Vous êtes un particulier, une organisation ou une entreprise et vous avez créé un logiciel open source très intéressant. Les utilisateurs le téléchargent, vous avez des retours, des rapports de bugs et des demandes d’ajout et de modification de code. Il est alors temps de réfléchir à la façon de faire rentrer d’autres personnes dans votre projet. Lors de cette conférence, nous verrons quelles sont les étapes importantes pour attirer et impliquer des développeurs et des utilisateurs en balaynt depuis les fondamentaux, comme le guide de contribution ou la documentation, jusqu’aux prémices d’une gouvernance neutre.

1. Paris open source experience
-
Involving external
contributors in your
open source project

2. Antoine THOMAS
Open source evangelist
@ttoine
blog.ttoine.net
linkedin.com/in/ttoine
10 years in Industry
10 years in IT
20+ years of open source
- Ubuntu Studio cofounder
- Middleware Java, Eclipse
Foundation, …
- 3+ years at PrestaShop
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

3. Basics
Let’s break open doors
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

4. Contributing to open source
You can do a looooooot of things
● Using the software
● Planning, sponsorising, or speaking at
events (meetups, conferences, ...)
● Designing (specifications, UX/UI, ...)
● Writing (translation, documentation,
blog posts, tutorials, video, ...)
● Gardening (sorting GitHub issues,
moderating community forum, ...)
● Helping community members
● Reporting bugs
And not only
● Writing code (require coding skills)
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2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

5. Don’t expect that
smart people will
guess what you
want
Minimum documentation:
● How to install, run
● How to build
● Contribution requirements
● Licenses accepted in the project
● Records of important decisions
● Code of Conduct
● How to reach project roles
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

6. Communication channels
Open source communities usually
collaborate through 5 main channels:
● Chat (used to be IRC, now Slack)
● Forum or Q&A
● Tracker (also called Forge)
● Wiki (collaborative doc)
● Events (CFP to highlight the
champions)
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2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

7. Mandatory but
forgotten topics
Well Managed IP
● 4 years in a master in IT or CS
and no IP course (at all)
● Licenses of core and dependencies are
important
Neutral governance
● Put your project in a third party
organization
● Involve partners, customers, users, ...
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2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

8. Common problems
● Internal fear of public judgement
● External pull requests not merged
○ Expectations not documented
○ Focus on contributions that solve problems
for most users
● Difficulties to give key roles outside the company
or project founders
● Internal people privilege
Bypassing documented rules is a very bad practice
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/helping-developers-engage-community-projects
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2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

9. Keep in mind
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

10. Best practice to grow an open source project’s ecosystem
More users
More developers
More
contributions
Better IP
1
3
4
2
release
merge
needs
improvements
Custom
 2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

11. Example of dashboard: all the tasks and personas
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

12. This presentation in one slide
● Be friendly and tolerant
(people might just not be fluent in
English)
● Respect the rules and
prerequisites
(no bypass for friends and
colleagues)
● Be patient, accept feedback, learn,
and practice
(the more you contribute, the more
you know, the more you become
trustable) 12
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

13. Open Source
Means
Working Together
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

14. Antoine THOMAS
Open source evangelist
Let’s talk together
@ttoine
blog.ttoine.net
linkedin.com/in/ttoine
Dashboard template at
https://github.com/ttoine/open-source-software-dashboard
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project