During 2018 I’ve been a contractor for the Italian Digital Transformation Team working on docs.italia.it (Docs Italia), an Open Source platform to collect and share the Public Administration documentation. We didn’t write Docs Italia from scratch though but built it on top of Read The Docs, the leading documentation platform for Python packages. We saved a lot of work by leveraging another open source project. Cool! Still Open Source software does not write itself and we managed to contribute back some value to the upstream project. In this talk I’ll share what we did and what we learned.

1. TFW YOUR COUNTRY FUNDSTFW YOUR COUNTRY FUNDS
OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENTOPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT
RICCARDO MAGLIOCCHETTIRICCARDO MAGLIOCCHETTI
SFSCON 2019SFSCON 2019

2. WHOAMIWHOAMI
PYTHONISTA, SOFTWARE DEVELOPER, CONSULTANT
OSS CONTRIBUTOR

3. ITALIAN DIGITALITALIAN DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION TEAMTRANSFORMATION TEAM
MAKE PUBLIC SERVICES FOR CITIZENS AND BUSINESSES
ACCESSIBLE IN AN EASY MANNER

4. DOCS ITALIA TEAM (2018)DOCS ITALIA TEAM (2018)
ALBERTO TORIN
DAVIDE PORROVECCHIO
FIORELLA DE LUCA
FRANCESCO OCCHIPINTI
FRANCESCO ZAIA
IACOPO SPALLETTI
LEONARDO CAVALLUCCI
PAOLO ROMOLINI
RICCARDO MAGLIOCCHETTI

5. DOCS ITALIA

6. READ THE DOCS

7. WE FORKED READ THE DOCSWE FORKED READ THE DOCS
A PROJECT FORK HAPPENS WHEN [...] CREATING A
DISTINCT AND SEPARATE PIECE OF SOFTWARE.
[...] NOT MERELY A DEVELOPMENT BRANCH, BUT ALSO A
SPLIT IN THE DEVELOPER COMMUNITY.
WIKIPEDIA

8. WHY A FORK?WHY A FORK?
DIFFERENT USERS, DIFFERENT UX

9. UPSTREAMUPSTREAM
CONTRIBUTIONSCONTRIBUTIONS

10. 33 PULL REQUESTS33 PULL REQUESTS
22 MERGED
11 CLOSED

11. 22 PR MERGED22 PR MERGED
10 BUGFIXES
6 I18N
6 CODE CLEANUPS

12. 1 REGRESSION :)1 REGRESSION :)

13. ANSIBLEANSIBLE
DEPLOY AUTOMATIONDEPLOY AUTOMATION

14. 0 NEW FEATURES0 NEW FEATURES

15. 1 FEATURE FAIL1 FEATURE FAIL

16. LESSONSLESSONS
LEARNEDLEARNED

17. BUILD TRUSTBUILD TRUST
WITH UPSTREAMWITH UPSTREAM
BE PART OF THE COMMUNITY

18. A FORK ISA FORK IS
A LONG LIVED BRANCHA LONG LIVED BRANCH
FIX UPSTREAM, LESS DELTA DOWNSTREAM

19. CONTRIBUTING TO OSSCONTRIBUTING TO OSS
IS PART OF THE JOBIS PART OF THE JOB

20. CONVENIENCE > PURITYCONVENIENCE > PURITY
OVERRIDE INSTEAD OF PATCH
CONFIGURATION FTW

21. SYNC WITH UPSTREAM:SYNC WITH UPSTREAM:
REBASE VS MERGEREBASE VS MERGE

22. CONCLUSIONSCONCLUSIONS
NOT ALL PROJECT FORKS ARE BAD :)
YOU CAN DELIVER VALUE WHILE
CONTRIBUTING BACK TO OPEN SOURCE

23. THANKS!THANKS!
GITHUB.COM/ITALIA
GITHUB.COM/XRMX
SPEAKERDECK.COM/XRMX
@RMISTAKEN
MENODIZERO.IT