Open Source: What Works, What Doesn't

My talk from the #AWSCommunity event about my experiences maintaining various open source projects.

Transcript

1. Open Source
   What Works and What Doesn’t
   

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2. Who am I?
   Michael Barrett
   Engineering People Lead, Operations Infrastructure Engineering @ Remind
   https://github.com/phobologic
   @phobologic on Twitter
   

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3. What is this talk about?
   

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4. The Projects
   

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5. troposphere
   A python library that allows for
   easier creation of AWS
   CloudFormation templates.
   https://github.com/cloudtools/troposphere
   

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6. nymms
   An independently scalable
   monitoring system that follows
   Nagios plugin standards.
   https://github.com/cloudtools/nymms
   

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7. Empire
   A control layer on top of Amazon
   EC2 Container Service (ECS) that
   provides a Heroku like workflow.
   https://github.com/remind101/empire
   

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8. stacker
   An AWS CloudFormation Stack
   orchestrator/manager.
   https://github.com/remind101/stacker
   

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9. Starting Your Project
   

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10. Motivation
    Why open source this?
    What will make this project feel “successful” to you?
    

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11. Engagement
    Is this a problem area you feel engaged with? Is it something you’ll likely be
    engaged in for the foreseeable future?
    

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12. What issue does it solve?
    What is the goal?
    How common is the issue?
    This will also help you focus, and make hard design decisions.
    

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13. Focus
    How focused is the problem area? Tighter focus usually means it’s an easier
    project to maintain, whereas broad focus can require more work.
    

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14. Choosing a License
    I Am Not A Lawyer!
    https://choosealicense.com/ is your friend
    What do you want to do with your project/who do you want to use it?
    

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15. Starting Documentation
    README.md
    Developer/Contributing Documentation
    

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16. Code of Conduct
    “When a project seems hostile or unwelcoming, even if it's just one person
    whose behavior is tolerated by others, you risk losing many more contributors,
    some of whom you may never even meet. It's not always easy to adopt or
    enforce a code of conduct, but fostering a welcoming environment will help your
    community grow.” -- https://opensource.guide/code-of-conduct/
    

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17. Most Important: Picking a Name
    

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18. More Documentation!
    Usage Documentation
    Tutorials/Demos
    

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19. Promotion
    If eyes/users/contributors are important to you, it may take active promotion to
    make your project a success.
    Twitter/HackerNews/Reddit/Medium
    Join relevant slack teams
    Offline - go to meetups/conferences/give a talk!
    

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20. Support
    How much effort/time are you willing to put into supporting your users?
    Start a Slack team or Gitter Community (and make it easy to find!)
    Be kind, be helpful
    Encourage feedback
    

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21. Handling contributions
    Be polite, be gracious, be responsive
    Sometimes you have to say no
    Rule #1 of open-source: no is temporary, yes is forever. -- @solomonstre
    

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22. It can take time
    Time to first PR:
    ● Empire: ~1day
    ● Troposphere: 3 months
    ● Stacker: 9 months
    

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23. The Team
    Having a team makes all of this a lot easier. Special thanks to @markpeek,
    @bobveznat, and @vesirin who I interact with on most of the open source
    projects I work on these days.
    

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24. Getting paid for software you give away
    

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26. Getting paid to work on stuff you give away
    Figure out your (potential?) employers outlook on Open Source
    Show that you engage in Open Source outside your work
    Talk about the benefits of Open Source
    Be up front about the costs of Open Source
    

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27. Other ways to get involved
    Code
    Documentation
    Tutorials
    Design
    Answer questions
    

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28. github/twitter: phobologic
    Great links:
    https://opensource.guide/
    https://choosealicense.com/
    

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29. Happy Hour!!
    

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