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Succeeding with FOSS!
This document provides guidance for starting an open source software project. It discusses introducing FOSS and getting started by choosing a name and mission statement. It covers technical infrastructure like version control, bug tracking, and hosting. It also addresses social infrastructure such as communication channels and announcing the project. Managing volunteers, earning or spending money, packaging releases, and choosing an appropriate license are also covered. The document aims to help software developers and managers launch and maintain successful open source projects.
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Succeeding with FOSS!
- 1. Succeeding with FOSS! Make your successful open source software PHP DevCon 2012 Basis SoftEXPO 2012
- 2. For whom isthis? software developers and managers who are considering starting an open source project, or who have started one and are wondering what to do now.
- 3. What is inside? ✓ Introducing FOSS ✓ Getting started ✓ Technical Infrastructure ✓ Social Infrastructure ✓ Managing Volunteers ✓ Money! ✓ Packaging, Releasing, and Daily Development ✓ Licenses, Copyrights, and Patents
- 4. What is FOSSanyway! Free and Open Source Software Now lets break it down
- 6. the "free software"sense What do you think about the term ‘Free’?
- 7. Free Vs. OpenSource all free software is zero-cost, but not all zero- cost software is free - Able to get the source code? - Have the right to modify or redistribute it?
- 8. “free as infreedom” – Stallman
- 10. Got Some FreakingIdeas!!! How to get started?
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- 12. Hell yeah! Gettingstarted
- 13. The hardest partabout launching a free software project is transforming a private vision into a public one
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- 15. Choose a GoodName Relevant to project Easy to remember
- 16. Have a clearmission statement The next thing people will look for is a quick description, a mission statement Should be on the front page, preferably right under the project's name
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- 19. State That theProject is Free Like GIT did…
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- 21. Development Status Peoplealways want to know how a project is doing they want to know how actively it is maintained, how often it puts out new releases, how responsive it is likely to be to bug reports, etc.
- 22. Development Status Alphaand Beta The term alpha usually means a first release, with which users can get real work done and which has all the intended functionality, but which also has known bugs. The main purpose of alpha software is to generate feedback, so the developers know what to work on. The next stage, beta, means the software has had all the serious bugs fixed, but has not yet been tested enough to certify for release.
- 24. Downloads The softwareshould be downloadable as source code in standard formats. Give a unique version number to the release
- 27. Communications Channels Forums,mailing lists, chat rooms, and IRC channels
- 28. Announcing go tohttp://freecode.com/, click on Submit in the top navigation bar, and fill out a form announcing your new project. Post to mailing lists or newsgroups: to direct people to your project's own forums for follow- up discussion (by setting the Reply-to header).
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- 31. Website Pick *.orgas official home Centralized information from the project out to the public Bind together the other tools (the version control system, bug tracker)
- 32. Mailing Lists Reply-to:discuss@lists.example.org
- 33. Tools Mailman — http://www.list.org/ PHPList- http://www.phplist.com/
- 34. SCM/ Version ControlSystem combination of technologies and practices for tracking and controlling changes to a project's files, in particular to source code, documentation, and web pages If you have never used version control before, the first thing you should do is go find someone who has, and get them to join your project.
- 35. "We see youhave expertise to make commits in a certain domain, so go for it." "Not only are we asserting a limit on your expertise, we're also a bit suspicious about your intentions."
- 36. Version everything Allow Committers Browsability Usebranches to avoid bottlenecks Code review Change Log
- 37. Version Control MeansYou Can Relax
- 38. Tools GIT (Distributed) -http://www.git-scm.org Subversion (Centralized) - http://subversion.tigris.org/
- 39. Bug Tracker Thetracker must be connected to a mailing list
- 40. Tools Redmine — http://www.redmine.org/ Bugzilla — http://www.bugzilla.org/ Flyspray — http://www.flyspray.org/ Trac — http://trac.edgewall.com/
- 41. RSS Feeds Spreadyour updates
- 42. Wikis A wikiis a web site that allows any visitor to edit or extend its content; "wiki" (from a Hawaiian word meaning "quick" or "super-fast")
- 43. Tools MediaWiki -http://www.mediawiki.org
- 44. Free Hosting! yummy There are a few sites that provide free hosting and infrastructure for open source projects: a web area, version control, a bug tracker, a download area, chat forums, regular backups, etc. you get a lot for free; what you give up, obviously, is fine-grained control over the user experience.
