Awesome Open Source

A curated list of resources related to how to do open source projects

Open source is a way of running projects openly and collaboratively, giving users and developers the freedoms to use, share, and modify the sources. It's prevalent in open source software, but extends to complementary areas such as documentation or design, and broader areas such as open content and open collaboration.

This list focuses on resources about the why and how to do open source projects, not so much about the what of concrete projects. It does contain links to lists of awesome open source projects, though.

Contributions are welcome. Read the guidelines how to contribute.

Contents

Fundamentals
- Licensing
- Legal
- Culture
Building
- Governance
- Community
- Development
- Onboarding
- Mentoring
- Metrics
- Documentation
- Marketing
- Funding
- Infrastructure
Using
Support
History
Inner Source

Fundamentals

Licensing

Licenses

OSI approved licenses - Canonical list of open source software licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
Annotated Open Source Definition - The definition of open source which is the base for the OSI license list, with rationales
Creative Commons - Open licenses for non-code such as documentation or artwork
Choose an open source license - Simple license chooser to help you choosing a license for your project
Joinup Licensing Assistant - Tool to find open source licenses based on desired conditions and compare them regarding compatibility
Open Source License Compendium (OSLic) - Compendium with instructions how to fulfill obligations of open source licenses
Open Source License Compliance Handbook - Detailed guideline how to comply to a large selection of open source licenses
Open Source License Checklists - Formal machine-readable representations of obligations of many open source licenses
TLDRLegal - Summary of licenses in plain English
Making Your Code Available Under An Open Source Licence - Overview of how to choose and apply open source licenses
Open source licenses: What, which, and why - Overview of the most important Open Source licenses and what they mean
copyleft.org - Detailed information about the GPL and other copyleft licenses
GPL Cooperation Commitment - Pledge to cooperatively solve GPL v2 violations
The MIT License, Line by Line - A very thorough explanation of the MIT license
License Center - Categorized list of open source, open content, open data, open hardware licenses
Universal License List - Aggregated list of licenses encountered by a combination of scanning tools
Scancode LicenseDB - Extensive list of licenses with meta data such as SPDX identifiers, classification, and links to text representations
Open source needs to clean up its language - Article about how classification of licenses could be worded better
Delayed Open Source Publication - History and practice of using licenses which give open source rights with a delay, e.g. the BUSL
Beyond Open Data: The Only Good License Is No License - Open licensing of data
Source Available Software Licensing - Overview of source-available licenses

License agreements

Contributor License Agreement and Developer Certificate of Origin references - Many links to material about CLA, DCO, FLA and related information
Why CLAs aren't good for open source - Article with an argument against CLAs (with a counter-argument in the comments)
Contributor Agreements - Information and a tool to create contributor agreements
DCO - Developer certificate of origin used by the Linux Kernel and other projects

Legal

Model Trademark Guidelines - Guidelines for open source projects how to write trademark guidelines
Open Usage Commons - Organisation for holding trademarks for open source projects
Open Invention Network - Defensive patent pool and community to protect open source from patent threats
OpenChain Project - Project to define, support, and certify open source compliance programs
Balanced Employee IP Agreement - Reusable agreement which makes sure employees keep the rights on side projects they do not do as part of their job
Open Source Casebook - Legal analysis of key legal topics in open source, including primary sources
Understanding US export controls with open source projects - Whitepaper on what to consider regarding export control regulation which might affect open source projects
EU Export Control Regime and Free Software - Analysis of European export control rules and how to comply with them
Journal of Open Law, Technology & Society - Free legal journal covering issues in the realm of openness, in particular open source software
The International FOSS Law Book - Background of how open source is seen from the point of view of legal systems in different countries
Requiring a specific Open Source Software in public contracts – best practices to adopt - Guide for requiring open source in public tenders
Guidelines on the acquisition and reuse of software for public administrations - Guidelines for acquiring open source software in Italy

Culture

The Cathedral and the Bazaar - Influential paper by Eric Raymond from 1997 laying out the principles of open source
Contempt Culture - Advice about how to create a healthy and respectful culture, explained at the example of contempt towards other programming languages
Open Source Diversity - List of information, projects, and other resources supporting more diversity and inclusion in open source communitites
What is open? - Beyond open source software, what is open data and content?
Open Advice - Answers the question what 42 prominent contributors would have liked to know when they started with open source

Maintainers

Awesome Maintainers - Open source maintainers talking about maintaining open source projects
The role of a maintainer - Best pratices for open source maintainers
The Open Source Contributor Funnel - A model how people become contributors to open source projects
The Open Source Software Developer Career and Its Benefits - A model for how developers progress in open source projects and what does this mean for their career

Code of Conducts

Contributor Covenant - Popular code of conduct which can easily be adapted to most projects
Ubuntu Code of Conduct - The Ubuntu code of conduct which has been the base for several other code of conducts
KDE Community Code of Conduct - A code of conduct stressing pragmatism and mutual support

Building

Governance

Open Source Archetypes - Framework for classifying options how to run open source projects
Open Source Survey - Survey ran by GitHub from 2017 about open source development practices and communities
Open Source Governance Models - Collection of data about open source governance models
On Consensus and Humming in the IETF - Article about rough consensus which is a pattern used in many open source projects in some way
Sustainable Free and Open Source Community - Principles of sustainable open source communities and overview of possible open source business models
Sustain - Group of people, events, and material about sustainability of open source projects
Open Governance - Checklist and some pointers regarding open governance in context of open source
Determining the True Openness of Open Source Projects - Definition of areas how to make an open source project, including best and worst practices
Minimum Viable Governance - A minimum governance model template
The Four Opens - Example of an open governance model
Four Levels Of Open - Another definition of openness beyond the openness of the license
Governance Game - Card game to explore governance of open source projects in the public sector
Open Governance Index - Study from 2011 analyzing openness of governance for 8 big open source projects
How open source foundations protect the licensing integrity of open source projects - How open source foundations facilitate open governance and long-term sustainability of open source projects
Contributions and credit policy for open source projects - Guide on how to write contribution and credit policies
'Rough Consensus and Running Code' and the Internet-OSI Standards War - How governance of early Internet standards evolved

