developers, product managers, project managers, business leaders, or general enthusiasts looking to start an open source project or currently maintaining one.
Author(s): John Mertic
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 330
Cover
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Contributors
About the reviewer
Table of Contents
Preface
Part 1: Getting Ready to Go Open Source
Chapter 1: The Whats and Whys of Open Source
What is open source?
A brief history of open source
Tracing the roots of open source to the mainframe community
The emergence of free software
Open source is coined as a term
Giving open source a vendor-neutral home
Implementing open source
Information sharing amongst enthusiasts
Underlying technology
Establishing technology ecosystems
Providing high-quality free software
Open source projects and why they are used
PHP
Blender
Zowe
PiSCSI
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 2: What Makes a Good Open Source Project?
Core characteristics of an open source project.
Users are part of the development process
Release early, release often
Transparent and dynamic decision-making
Open sourcing code versus creating an open source project
Intelligent code dumps
Open Core
Expectations when releasing code as open source
Patterns and anti-patterns for successful open source projects
Open communication (and over-communication)
Benevolent dictatorship versus leading by committee
Forks
Over-governance
Competitors welcome!
Write everything down
Embrace your community
Focus on your strengths and use tools and other resources for your weaknesses
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 3: Open Source License and IP Management
Permissive versus non-permissive licensing – why and what to pick?
Permissive
Non-permissive or copyleft
Which type of license makes sense for my project?
Copyrights and contribution sign-off
Contributor License Agreement (CLA)
Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO)
Brand and marks management
Determining your project’s name
Brand consistency
Protecting the brand
Enabling others to use your brand
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 4: Aligning the Business Value of Open Source for Your Employer
Why would a company want to open source code?
Lowering development costs
Adding new features/functionality for customers
Faster time to market
The ability to focus investments
Getting support for open sourcing code internally
Reviewing what’s out there already
Building the business case
Getting allies
Setting expectations
Checklist for open sourcing a project or code base
Legal review
Technical review
Measuring success in open source to the organization
Setting (reasonable) goals
Identifying and showcasing how your organization is contributing
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 5: Governance and Hosting Models
What is open source governance?
“Do-ocracy”
BDFLs
Technical councils
Elected
Single vendors
Vendor-neutral foundations
Roles in an open source project
Users
Contributors
Maintainers
Leaders
Documenting your open source project’s governance structure
Discoverability
Simplicity
Flexibility
Financial support for open source projects
Tip jars
Crowdfunding
Single-organization funding
Foundations
Summary
Part 2: Running an Open Source Project
Chapter 6: Making Your Project Feel Welcoming
Getting your project set up for newcomers
Setting up your project infrastructure
Creating a getting started guide
Being welcoming to new contributors
Recognizing newcomers when they make an impact
Supporting end-users effectively
Managing issues
Community and developer management
Commercial support
Being where the conversation is
Online forums and social channels
Regional meetups and events
Summary
Chapter 7: Growing Contributors to Maintainers
The importance of growing contributors into maintainers
Alleviating the stress on the current maintainers
Bringing new ideas and energy into a project
Enabling current maintainers to step back
Finding contributors and being a mentor
Qualities of a future maintainer
Using mentorship to bring in a new contributor
When is a contributor ready to be a maintainer?
Signs that mentorship is going well
What if the contributor is never ready?
Summary
Chapter 8: Dealing with Conflict
Understanding people and their motivations
The human brain
Cultural and life experiences
Example interactions in an open source project
Inclusive decision-making
Open communication and collaboration
Methodology for making decisions
Making decisions
Remedying toxic behavior
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 9: Handling Growth
Measuring growth
Growing awareness of the project
Project adoption
Project diversity
Assessing and remedying low areas of growth
Commits/committers
Project usage
Diversity
Growing and scaling project leadership
From project generalists to project specialists
Managing time and expectations
Avoiding burnout
Summary
Part 3: Building and Scaling Open Source Ecosystems
Chapter 10: Commercialization of Open Source
The importance and value of an open source project being used commercially
Is commercial usage ok?
The sustainability cycle
Commercialization models for open source
Dependency or component of a larger commercial software package
Service and support
Open Core
Setting your project up for commercial usage
Branding and IP management
Recognition and conformance programs
Summary
Chapter 11: Open Source and the Talent Ecosystem
Open source as your portfolio
My career story
Growing your career in open source
Finding talent through open source
Participating in communities
Sponsoring project-related infrastructure
Sponsoring or hosting a mentorship, hackathon, or another event
Retaining and recognizing talent coming from open source communities
Measurement and management of open source engagement
Setting annual goals
Create an internal awards or incentives program
Summary
Chapter 12: Marketing for Open Source – Advocacy and Outreach
What is marketing for open source and why does it matter to your users?
A case study in open source marketing – Mautic
Mautic’s story – impact and purpose of open source marketing
Open source project “marketing runway”
Website and blog
Discussion channels
Social media
Next-level outreach and driving engagement
Events and meetups
Media and analysts
Case studies and user stories
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 13: Transitioning Leadership
Why even think about transitioning leadership?
Career change
Project leaders near retirement
The project is stalling
Building a plan
Documenting your project’s operation
Timelines and enablement for new leaders
Stepping back comfortably
Being appropriately available
Endorsing the new leaders
Setting the right support network for new maintainers
Summary
Chapter 14: Sunsetting an Open Source Project
How to know when a project is slowing down
Projects – code velocity and community participation slow down
Products – technology space in decline
Profits – funding and investment dry up
The sunsetting process
Aligning on sunsetting in the community
Announce intent to sunset
Work with end users on transitioning
What comes after sunsetting?
Mark code repositories and issue trackers as archived
Find a home for asset ownership
Can a project come back from sunsetting?
Summary
Index
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