- 45. Tools GitHub (Git)-http://github.com/ Google Code Hosting (Subversion and Mercurial ) http://code.google.com/hosting/ BitBucket (Git and Mercurial: integrates with JIRA, Jenkins, Pivotal Tracker) - https://bitbucket.org Springloops (Git, SVN) - http:// www.springloops.com/v2/
- 46. Get your codesinto social & political issues
- 47. forkability the abilityof anyone to take a copy of the source code and use it to start a competing project, Good or Bad? if fewer than half of the developers are in favor?
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- 49. Benevolent Dictators Thebenevolent dictator model is exactly what it sounds like: final decision-making authority rests with one person, who, by virtue of personality and experience, is expected to use it wisely.
- 50. Democracy "Wait, Ididn't agree to that. We need to hash this out some more." "I assume we all agree that this bug needs to be fixed, and that this is the way to fix it." "Time to vote"
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- 54. Getting the MostOut of Volunteers Why do volunteers work on free software projects? " hey! you do this Vs. who can do this?" "Would you be willing to look at this bug?" "Follow up" Use "Praise & Criticism" Use "Automation" i.e. testing
- 55. Share Management Tasks asWell as Technical Tasks Translation Manager Documentation Manager Issue Manager FAQ Manager
- 56. Committers, who? willbring the best results for the code? "If you have 100 committers, 10 of whom make large changes on a regular basis, and the other 90 of whom just fix typos and small bugs a few times a year, that's still better than having only the 10. "
- 57. Credit Credit is theprimary currency of the free software world
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- 59. why open source projectsget funded? Everybody likes a prime idea
- 60. Corporate funding offree software development is not a new phenomenon Sharing the burden Augmenting services Example: CollabNet's support of http://subversion.tigris.org/ Undermining a competitor Example: http://www.openoffice.org/ Marketing - think image, think brand value Dual-licensing Example: MySQL and Sleepycat Donations (donation button, mugs, T-shirts) Example: www.wikipedia.org
- 61. Money Can't BuyYou Love Hey! Mr. Chowdhury! we dont want your so called company branding in our project
- 62. Google Summer ofCode For students: http://code.google.com/soc/
- 63. Kickstarter Kickstarter isthe world's largest funding platform for creative projects. Every week, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields. http://www.kickstarter.com/
- 64. Packaging, Releasing, and DailyDevelopment Release Numbering Release Branches - always use a release branch Maintaining Multiple Release Lines
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- 67. Choosing a Licenseand Applying It The "Do Anything" Licenses If you're comfortable with your project's code potentially being used in proprietary programs, then use an MIT/X-style license (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php) The GPL If you don't want your code to be used in proprietary programs, use the GNU General Public License (http:// www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).
- 68. Applying a Licenseto Your Software You don't need to include the actual text of the license there; just give the name of the license, and make it link to the full license text on another page. The software itself must contain the license The standard way to do this is to put the full license text in a file called COPYING (or LICENSE)
- 69. The GNU GPLsays to put a notice like this at the top of each source file Copyright (C) <year> <name of author> This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>
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- 71. Who am i? m a hossain tonu http://mahtonu.wordpress.com @mahtonu
- 72. Writing a Book comingthis march
- 73. i dont haveany licensing issues with these slides, cool! Thanks :) questions?
- 74. Reference Producing Open SourceSoftware - Karl Fogel http://www.producingoss.com/