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Step 1: Convince the president of my vertical to consider open sourcing a body of code
Step 2: ???
To give a bit more detail, I've already successfully convinced my boss and boss's boss to consider open sourcing a body of code that was written mainly as a demo platform for our company. We've already determined that the code is useful and understand the benefits to open sourcing the code.
Now the question is where to go from here? What are the next steps? The president said that he'd like to see a project management proposal which would contain details like:
Who would manage changes to the code?
What would the process look like to release new code?
How is the code review process defined before releasing code?
Who will participate?
What are the legal aspects that need to be considered first?
What I think I need is a "Open Sourcing Code for Dummies" guide or if there are some simple guidelines, how-to's, or templates for putting together a proposal available. I'd like to hit a home run on my first at bat and plop a solid proposal in his inbox. Any advice, resources, or ideas on how to structure such a proposal would be helpful.
I would consider the following:
Think clearly about the goals of open-sourcing your software and check all your decisions in this light.
Double check, if all licences of used libraries are compatible with the chosen license and you have the permission to use anything in the codebase. This also includes images or other non-code. If the source is world-visible, copyright-infringements are easy to spot, and your competitors might use the chance to make you trouble.
Choose an appropriate license. Most important decision might be copyleft (GPL, AGPL) or not (Apache, BSD, MIT).
Check your code again and remove anything, that you don't want to see in the public (silly comments or so).
Write a documentation to build the software from the source. If you have a good buildfile that could be as easy as 'make', but most likely you have to document about dependencies like installed libraries and so on.
Provide some way to contact your company about the software. maybe an e-mail-address and a someone, who answers to this e-mail.
If you want to attract external coders, document some important parts of the sourcecode. Provide some basic documentation about the structure, that external developers can figure out, which source-file they should edit, to change behaviour X of the software.
If you want to work with external programmers, you will need an world-readable Version-control. If you get patches, that are outdated against your actual codebase, it isn't helpful. If you have persons, who often send patches, give them commit-rights. Also an open bug-tracker is useful. If you don't want to host the two tools yourself at your company, use an Open-Source Hosting site.
If you choose a copyleft-license, let all external committers sign a contract, that give you permission to use their additions. Otherwise you couldn't use the changes in other propietary products of your company.
That's it, what comes to my mind at the moment.
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I have worked with my friend on a project and made a website. This is the website: TOFSIS
It's more or less like an Educational CMS. Now the thing is, it's in its initial stage. We still have to prepare more modules for the site as instructed by the college.
So, my partner and I thought of making it open sourced so that people in college can build on it. We want to choose from a pool of eligible developers who are really interested and give the codes only to them under certain conditions so that they can prepare a particular module for the site or fix the existing bugs. And for things like GPA calculator, attendance calculator, you don't need the codes for the site.
I read completely about licenses and I don't think we can choose open source license as yet because we are not giving out the codes now. But what about Creative Commons? Just adding a CC badge like SO.
I see that on SO footer there is a CC stamp. SO is not open sourced to my knowledge. But I also heard CC is not meant for softwares or codes. So when does a developer use CC license? And is it fair in my case to use a GPL without giving out the code now but put some more additional custom conditions?
What should I do in my case? I want to put up a license. I don't want anyone to commercialise and I want people to share back things too.
Thank You
The AGPL is possibly the best license choice if you want to make the source code open for people to improve, but also want to force people to share back their improvements.
It doesn't explicitly prevent commercialisation, but anyone who makes a commercial derivative work would have to share all their changes under the AGPL. In practice, this means that a commercial entity would have to find some other way of creating value, e.g. providing value-added services.
Note: The Open Source Definition, require that a license has "No Discrimination Against Fields Of Endeavour". This means that you can't go adding clauses that prohibit commercial use if you want to be classified as open source. You have to let businesses use open source code fairly on the same terms, just like everyone else.
Before I answer, first a question: why not make the code widely available? Since you appear to have no intention of commercializing it, why go through the hassle of using a non-OSS licence (which will spark discussions with your contributors).
