There is a lot of documentation out there on how to do open source well at the project level. Historically, many projects have been started by developers, often on their own initiative, and the first non-technical questions they faced tended to be about project coordination (like "What collaboration tools shall we use?" or "What will our code review practices be?") and about community management (like "How do we decide who has commit access?" and "How do we integrate newcomers smoothly?"). Because developers hate to solve the same problems over and over, there is a wealth of detailed and varied material addressing those sorts of questions (we've even written some ourselves, but it's just a drop in the bucket of what's available). Taken together, this literature thoroughly answers the question "How do we execute the best tactics for developing open source software?"
Setting an Open Source Strategy
The majority of companies that use open source understand its business value and identify its advantages in efficiency, flexibility, interoperability, and speed of innovation. Yet only half of these companies report practicing basic open source management, such as community development, code maintenance, and the like, according to the latest Future of Open Source survey.
Creating and growing healthy community open source projects [PLoP 2020]
Abstract: This article presents a succinct and minimal handbook of best practices of how to create and grow community open source projects. We start with the assumption that the handbook’s user has…
From Open Source Software to Open Source Strategy
How the Smartest Executives Are Using Open Source Techniques to Optimize Corporate Strategy
Tools for Managing Open Source Programs
The road to strategic use of open source starts with a carefully planned, organized, and empowered open source program office to guide and manage its creation, distribution, and use. But that’s just a first step. To get such an office underway and running smoothly, you need the right tools. These mission-critical tools will be used to track goals and metrics in departments from engineering and legal to executive leadership, PR, and marketing, and give employees all the resources they need to gather data, provide snapshots of performance, and manage the daily use of open source within your company.
Nibble Stew: The Nine Phases of an Open Source Project Maintainer
There is more to running an open source project than writing code. In fact most of all work has to do with something else. This places addit...
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.
Making your open source project newcomer-friendly
One reason I really like open source is that it offers a lot of great opportunities for newish programmers to get some hands-on experience with real world problems. There’s only so much one can learn …
The Missing Middle of Open Source
Why serious, maintainer-driven projects struggle to sustain themselves—and what it will take to fix it.
Open source engagement in organizations
Companies, governments, and other organizations big and small are working with open source to achieve their goals. Teams range from barely considering it to ...
Open Source Explained — Open Indie
Musings on the concept of ‘open source’, in the broadest possible definition of the term. Also an invitation to become a participant in ...
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…
A plan for open source software maintainers
It seems to me that this is a case where problems are in fact solutions to other problems. To wit:
Roadmap: Open Source
After years of investing in open source software, we’re releasing our thinking on what positions these companies as emerging technology giants.
Ecosystem Mapping — Open Tech Strategies | Blog
All the power of open source comes from throwing in with your neighbors, even the neighbors you don't like very much. For most projects, the main reason to get involved in open source is to create productive relations with as many participants as possible, including rivals. Doing this well requires understanding who is in your ecosystem and how they relate to each other.