Producing Open Source Software
by Karl Fogel · first published 2005
88% recommend13% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Thorough, practical guide to starting and running a free software project, covering community building, driving contributions, publicity, and release management. Suits maintainers and first-time project founders.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Add Fogel's "Producing Open Source Software" and Brooks' Mythical Man Month and you've perfectly described my shelf too. I found most of those when I was a lowly junior developer and they were instrumental in shaping my thinking, approach, and…
on “The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition” ↗Karl Fogel's Producing Open Source Software is hands down one of the best books possible on building communities and driving contributions. It was written ~10 years ago (pre-Github) so it's a bit dated but he's working on an update now - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kfogel/updating-produci...
on “On open-sourcing existing code” ↗…https://unglue.it/work/136338/ * Francis daCosta: Rethinking the Internet of Things (APress) https://unglue.it/work/310550/ * Shotts: The Linux Command Line (No Starch Press) https://unglue.it/work/136224/ * Fogel: Producing Open Source Software UT: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project https://unglue.it/work/135870/ * Ryder: Unix as IDE https://unglue.it/work/194054/ More at e.g. * https://unglue.it/free/kw.Computers%20/%20Programming/
on “Computer Science textbooks that are freely available online” ↗…Man Month - important lessons for any developer Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life - A really good read on how to write which is applicable to everyone who needs to communicate well Producing Open Source Software - This is such an in depth book into everything you need to consider when working “in public”
on “Ask HN: Name 3-5 books that had the most impact on your career and knowledge?” ↗…community, especially the ones for who GSoC is that same spark it was for me and many others, and the ones who stick around long after GSoC ends. GSoC 2007 was also the year they gave us Karl Fogel's Producing Open-source Software book (he managed to sign every copy!). This amazing instruction manual, combined with the GSoC experience, gave me the confidence to launch my own open-source projects (such as the XMPP server software…
on “Google Summer of code 2023 is coming” ↗Some general stuff: http://producingoss.com/ http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://www.reddit.com/r/FOSSHelpWanted http://sourceforge.net/people/ http://www.reddit.com/r/codeprojects Outside of that, you'll want to know one or more of the popular Version Control Systems. Git is wildly popular these days, and subversion has a huge legacy base of projects using it. If you
on “Ask HN: Beginner looking to join an open source project” ↗A good resource by Karl Fogel on: "Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project" http://producingoss.com/
on “Basic Income Research Proposal” ↗You do web dev, you could also consider getting into a JS library. And I recommend everyone who works in a team read http://producingoss.com/ -- its insights aren't just good for open source code.
on “Ask HN: How do I beat the solo development blues?” ↗For anyone looking at this and wondering about the process of starting an open source project, I humbly recommend reading Karl Fogel's Producing Open Source Software. It's CC-SA 3.0, and available at http://producingoss.com/
on “We need to talk about email clients.” ↗Some more useful advice for Open Source projects and security/release management can be found in "Producing Open Source Software" from http://producingoss.com/en/publicity.html
on “Tell HN : Wordpress.com exploit” ↗> Many designers don't understand the criticism that usually comes around with each modification in open source project. Many developers don't understand how to speak to designers in a polite way (they think they speak normally, but it isn't perceived as such). Those are some great points, they're discussed in this book: http://producingoss.com/en/communications.html#writing-tone
on “Designers, how do we get you guys to contribute to open source projects?” ↗Perhaps http://producingoss.com/en/difficult-people.html could give you some insight. I much recommend this book as a guide to the basics and best practices of running an open-source project - it certainly helped me when I started. I don't necessarily agree with everything there, and in reality every case is different - but it's always good to read the experiences of others.
on “Gilbc a bug and a Joke” ↗rather more extensive and general, but somewhat related book (Producing Open Source Software): http://producingoss.com/a
on “Successful GitHub Development” ↗History: Back in 2008 I read the book http://producingoss.com/ and was at the same time dealing with several forks of http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.ewing/python/Pyrex/ for use in my project http://sagemath.org. Inspired by producingoss, I came up with the name "Cython" during a brainstorming session with Tom Boothby, then made a website (cython.org), listed the three leaders of the var
on “Cython 0.20” ↗Also check out the book "Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project" by Karl Fogel. He just finished up the 2nd edition and made it freely available online: http://producingoss.com/
on “Announcing Open Source Guides” ↗