Anyway, a good licence could be the Microsoft Reference Source Licence, which will allow viewing rights, but not modification / redistribution. You can make a separate agreement to allow specific people to contribute, ask a lawyer since this goes into contract-law territory (you need permission from them to re-license their code).
But I also heard CC is not meant for softwares or codes. So when does a developer use CC license?
A software developer should never use a CC license for a software program.
Creative Common licenses are fitting for works like images, photos, music, video or the text of documents.
They are less fitting for software because a software program has two forms: object code and source code. The CC licenses do not work well with these two forms. E.g you can edit a photo or a music quite well, that does not work well with software if you don't have the source-code.
CC on stackoverflow btw. is used for the content. So you can edit my answer now and improve it ;)
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My application is reaching a pretty nice beta/alpha level and I might at some point publish it. I have not decided what software license to use in my application. The application is under construction. I bet this must be a question that every developer thinks about at some point.
My software is more like a library and here are some key factors in my case:
It must be an open-source license.
It must be free for developers to use as a library for their applications.
Developers are allowed to redistribute the source code as part of their applications modified or unmodified.
The library can be used for closed-source software.
I want attribution/credit. A one-line credit in the software Help dialog or somewhere in about section of their website is fine. As long as it is reasonable easy for a 3rd-party to find out what library was used to produce the resulting software.
Forking a new project out of my existing source code should not be allowed. I want people to be able to use it and even modify it, but not clone a new similar product to compete against my existing product.
The license needs to state that I take no responsibility for any damage whatsoever.
Is there such a license? Would those requirements even fit in an open-source license?
Forking a new project out of my existing source code should not be allowed
Above is in conflict with Open Source idea (which allows/encourages forking). More info here: Which open source license has no forking
If you think that you can drop that requirement the best choice is LGPL and additional requirement that people must give you credit (you will have to define what type of attribution/credit do you want per different uses)
As James stated in previous comment:
Forks very rarely happen
It is very hard to fork a (big) project
You can benefit more if there are forks - you can take the good ideas from the fork and leave the bad. That way the better judgement about features/code will eventually win (which is part of the idea of Open Source)
Forking a new project out of my
existing source code should not be
allowed. I want people to be able to
use it and even modify it, but not
clone a new similar product to compete
against my existing product.
Ummm ... This is I have never heard of in a Open Source license, and I don't know of any that have this. How would you even word it? Determining the difference between a fork and someone else who has taken your code and just added a patch would be really hard.
Can you think about this one? Forks very rarely happen, and when they do they aren't always competition. Talent, ideas and even code can flow between the forks freely.
You need to speak to a lawyer, we aren't lawyers and don't know your application.
Prevention of forking with open source licenses is complicated, as James says.
For commercial applications, you may want to look at dual licensing.
As far as I know the LGPL allows forks.
You should be able to find one to suit your needs here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_licenses
More specifically I think the GPU Lesser Public License might suit the needs of your library. Keeping in mind that like (all?) open source licenses, LGPL allows forking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License
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I find myself wanting to develop certain projects, but most of the time I lack motivation because I develop by myself.
What I usually do is look for similar existing projects, and ask the developers if they like to collaborate, but it's rather hard.
Is there a good place (a website maybe) to find people that are interested in the same project as me, and therefore would like to collaborate?
You code by yourself?
Release the code on one of the open-source foundries. (code.google.com. sf.net. bitbucket.org , github.com ,etc...)
Pick an easy license (x11/MIT is good, GPL2/3/AGPL3 if you like, among others.)
Write simple instructions on how to deploy, run, with a one-page tutorial.
Have a website where you write about the stuff you build, and the stuff you'd like to build.
Find people who need some help and help them. Don't over-extend yourself.
It takes time to build trust. Trust takes time.
Update
You wrote:
What I usually do is look for similar existing projects, and ask the developers if they like to collaborate, but it's rather hard.
If you see an open-source project out there, odds are the developers already like to collaborate. What they might not want to do is talk about grand schemes about how to turn the software into the next fifty billion-dollar behemoth. Generally, if you join the mailing list, introduce yourself ("Hi, I'm Joe, and I like to do X, and I like this software."), get and use the software, and provide feedback and constructive criticism, and demonstrate that you are following instructions or at least attempting to, and then, then, if you provide a patch (or a branch if github) it might be looked at and considered.
Do follow the project methodology. For example, if they use tests, submit tests with your patch, that sort of thing.
I tried myself to start an open source project and failed. I had published my idea in a forum and there were about 10 or 15 people who wanted to join the project. Actually there were very little activity ...
I think the main reason for the failure was that I hadn't developed anything before going public. It would have been really useful to have at least a prototype. Another thing is defining a (simple) development process.
If I would try it again, I would:
develop a prototype
document the code and the architecture in detail
write down tasks others could do
describe the development process
design a nice website and promote my work
publish the code at google code or something like that
Check out the offerings at github.com. If you can use git, I often find some cool projects on there, and you can always fork the repository to help out.
First, you should register your project on an Open Source Forge. There is a comparison list on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_software_hosting_facilities
On certain forges, there is a way to ask for help. I know that SourceForge does: https://sourceforge.net/people/
I recommend that you read Karl Fogel's excellent and complete book on the subject : Producing Open Source Software. It is freely available online or in print from Amazon.
If you already have some code somewhere online, you could put an ad for your project on Stack Overflow's Open Source Advertising.
Quote from the link:
It must be an advertisement soliciting the participation and
contribution of programmers writing actual source code. This is not
intended as a general purpose ad for consumer products which just
happen to be open source. It's for finding programmers who will help
contribute code or other programmery things (documentation, code
review, bug fixes, etc.).
Openhatch
is the best place I have found to look for open source projects
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The producing open-source software book is a gold mine of information on starting open-source projects. Yet I am hoping to learn more from the experience of stackoverflow users and was wondering what are the mistakes you made when starting a new open-source project (or difficulties you encountered when attempting to contribute to a new project), and how would you avoid these traps to become a successful project*?
**Successful loosely defined as a project that is used, and attracts active contributors.*
My two biggest mistakes are:
I expect the world to fall in love with my project as soon as I post it anywhere. If I don't get immediate feedback how great I am, I quickly lose interest.
When I get quick feedback, I often don't respond on a timely basis because I have so many projects.
"Eat Your Own Dog Food."
Be your first user. This is good:
to know what you're doing
to motivate yourself
to get early feedback
I think it's nearly impossible to write open source software you're not using yourself.
"Eat Your Own Dog Food" tries to break out of the vicious circle: Nobody uses the software because it is not useable; it is not useable because there is no user feedback. Try to develop something that is useful for you and see if it sticks and gains some traction.
Besides using the software yourself “Release Often, Release Early”. With release I do not mean publishing some source zip somewhere but a real end to end release.
Choosing the wrong license (for different values of 'wrong') is a common pitfall. Two examples:
1.) If you're using a license that does not allow for relicensing under different terms and you accept contributors code, you need to keep in mind that the code suddenly is not yours anymore. This is fine for some hobby project, but might limit your commercial options later. Of course, it also limits other's commercial options too.
An example for this is the GPL. Include contributed code under this license and you're bound to the GPL yourself and can't decide to dual-license later (unless you nail this down for every contributor). Even a simple change of the license to a similar OpenSource license is impossible: See the linux kernel - it's bound to GPL V2 and can't be updated to GPL V3.
2.) If you're using a permissive license (e. g. Apache, MIT, BSD) you need to keep in mind that not only you can go commercial and close the code later, but anybody else can do so too.
Don't get me wrong: I like the GPL, I'm happily contributing to GPL projects and am glad that these projects exist. I also like BSD, Apache, MIT (the permissive ones) and am contributing to projects that others exploit commercially, e.g. through "Enterprise Editions" of the software that I'm getting OpenSource. It's all fair game - you just have to be sure what options you want to have later. None is better, they're just different.
The first pitfall is to start a new project when there are already plenty of existing projects that are planning to do the same thing.
