Book Image

Open Source Projects - Beyond Code

By : John Mertic
Book Image

Open Source Projects - Beyond Code

By: John Mertic

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1: Getting Ready to Go Open Source
7
Part 2: Running an Open Source Project
12
Part 3: Building and Scaling Open Source Ecosystems

Marketing for Open Source – Advocacy and Outreach

Back in the early days of free software, the concept of “marketing for open source” would likely be considered sacrilege. Free software was the opposite of commercial software; instead of being driven by sales and marketing strategies, the software that was written was opinionated and driven by the author’s interests. All was well if what users were looking for aligned with what the author was building.

Generally, these users would not be into sales and marketing anyways, which in one sense was good as the focus was on the software itself. This early era gave birth to some of the most popular free software tools out there, such as emacs and vi, which are hugely popular and have active and vibrant communities. These tools might not have gained the popularity they have if they did have more traditional marketing. For the audience the authors targeted, this grassroots-focused approach was the right one.

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