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

What is open source governance?

Open source governance is simply the processes and policies an open source project needs to have to enable it to function. This can mean many things:

  • How can a project accept code?
  • How does a project create a release of its code?
  • Who determines what code comes into a project and what code doesn’t?
  • What does someone need to do to contribute code to a project?
  • How are issues handled?
  • How are security vulnerabilities addressed and disclosed?
  • Who can speak on behalf of the project?
  • Who owns the name, artwork, and other assets of the project?
  • …and the list goes on.

There are a few approaches to structuring governance in a project, each with different benefits and weaknesses to consider. One thing to know with open source governance is it’s not one-size-fits-all, as there are unique qualities in each community to consider. Let’s take a look at some of the more common options.

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