Open Source Project Infrastructure
Practical
Say you want to find out about an open source project. What is its status and how to contribute?
In order for someone to be fully invited into an open source project in a transparent and seamless way, there are several pieces of infrastructure that one must be able to find. Say you find a project website:
- Communication channels - where does discussion or development for this project take place.
- Repository - where is information, code, or design stored? Is it a wiki, github, or FB page? How do you log in or create an account?
- Q&A or Forum site - for directed development or answers, a Q&A site such as Askbot is useful. For discussion, a Forum is useful.
- Status and Development - what is the status of the project? Is there a Roadmap? Is there a bug or issue tracker? Is there a Critical Path Document?
- Direction - is there a project Vision, Mission, Founding Document, Whitepaper, or Social Contract? Where is the project on its roadmap?
- Engagement - what are the project stats? Has it developed any technology? How many contributors are there? How many people follow the project on Twitter or Facebook?
General
- Common tools - wiki, wiki templates, embeds, free/kicad
- Collaborative Literacy - can not be taken for granted and must be taught
- Work logs
- Logs - for project take, organizational points, collaboration, etc
- News - curated news feed - News Feed Specification
- Visual social media - Instagram
Project
- Documentation - Development Template
- Burndown
- Developer List - in PhPList
- Developer Map
Communications
- Newsletter
- Blog
- Website
- Milestone timeline
Team
- Relatedness Wrangler - our word for HR
- Board of Directors
- Leadership
- SME advisors
- Onboarding - crash course, training on protocols, training on collaborative literacy
Other
- Roadmap
- Release schedule
- License
- Documentation
- Bug tracker
- Product specifications
- Product Metrics
- Communication channels
- Development workflow SOPs
- Cloud collaboration platform
- Development Toolkit
- Prototyping toolkits
- Compiler (open source microfactory)
- Contributor agreements
- Versioning system
- Repositories
- Commit procedure
- Governance
- Developer training
- Project Management and Leadership training
- Collaborative literacy training within the OSE community
- Chapters
- Relationship building with allied open source projects (FreeCAD, Kdenlive, SweetHome 3D, Open Source Geospatial Foundation, Shuttleworth Foundation, etc.)
- Learning from the practices of industry leaders (Wikimedia Foundation, Linux community, OSHWA, Eclipse Foundation, Wordpress, and others)
