Getting started in Open Source
Joining vs Starting a Project
Scratch an itch.
Research first
Revive dead project vs. rewrite
- Get involved with communities even if you plan to start your own
- Learn from their examples
Know your licenses
Note
I am not a lawyer.
http://opensource.org/licenses is pretty cool
" Freely used, modified, and shared"
| MIT/X11: | Short, permissive, says attribution and no liability. Doesn't discuss copyright. Can convert to Apache 2 |
|---|---|
| Apache: | Short, permissive, goes in every file, grants patent rights from contributors to users, author keeps copyright. Plays nice with GPL3 (?) |
| BSD: | Attribution, keep copyright, no liability |
| AGPL: | Demands source distribution even when software not distributed (for cloud/hosted) |
| GPL: | Viral, copyleft. Viral = infects entire program if it links to GPL library or uses a single line of GPL'd code |
| LGPL: | Fixes library linking issue with GPL |
| CC: | Non-code content |
- MIT/X11
- Apache
- BSD
- AGPL/GPL/LGPL
- Creative Commons
- http://choosealicense.com/
Assessing a new community
- Elitism vs welcomeness
- Communication style
- Documentation and guides
- Faster or slower change?
Getting involved
Lurk more
- Make accounts
- Mailing lists
- IRC channels
- Wikis
- Issue trackers
Your nick is your reputation
It's okay to make mistakes... But learn from them.
Finding a project
Note
First contributions will be metric of how nice they are to newbies
There's a thing where older project members get grumpy at newbies because they've answered the question over and over... read docs/faq then improve them
- Openhatch
- Easy bugs
- GSOC submitters who didn't get enough interns
- Search by language
- Search by project type -- find something that interests you (web dev? bioinformatics? video games?)
- Your immediate payment for contributions will be satisfaction, so pick something satisfying
First steps
Note
It will feel like you have only a vague idea what you're doing. This means you've found a project that's challenging and that you'll learn from.
- Lurk awhile then ask
- Write a test
- Fix a typo
- Deploy and update the installation docs
DevOps Concerns
- Configurations often managed in public repos
- Root can't be handed out to just anyone
- Build trust, contribute to project consistently
- Practice with the tools they use
Your Homework
- Find a project that you'd like to get involved with this summer
- Join IRC, mailing lists, etc.
- Pull the code and run its tests using what you've learned
- Find something you can contribute to the project
- Discuss how it's going in #devopsbootcamp on irc.freenode.net
Questions?
Any questions about anything from this year?
- Conferences: OSBridge, OSCON may have free expo hall passes
- In Corvallis? Want to come to the OSL and see what we do, pair program, etc.?
- No meeting next week -- please leave feedback!