Open Source Stewardship

Stewardship is an old word. It means taking on the responsibilities that come with ownership, with an ethic of public service. This is vital to open source, which, as a gift economy, is sustained and enlivened by the generosity of individuals sharing their knowledge and their time. This talk will look at what it means to be a steward in open source, in practical terms, from creation to maintenance to sunsetting. In doing so, open source consumers and contributors alike will be able to be successful, responsible members of the community.

This talk was presented at NSNorth, on May 10, 2014.

Transcript

1. Open Source Stewardship A talk about how to build the best version of your software
2. Stewardship is an old word
3. Stewardship (n.) An ethic that embodies the responsible planning and management of resources. Old English: stiward, stigweard "house guardian, housekeeper," from stig "hall, pen for cattle, part of a house"
5. What's the use of an old word in this brave new world?
6. ISO 20121 Event Sustainability Management System Requirements with guidance for use; ❡3.20: "Responsibility for sustainable development shared by all those whose actions affect environmental performance, economic activity, and social progress, reflected as both a value and a practice by individuals, organisations, communities, and competent authorities."
7. Gift Economy
9. Commodity vs. Gift Exchange "Gifts and Commodities" (1982), by Chris Gregory — immediate vs. delayed exchange — alienable vs. inaliable goods — indepedent vs. dependent actors — quantitative vs. qualitative relationships — between objects vs. people
11. Gift Economies create a virtuous cycle
12. $ whoami - AFNetworking - Nomad CLI - Postgres.app - Induction.app - Helios - Ono - TTTAttributedLabel - FormatterKit - TransformerKit - InflectorKit - CargoBay - GroundControl - SkyLab - Orbiter - ...
13. That Doesn't Matter
14. This talk is as much aspirational as it is (hopefully) instructive. I could be so, so much better at this. I want to be so much better at this. I hope we can get there together.
15. How to Be a Steward of Open Source
16. Every Project Has a Lifecycle - Creating - Maintaining - Transitioning
17. Creating
18. Minimum Viable Project - README - Screenshot - Example Project - License - Means of Distribution
19. README
20. What's in a README? — A short introduction — A section describing the basic usage — A list of requirements and instructions on how to install the project — Links to documentation and resources for additional information — Contact information for the creator — A quick statement about licensing
21. Screenshot
22. A screenshot is worth 1000 seconds
24. Example Project
25. (Insert Example)
26. s t r e t c h Your Code - Static Analyzer - Automated Unit Tests - Complete Examples - Use in Production Applications
27. License
28. Good fences make good neighbors
29. Popular Objective-C Open Source Licenses — MIT — Apache 2.0 — BSD — zlib
30. tl;dr MIT License Can — Commercial Use — Private Use — Modify — Distribute — Sublicense
31. tl;dr MIT License Cannot — Hold Liable
32. tl;dr MIT License Must — Include Copyright — Include License
33. Distribution
35. NSHipsterKit.podspec Pod::Spec.new do |s| s.name = 'NSHipsterKit' s.version = '1.0.0' s.license = 'MIT' s.summary = "A pretty obscure library. You've probably never heard of it." s.homepage = 'http://nshipster.com' s.authors = { 'Mattt Thompson' => 'mattt@nshipster.com' } s.source = { :git => 'https://github.com/nshipster/NSHipsterKit.git', :tag => '1.0.0' } s.source_files = 'NSHipsterKit' end
36. $ pod push
37. 4779 Libraries Currently available through CocoaPods
38. $ pod install
39. Maintaining
40. Maintaining - Responding to Issues - Answering Questions - Versioning
41. Responding to Issues
43. You know you've made it when you're writing more on GitHub than in Xcode
44. :(
45. Answering Questions
46. Each question is a data point for what's confusing about your software
51. ...
52. Versioning
53. Semantic Versioning major . minor . patch
54. Semantic Versioning Guidelines http://semver.org — MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes, — MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner, and — PATCH version when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes.
55. How often to bump?
56. Transitioning
57. Transitioning - Delegating - Recruiting - Sunsetting
58. Delegating
59. Delegating is one of the hardest things to do. Period.
60. @protocol OSSDelegate <Person> @property (getter = isEmpathetic) BOOL empathetic; - (void)communicateWithClass:(Class)always; - (void)take:(id)charge and:(id)responsibility; - (void)knowWhatThe:(id)bleep theyAreDoingWith:(id)domain; @optional - (BOOL)conformsToYourExactWayOfDoingThings; @end
61. Recruiting
62. Contributor today, maintainer tomorrow
64. Sunsetting
66. Without a graceful exit, a project is doomed to do more harm than good.
67. Wrapping Up — Announce the end of the project, offering suggestions for how to migrate to another solution. — Keep the project around, but make a commit that removes source files from the master branch. (git will keep everything safe in history) — Thank everyone involved for their help and contributions.
68. Wrapping Up
69. We are in the midst of a Renaissance with Objective-C ...and it has as much to do with the language as it does with the community
70. Responsibilities
71. @mattt