how to run an open source project 24120

7/27/2019 How to Run an Open Source Project 24120

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How to Run an Open Source Project

by Sebastiaan Deckers


2/13

Who am I?

Founder of Pandion instant

messenger

XMPP client for Windows

Open source, soon GPL v3

2-4 million users Working at Directi on Chat.pw

Based on Pandion

Open source, GPL v3

Launching soon!


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Goals of this Talk

Starting a project

Useful tools

Mistakes to avoid

Division of labour Gaining and handling users

???

Profit!


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Getting Started

Choose a name

Remember Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox?

Choose something that is available, easy to

remember, pronounceable over the phone,

Acronyms are good, recursion better

eg: GNU = Gnus Not Unix

Choose a logo

Humans remember visually


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Code and Content License

Source Code

Copyleft: GPL, LGPL

Copyright: BSD, MIT/X11, Apache

Content

Logos, documentation, artwork, presentations,

media, mailing lists, blog posts,

Creative Commons Licenses

GNU Free Documentation License

Contributions

Transfer IP or scattered ownership


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Project Hosting

Do-It-Yourself (DIY)

Pro: Product demo, commercial projects

Con: Productivity drain, attack/spam vector

All-In-One

Pro: No hassle, integrated suite

Con: No flexibility, poor usability

Loosely Coupled Mashup

Pro: No hassle, specialised

Con: Content islands


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Releases and PR

Synchronised Releases

Major releases follow fixed cycle with others

Minor releases when needed by users

Nightly builds for developers and testers

PR 2.0 Wikipedia

Blog

Twitter Ohloh

Community!


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Team Management

Perceived Weakness Actual Strength

Distributed location & time

zone

Melting pot of experience

and development styles

Ad-hoc productivity High motivation andpassion

Easy come, easy go Specialist contributors,

resilient manpowerCode quality Co-developers fix bugs and

improve architecture


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Team Management

Lessons learned

Document everything, publically log decisions

Lower barriers to join the project or it gets forked

Decentralised decisions

Core leadership team

Listen to your users

Follow up, track progress, deadlines

Have a project manager who cracks the whip If you build it, they will come

Dont wait for people to join. Just go for it.


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User Community

Problem:

The better the product, the more users.

The more users, the less time spent improving the

product.

Solutions:

Self Service: documentation, wiki, discussion groups,

chat rooms, etc.

Empowerment: Expert users assist novice users.

Filter and rank feedback so developers can

concentrate on what matters.


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Is there Money in Free Software?

Ways to monetise projects as a developer:

Sell related service or product

Advertising

Get better job offers

Consulting & paid support

Beg for donations


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Project Foundations

Single entity owns the project

Why?

Fixed representation of ever changing team

Survival assurance to users

Accountability

Legal protection

Hiring employees

Receiving income


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EOF

Questions?

Contact Me

[email protected]

http://twitter.com/pandion

http://blog.pandion.be/

Shameless Plugs

http://www.pandion.be/

http://www.directi.com/

http://start.pw/

Thank you for your time!
mailto:[email protected]://twitter.com/pandionhttp://blog.pandion.be/http://www.pandion.be/http://www.directi.com/http://start.pw/http://start.pw/http://www.directi.com/http://www.pandion.be/http://blog.pandion.be/http://twitter.com/pandionmailto:[email protected]

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