49
votes
Accepted
How to explain to users that we do this in our spare time?
Put it on the front page.
Put it in a pinned message at the top of the forum.
Stop worrying about it.
Find a way to create a marketplace where people can put up money if they care to, and someone ...
- 4,187
33
votes
Accepted
How do I attract new programmers?
There are a lot of things that you can do to get other programmers contributing to your open source project.
Make the project useful for others
I think most programmers would like to contribute to and ...
- 455
32
votes
Accepted
Can FOSS software licenses (e.g. MIT, Apache, GNU, etc.) apply to documents without the need to be rewritten?
The practical answer is that if you want "open source documentation" you should probably just use a Creative Commons license; you can choose between permissive (CC-BY) and copyleft (CC-BY-SA)...
- 14.9k
22
votes
How to react to unhelpful contributions to otherwise unnoticed projects
Note that when you say it's "unnecessary", you mean unnecessary for you. That's not the right way to collaborate: if you want others to contribute then they should have the same conveniences as you (...
- 321
17
votes
How to react to unhelpful contributions to otherwise unnoticed projects
Reject it with a message.
Don't accept it; accepting it sends the signal that this is a good contribution and you want more of them. If that's not what you want, don't accept it.
What you should do ...
- 9,028
16
votes
Accepted
Copyright and Contributing to an Open Source Project
This is where the problem (or advantage) of multiple copyright owners comes in with open projects. There are two scenarios, based on whether a Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA) is required to ...
- 6,785
16
votes
How do I attract new programmers?
Supposing your app is nice and could be some day a popular one, I recommend the followings:
Choose a nice name and description
Choose a name which has not been taken by anyone else before. The ...
- 641
13
votes
Accepted
How can I trust Wikipedia, if everyone can change it?
You are not supposed to trust it - Wikipedia itself tells you that it is not a reliable source.
Instead, you are supposed to trust the sources it cites in the articles. This will mostly be secondary ...
13
votes
How do I attract new programmers?
This works in much the same way that attracting users/a community for other things does.
You might want to look at, as suggested in the comments, Community Building, which has some advice about ...
- 9,028
13
votes
What tools on GitHub can help me do quality assurance for my projects?
In a way you are already moving forward with help from the community; that's what those pull requests are.
In addition to pull-requests, you have other tools at your fingertips
The project wiki
...
- 6,785
13
votes
How to react to unhelpful contributions to otherwise unnoticed projects
Some guidelines that may be of use:
Always thank the submitter for their patch (unless you really don't want them to submit any patches anymore, which could be possible)
Establish guidelines for ...
- 9,086
12
votes
Accepted
What do I do if my contributors are split into two camps?
Been there, done that.
Why does it happen?
In my experience, a split due to creative differences usually happens because different people have a different idea of what the project goal actually is, ...
- 11.5k
12
votes
Accepted
Should I require that new issues be written in English?
Open-source maintenance is often volunteer work. As a volunteer, you do not owe your time to anyone and can always say “no”. So it is absolutely legitimate to close any issue that is not ...
- 37.5k
11
votes
Copyright and Contributing to an Open Source Project
By default under international copyright law, all copyright is owned by the person who wrote the code (or owned by the company they work for if they are an employee, or owned by the client who hired ...
- 2,879
11
votes
Whose responsibility is it to test contributions?
I would believe that testing the project is the responsibility of all collaborators. It should fall under the hands of the contributor, as well as the maintainer. For example, a contributor should ...
- 6,319
11
votes
Accepted
In open source projects, how do you minimize sabotage risks?
This is part of the purpose of version control systems, like git.
When someone makes a new feature, or changes any code at all in fact, they have to commit it to the project. It's a bit like editing ...
- 9,028
11
votes
Accepted
Can a GitHub Organization assert copyright?
I would not expect that Rubberduck VBA, as an unincorporated organization that lacks legal personhood, is an entity that can own a copyright (though this may vary by jurisdiction). Furthermore, unless ...
- 33.5k
10
votes
How do I attract new programmers?
Attract a community of users
Insert some bugs
Wait for the pull requests
The above is only partly in jest - the second step will happen by accident without you planning for it.
You need to find a ...
- 6,785
10
votes
Accepted
What tools on GitHub can help me do quality assurance for my projects?
How about some tools that integrate with GitHub? Do you unit test your code? (Hint: You should be.) Set yourself up with a build server to automatically run the tests when a pull request is received. ...
- 5,258
10
votes
Accepted
Dealing with different development environments
In corporate software development, all developers are, typically, using the same IDE running on the same version of the same operating system
This is a misconception. Example:
I run Eclipse Luna with ...
- 216
10
votes
Accepted
GPL Violation - What is our legal exposure to third parties (not our contributors)?
If the project does not create and distribute a combined work of the plugin and the closed source host, then I see no realistic liability. This is because you aren't violating the GPL. A violation ...
- 4,187
10
votes
How to deal with "project managers" in an open-source project?
Project management, whether in closed or open development projects, is a hugely valuable role. Therefore, the way you deal with project managers is simple: value their presence, and try to keep them ...
- 8,703
9
votes
Dealing with different development environments
This is a really broad subject so I'll answer at a very high level and not touch specifics unless they are relevant for OSS.
"Works for me"
This is really the crux of the problem; you have build ...
- 8,703
9
votes
How do I (a beginner) find a bug in a project on Github?
The most useful open source contributions come from people who actually use the project they are contributing to. So I'd suggest to you first, to use free software as often as possible, and possibly ...
- 5,447
8
votes
Accepted
What happens when a corporate sponsor goes bust?
This situation is one major strong point in comparison to closed source software. While nobody can claim the copyright anymore and therefore the license must be kept unchanged, the software can still ...
- 11k
8
votes
How do I attract new programmers?
You should have proper comments in source code and documentation for internals. Absence of such sucks the fun out of contributing. Yes, most professional developers are fine reading other's source ...
- 181
8
votes
In what ways can students get involved in Open Source?
My recommendation is to join the development and commit-notification mailing lists for an Open Source project you have an interest in, subscribe to notifications on GitHub if applicable, join their ...
8
votes
Can anyone contribute to an open source project?
Every open source project has a policy to restrict who can contribute.
This is mandatory for a project to succeed in the modern era, otherwise random "contributors" would would be injecting malware ...
- 2,879
8
votes
Accepted
Relicensing from GPL v2 to LGPL v2 - What if I can't contact all contributors?
You need all the copyright owners' permission to change license.
There's no natural GPL-implied path here because LGPL is more permissive. It allows redistribution of unmodified binaries without the ...
- 260
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible