Producing Open Source Software

From the CouchSurfing Wiki, an informal workspace which anyone can edit.

Producing Open Source Software is a great book by Karl Fogel, on how free software projects function and how to keep them functioning. "How to Run a Successful Free Software Project." Some ideas are useful for CouchSurfing right now, and some could be of help to make CS even more free and open.

It's available online.

Contents 1 What a project needs 2 Social and Political Infrastructure 3 Communications 4 Packaging, Releasing, and Daily Development 5 Managing Volunteers

What a project needs

• Website
  • but not CouchSurfing.com, could be wiki or dev-wiki
• Mailing lists
  • and not the CS groups please
• Version control
• Bug tracking
• Real-time chat
  • NO Flash!
  • IRC, freenode? #couchsurfing (welcome to check out #couchsurfing on IRCnet!) Or some more closed system

Social and Political Infrastructure

Communications

Packaging, Releasing, and Daily Development

Managing Volunteers

• Getting the Most Out of Volunteers
  • Delegation
    • Distinguish clearly between inquiry and assignment
    • Follow up after you delegate
    • Notice what people are interested in
  • Praise and Criticism
• Prevent Territoriality
• The Automation Ratio

• • Automated testing

Treat Every User as a Potential Volunteer

• Share Management Tasks as Well as Technical Tasks
  • Patch Manager
  • Translation Manager
  • Documentation Manager
  • Issue Manager
  • FAQ Manager

• Transitions
• Committers
  • Choosing Committers
  • Revoking Commit Access
  • Partial Commit Access
  • Dormant Committers
  • Avoid Mystery

• Credit