One of the insider secrets of free and open source software (FOSS) is that most of the rules a project uses on a day-to-day basis are not found in the software’s license. There are contribution guidelines, which are enforced by the project only taking contributions that meet them. There are codes of conduct, which are a condition of community participation. There are endorsements, official membership, a voice in setting the project roadmap, and all kinds of other benefits that attach to varying types of community participation. In each case, entirely external to the license, there are official rules and unwritten norms that govern how participants gain the benefits of joining the civic life of a project.
How to set up a new Programme | The Commons Conservancy
So you are responsible for some ‘free and open’ project or effort that is in the public interest. This could be free software/open source, open hardware, open science, open content, etcetera. With open, we mean that you are sharing not just the final end result as something immutable, but you’ve made it part of the ‘Commons’ by explicitly allowing anyone to build and extend on what you’ve created. In legal terms this is normally done through a ’license’, and each incremental author actually needs to license his or her part. However, once different people start contributing, managing who can license what becomes cumbersome - especially if you need to make upgrades to a license. Mix in the need to collectively raise funds for promotion, development and maintenance, and you’ve just experienced why people that are involved with larger projects sometimes feel victim to their own success. None of this matters when a project is young, but as soon as it is about to outgrow the original creator it becomes urgent - there is a window of opportunity for quick and effective repair which slowly starts to close once you’ve passed a certain scale, The critical fase of scale up is where we aim to help out.
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…
Twelve tips for growing communities around your open source project | Ben Balter
Publishing code isn't enough. Twelve practical tips to attract users, welcome contributors, and grow a healthy open source community.
How to manage casual contributors to open source projects
Try these strategies to better utilize contributions from your project's episodic volunteers.
FOSS funding, co-operation, and the Digital Life Collective
Free open-source software (FOSS) is the bedrock of our digital world. This is a story about getting funding for FOSS engineering…
Some startups are going ‘fair source’ to avoid the pitfalls of open source licensing | TechCrunch
New alternative category to 'closed source' could help companies monetize software in the open -- without going all-in on open source.
The Asymmetry of Open Source - Matt Holt
A comprehensive guide to funding open source software projects
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.
Embrace Open Source, For the Good of Nerdmanity | Fortune
More businesses are willing to use open source software for key projects.
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 Contribution: The Ultimate Guide | Built In
How to get into open-source contribution according to these experts.
What Is Open Source Strategy? — Open Tech Strategies | Blog
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?"
Open Source Endowment — World's First Endowment Fund for OSS
The Open Source Endowment provides truly sustainable funding for critical open source software through a community-driven endowment model.
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 Money In Open-Source Software | TechCrunch
It’s no secret that open-source technology -- once the province of radicals, hippies and granola eaters -- has gone mainstream. According to industry estimates, more than 180 young companies that give away their software raised roughly $3.2 billion in financing from 2011 to 2014. Despite the growing popularity of open-source software, though, many open-source companies are not financially healthy.
