Recommendation to read "Producing Open Source Software"

[Leo Simons <ma...@leosimons.com>]

Hi gang,

I want to recommend the book

  Producing Open Source Software
  How to Run a Successful Free Software Project
  
written by Karl Fogel, published by O'Reilly and also available online 
at
  
  http://www.producingoss.com/

to everyone. Reading it and applying its advice to your contributions 
(insofar as you don't follow this advice already) will make those 
contributions more valuable to this project and probably also increases 
the likelyhood that you will be invited to become a committer and/or a 
PPMC member.

(If you're not a (potential) contributor, but rather the manager of 
developers contributing to harmony, I'd suggest you buy a copy for each
and everyone of them, one for yourself, and one for your boss)

Karl describes many big concepts and small details that are important 
when participating in an open source project. Karl is one of the people 
behind the subversion project, which is run very similar to most apache 
projects. As such, the processes he describes are very similar to those 
we (try to) employ here.

Not all of the book is all that relevant for Harmony (after all, apache
has a whole lot of the things Karl describes already in place and a lot
of the choices already made), but in particular these two chapters are 
probably a rather good read for all of us:

  Chapter 2. Getting Started
  http://www.producingoss.com/html-chunk/getting-started.html

    Starting From What You Have
    Choosing a License and Applying It
    Setting the Tone
    Magnitude of the Change
    Announcing

  Chapter 6. Communications
  http://www.producingoss.com/html-chunk/communications.html
  
    You Are What You Write
    Avoiding Common Pitfalls
    Difficult People
    Handling Growth
    No Conversations in the Bug Tracker
    Publicity


Poul-Henning's classic "bikeshed" post is also a must-read for everyone 
involved in open source, and its reproduced in the book at

  http://www.producingoss.com/html-chunk/bikeshed-full.html

I've been "doing open source" for a while now, and I still had more than
a bit to learn from reading the book.


cheers,


Leo

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