
Open sourcing a Contracted project: I toggled the “public” switch, now what? - alonisser
https://medium.com/@alonisser/i-toggled-public-now-what-6b42959db251#.vk7hcbu87
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Sir_Cmpwn
I just pushed an effort at Linode to open source our new manager website:
[https://github.com/Linode/manager](https://github.com/Linode/manager)

I think it will avoid these pitfalls. It is a learning resource because I hope
that someone will read it instead of spending the weeks we had to spend
figuring out how to set up the ideal frontend web project in 2016. I also hope
that it'll get some exposure among those millions of open source JavaScript
projects by simply inheriting our customerbase.

Unfortunately, though, I don't realistically see many external contributions
coming into the manager. It hits all of the points that make it easy to
contribute (it's not my first open source project by a wide margin), but I
would be surprised to see many contributions despite that.

~~~
StavrosK
> It hits all of the points that make it easy to contribute

Where's the documentation?

> Reporting Bugs

> Don't.

Hmm...

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Yeah, fair. It's still early in development so those resources haven't been
made available.

~~~
StavrosK
Fair enough, I just wanted to point out documentation is pretty much the first
and most important thing you need to do if you want someone to contribute to
an open repository, so I don't think you can say it "hits all the points"
without having any docs available.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Well, I do see significant amounts of contributors working on several of my
personal open source projects, and I only generally make end user docs
available. A well organized codebase doesn't always need much explanation.

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wimagguc
Open-sourcing side projects is fun only if you care about those or until they
become more popular. One of the tiny libraries I developed some time ago has
1000+ stars as of today, and though I have no interest in developing it any
further, I keep receiving bug reports, questions or pull requests. The
questions tend to be on the silly side, most pull requests would break the
code for others. Most of the time it's a pain really, yet, I have to keep it
out there and make it available on Cocoapods too, mostly because the last
thing I want is to break other dev's projects.

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vigilant
I fear that opening sourcing my personal projects would work against me. The
code that i develop in my spare time is done for my own benefit, and just for
fun - no documentations, no unit tests, and there are hacks there which i'm
proud of.

I fear a future employer would look at that code and think that is how I write
code in professional environment.

~~~
icebraining
You could create a repository under a nickname not directly tied to your
"real" name. Having multiple virtual identifies is one of the best features of
the 'net.

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neurobuddha
This article seems relevant for my situation. A few days ago I released
project management software called Wheatbin:
[http://wheatbin.com](http://wheatbin.com). It's my first contribution to Open
Source.

The github repo is here:
[https://github.com/wheatbin/wheatbin](https://github.com/wheatbin/wheatbin)

The software works great for my needs, but it would be nice to see Wheatbin
evolve through community involvement. I wasn't sure if that happened
organically or if there were things I could do to get that started.

~~~
moron4hire
There is no such thing as "if you build it, they will come". I mean, the movie
"Field of Dreams" was about a literal miracle, after all. Open source software
takes just as much marketing and "sales" to convince people to use--say
nothing about contribute to it--as proprietary software.

~~~
forgotpwtomain
> There is no such thing as "if you build it, they will come".

Who is marketing Redis, Postgresql, UBlock, VLC? I understand the opposite
doesn't apply to everything but neither does the blanket negation.

~~~
moron4hire
Postgres is very heavily marketed by EnterpriseDB.

~~~
forgotpwtomain
Your post explicitly states:

> Open source software takes just as much marketing and "sales" to convince
> people to use--say nothing about contribute to it--as proprietary software.

The comments in response to my post have been about the author's of said
software publishing blogs - are you really equating 1 author publishing a blog
with the 'marketing and sales' used to sell proprietary software (as in
dedicated sales team, dedicated marketing teams, SEO, dedicated social
media/pr employees)?

> Postgres is very heavily marketed by EnterpriseDB.

Saying that Postgres is 'very heavily marketed' when drawing a comparison to
the marketing proprietary software receives isn't just misleading, it's false.

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dankohn1
Please take a look at the new Core Infrastructure Initiative Best Practices
Badge.
[https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/](https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/)

It helps list what it takes to have a project that is usable by others and to
which they can easily contribute.

~~~
sshykes
Do you think it might have been responsible to disclose that you are a "Senior
Advisor" to this coreinfrastructure initiative thing?

~~~
dankohn1
I guess I thought I did, since it's right there if you click on my username.
Also, the badging project is completely free and open source (we're also eager
for contributions about improving the criteria), so it's not like I'm aiming
to rack up my affiliate commissions. But apologies if it came off as
irresponsible.

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chvid
Thanks for writing this.

It lists many reasons why I don't open source my side projects.

Open sourcing is meanigless without considerable additional work in form of
quality assurance, documentation, project management, marketing.

As a developer you should weight whether it is worth the cost for the return
of exactly what? Getting your stuff out there? Developer street credits? Maybe
a consulting gig down the road?

Or is your time better spent doing other things?

~~~
syoc
I don't see how open sourcing is meaningless if you don't do the things you
listed. It may be meaningless to _you_ , but you can never tell if someone
else will be able to benefit from your work.

~~~
chvid
In theory yes. In practice no, your project will just be burried amongst the
million other github projects.

~~~
ghughes
I have to disagree as well. Years ago I open-sourced a little utility on
GitHub and stuck the GPL on it. I had to stop working on it and soon forgot
all about it. I checked on it recently and discovered that it was forked by
PhoneGap and is now a critical dependency of their product. I don't recall
doing anything to promote it.

~~~
nekitamo
Thank you for Fruitsrap. We use it every day, as do dozens of other teams you
probably have never heard of :)