Currently I am starting a blog based on a talk that I have given on the FrOSCon here in germany.
First article: There shall be light – things to keep in mind when starting a project
Maybe this helps. I don't know how long it will take to write the following 19 blog posts.
I'll answer clinton here:
Not so obvious stuff for new users is:
For User focused software:
getting started guide (Get the software to run quickly)
screenshots! Users love screenshots and too few projects provide them
For developer centric software:
getting started guide ("get to code quickly" for example by explaining dependencies, structure, compile and start process)
code of conduct
I'll think a little bit more about it and add it here.
Positively super great documentation is a must.
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The company I'm working for is facing some difficulties and our future is, let's say, uncertain. Over the last years, we have developed a framework to build community apps and social networks. We believe that this initiative should not be totally lost, and that it may be useful for the community, so we decided to open source it.
I have some questions regarding this process:
How to choose the most suitable license knowing that the original authors could still contribute and/or do some consulting ?
What are the necessary modifications we have to do in the codebase ?
Do you have some pointers to some existing docs / books which would cover this wide topic ?
I know that those questions are quite open and that there is no simple answer, but I would like to hear from some people with similar experiences.
Thanks in advance !
For the license, you have to ask what your goals are for the license. Is your goal to build a community of people who contribute code back, and not let anyone else create a proprietary fork of your code? Then the GPL would be a good license to choose. Is your goal to allow you to retain copyright, distribute it as open source, but offer an alternative license for people who want to link it to proprietary software? Again, the GPL might be a good choice, though in this case you'll need to make sure you set up copyright assignments from any other contributors that send changes back to you so that you can re-license their contributions.
It sounds like your code might be server-side software, in which case you may want to look into the AGPL; the AGPL is like the GPL, but also requires people to distribute the source to changes if they run it on their own server (which the GPL doesn't require, as it only ever requires anything when you distribute it).
If you want people to be able to build off of it while writing proprietary software, but still contribue changes back to your software itself, the LGPL is pretty good. If you don't care about proprietary forks, and want something that's simply permissive, then the MIT license is a good choice.
The only modifications that are necessary are those that remove any code you are not legally able to release. If you own the copyright on all of the code, then it should be all good, but be careful of any cryptographic code, and talk to a lawyer if there is any in your program. Export restrictions can be a pain to deal with, though they do have provisions that make the process simpler for open source software.
Beyond the necessary modifications, it is good to make sure your code is easy to build and run on as many systems as possible. For instance, you should check which of your dependencies are required, and which ones can be made optional. Some good documentation on how to build and install your software is also good, as well as all the usual things you want in any software development (not just open source), like an easy to build system, unit and regression tests, etc.
A few other things to think about are:
How will other people get their changes to you? Patches on a mailing list? Patches attached to bug reports? Forks on GitHub?
What revision control system will you use? I generally advocate for a distributed revision control system like Git or Mercurial, but Subversion is also very popular and should do the job.
Make sure you make it obvious how the community is supposed to work; a web page describing how to get the software and how to contribute, pointers to your mailing list or IRC channel or whatever medium you want it to be discussed on. If you are going to have a core group of committers or something, document how the process of choosing committers works.
I could go on listing more and details, but I'd probably be repeating things that have already been said. If you want more information, I'd recommend reading Producing Open Source Software by Karl Fogel.
If you're looking for ways to incorporate the open sourcing of this software into a strategy to make money for your company, Joel Spolsky's take is one of the most clearheaded I've read.
If you only read one book on the subject of open source licenses, then it would be hard to do better than Open Source Licensing by Lawrence Rosen.
We've done the same process last weeks. We choose Mercurial as version control system, which works like a charm. Bitbucket is a hosting company, which provides Open source projects with free hosting. You also need more documentation, because people from outside the world will hopefully join your project - this is something different from explaining things to your collegue next door.
One important thing is also that you have to keep in mind, that you now have an audience which you dont want to annoy. With internal development you often change your API, the database schema or something like that. With open source you have to keep in mind, that there should be compatibility between minor versions and clear migration paths if necessary.