Introduction
Open-source software programs have enjoyed major success for decades. While there are different flavors of open-source licenses, they all share similar principles of transparency and inclusiveness that have produced some of the most powerful projects ever.
Suppose you're a leader at a company that has developed some substantial software projects. These projects have been proprietary since inception, but now you're investigating the possibility of open-sourcing one or more of them. You then try to determine which candidates would be best to publish. Now, you begin to realize that running a successful program is more than just uploading source code to a public repository. It requires careful collaboration with stakeholders from across the company. It also introduces a new mindset for exposing intellectual property in a way that may be entirely new for the company. Lastly, it involves lots of work to set up and maintain. But for some projects, you know it's worth it.
In this module, learn how to create a successful open-source program by establishing contributor guidance, following proven processes, and by using community standards.
Learning objectives
In this module, you'll:
- Assess your organization's existing open-source efforts.
- Establish the goals of an open-source program.
- Create a repository for your open-source program, complete with contributing and communication guidelines, codes of conduct, templates, and maintainer guides.
- Abide by existing open-source licenses.
- Choose a license for releasing an open-source project.
Prerequisites
- A GitHub account
- Ability to navigate and edit files in GitHub
- Familiarity with pull requests
This module builds on the concepts described in Manage an InnerSource program by using GitHub. It assumes you have already completed that module first.