Being involved in open source software is rewarding, yeah? You start off contributing to your favorite project, and it feels so heartwarming when that project’s maintainers recognize your effort. Then a few years later you somehow end up responsible for that project, and maybe some satellite projects, and people are clamoring for your attention, and your inbox is never empty, and it’s exhausting and terrifying, and the skills necessary to cope with all the personalities involved are entirely different from the skills you used to get your foot in the door in the first place.
How to become an amazing contributor (to an open source project)
It's a busy morning here in New York City. My email inbox is full of pleasant surprises. The first is a patch for one of my open source projects. A second will appear this afternoon. A third should come late at night—or maybe tomorrow–from a new contributor. Alongside my day job, I contribute and manage open source projects. The number of projects I work on has grown from a couple of small tools to well over a dozen in the last three years. Open source has become a great way to learn new technology, experiment with modern software development practices, and, of course, meet other like-minded engineers. I find that seeing great contributors send working and tested code provides a unique feeling of accomplishment, as powerful as having many satisfied users of my own applications or strong revenues posted by the employer that pays my bills.
The Missing Middle of Open Source
Why serious, maintainer-driven projects struggle to sustain themselves—and what it will take to fix it.
Passive Open Source
I used to be an active contributor to open source projects, but that was when I was still in college - I had a lot of free time and it was some good learning experience. I even managed to get involved with several open source projects when I start my first job in a big company.
Sustainable Open Source: The Maintainers Perspective or: How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Open Source
Open source and the software supply chain
Managing something as esoteric as resources for building software with a variety of contributions made by the open source community is more amorphic.
How to manage casual contributors to open source projects
Try these strategies to better utilize contributions from your project's episodic volunteers.
Open Source or Open Core: Why Should You Care?
Open source software has gained its significant foothold because the community development model works everywhere. Its momentum has moved it into the underlying infrastructure of some of the most sophisticated web scale companies, like Facebook and Google. Open source underpinnings now drive many of the most significant advances in the worlds of cloud and big data.
What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
Outside your door stands a line of a few hundred people. They are patiently waiting for you to answer their questions, complaints, pull requests, and feature requests. You want to help all of them,…
What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer
Outside your door stands a line of a few hundred people. They are patiently waiting for you to answer their questions, complaints, pull requests, and feature requests. You want to help all of them,…
Open Source Is Eating The Software World
It's been said software is eating the world. This year’s Future of Open Source survey points to the fact that open source is eating the software world.
The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders
The open source movement runs on the heroic efforts of not enough people doing too much work. They need help.
More Money For Better Open-Source Software
Give Away Your Code, But Never Your Time — William Gross
As software developers, I think we can agree that open-source1 code has transformed the world. Its public nature tears down the walls that prevent some pieces of software from becoming the best they can be. The problem is that too many valuable projects stagnate, with burned-out leaders:
The shape of open source
At its core, open source is about collaboration. Whether it’s version control, licenses, or issue trackers—everything exists to support people working with each other. Open source embodies a model for…
Open Source Software and Corporate Influence — Andrew Lilley Brinker
Exploring how corporations gain power in open source projects, and how to build resilience to corporate capture.
