Lecture 10: Open-Source

Video 🔒

This lecture was given by our Head Course Assistant (Head CA): Yash Kumar Lal.

Defining Open Source

• Software Ownership and Distribution
• Code
• Community

Parts of an Open Source Project

• Vision
  • Why is your project important?
  • Is it at a stage it can be open sourced?
  • Where do you see your project in 6 months, 1 year, 2 years?
• Motivation to open source your work
  • Community should get to use a software
  • Can be a gateway for jobs
• Governance Models
  • BDFL (e.g., Guido van Rossum for Python, Linus Torvalds for Linux)
  • Committes (e.g., Inkspace, Debian)
  • Companies (e.g., React by Facebook)
• Technical Aspects
  • Working with legacy code
  • Following issues and PR templates
  • Code specifications and standards for each project
  • Git workflow
  • Not every project is hosted on GitHub (e.g., Mozilla Firefox)
• CONTRIBUTING.md
• Community
  • Code of Conduct
  • Friendly, responsive environment
  • Be Nice, Be Respectful (BNBR)
  • Welcoming to new members
• Licenses
  • What caveats do you want to attach to your intellectual property when distributing it?
  • MIT, GNU GPL, Apache, or maybe no license. Find the one you want

Open Source Financing

• Company funding (React)
• Supporting Foundations (Tor)
• Grants (Lua, Kaldi)
• GoFundMe, Patreon
• Goodwill

Problems

• Managing people
• Maintaining standards for code

Some Extra Notes by Leandro

• Open Source Guides
• Conventional Commits
• Semantic Versioning
• Keep a Changelog
• Watch this talk about open-source as a market