Community

Measuring Engagement - Study by Mozilla about how responsiveness affects contributions
Open Source Guides - Collection of resources about how to run and contribute to an open source projects
The Art of Community - Standard reading on community management
Five Pillars of Building Developer Communities at HashiCorp - How to build a community
Open Leadership Training Series - Best practices of working open
Producing Open Source Software - Book about how to run an open source project
Seven questions to steer open source project community development - Checklist with questions how to position open source projects
All Contributors - Specification and automation to recognize all contributors, not only code contributors
OpenDRI & GeoNode: A Case Study for Institutional Investments in Open Source - Case study how building a community around an open source project created a 200% return on investment
Social Architecture - Book about building open source communities
Public Issue Tracker Behaviors - List of bad behaviors in issue trackers you better avoid

Development

REUSE - Specification and tools to declare copyright and license in open source software
How and why to properly write copyright statements in your code - Guide how to write copyright statement including legal background
Semantic Versioning - Popular release versioning scheme reflecting what kind of changes are in a release
Keep a changelog - Guidelines for maintaining a changelog
Contributing Template - Template for contribution guidelines
How to Write a Git Commit Message - Comprehensive resource about how to write great commit messages
Conventional Commits - Conventions for writing structured commit messages which also can be read by machines
Code Review Developer Guide - Google's code review guidelines
How the top 100 projects on GitHub do user support - Study about how open source projects do user support
disclose.io - Standardized best practices for security issue disclosures

Onboarding

First Timers Only - Introduction how to start with open source contributions with links to projects helping with that
First Contributions - Playground for learning the GitHub contribution process by doing it at an example
How students can get started contributing to open source software - Overview of programs for students to get started with open source

Mentoring

Metrics

Stackalytics - Open source tool providing contribution statistics used by OpenStack and others
Bitergia - Open source contribution metrics
Open Source Contributor Index - Statistics about the top contributing companies on GitHub
Swiss OSS Benchmark - Statistics about Swiss Institutions developing open source software on GitHub

Documentation

Marketing

What I learned from an old GitHub project that won 3000 starts in a weeek - Case study of successfully marketing an open source project
afs.one - Directory of successful use of open source software

Funding

Nadya Eghbal's "Lemonade Stand" - A comprehensive list of funding methods for open source projects
Open Source Software Funding Platforms Registry - List of platforms for funding open source software development
Open Collective - Open source platform for managing and connecting projects, fiscal sponsors, and financial contributors
Decentralized funding? An analysis of three programs - Analysis of some programs to fund open source development in an open and decentralized way through development grants
COSSI: Commercial Open Source Software Company Index - List of companies which make more than million USD revenue from open source software
FOSS Contributor Fund - Framework for selecting projects a company supports financially
2024 Open Source Software Funding Report - Results and recommendations from survey about funding of open source projects by organizations

Infrastructure

Code Hosting

Software Heritage - The universal software archive
GitHub - Largest code hosting site
Scaling from 2,000 to 25,000 engineers on GitHub at Microsoft - Detailed report about how to scale an organization on GitHub with pointers to tools and best practices
GitLab - Code hosting site whose code is available as open source under an open core model
Savannah - Code hosting site for the GNU project and other free software projects
Codeberg - Code hosting platform for Free and Open Source Software run by a non-profit community as alternative to commercial platforms

Communication

Mailman - Popular open source mailing list software
Discourse - Open source forum software
IRC - The chat tool originally used by a lot of open source communities
Jitsi - Open source video conferencing
BigBlueButton - Open source web conferencing system also used for virtual conferences

Using

Management

Awesome OSS Management - List of packages and projects helpful for managing open source projects and offices
Open Source Guides for the Enterprise - Resources for running an open source program office
Open Source Program Offices: The Primer on Organizational Structures, Roles and Responsibilities, and Challenges - Comprehensive overview about how Open Source Program Offices work
TODO Group - Group of practioners of open source management, initiated by the Linux Foundation
OSPO Alliance - Group of practioners of open source management, initiated by the Eclipse Foundation
Open Source Management Training - Free online course from the Linux Foundation about managing open source programs in the enterprise
Open Source in the Enterprise - Mini-book with guidelines for enterprises how to use and create open source software
Principles for industrial Open Source - Large collection of patterns how to improve management of open source in an organization
OSPO Definition - Definition of an Open Source Program Office and what it does (addressing Fear, Love, and Money)
The life-cycle of open source program offices - A mental model of the development of the activities, responsibilities, and the role of OSPOs
Open Source Observatory (OSOR) - Site from the European Commission about open source in public administration
Open Source Policy Examples and Templates - Collection of published open source policies
FINOS Open Source Readiness - Material about managing open source with a focus on the financial sector
Good Governance Initiative - Framework for building open source management in an organization

License compliance

SPDX - Standards to represent and communicate license information
Tooling Ecosystem working with SPDX - Extensive list of tools working with SPDX information
Software Bill of Materials - Explanations and examples about what a Sotware Bill of Materials is and how it's used
Awesome SBOM - List of materials about SBOMs
Cyclone DX - Standard for SBOM information
Tooling Ecosystem working with CycloneDX - Extensive list of tolls working with CycloneDX information
Clearly Defined - Project of the Open Source Initiative to get clearly defined license data for open source projects
OSSelot - Curated database of SBOMs and compliance artifacts for open source projects
Open Source License Compliance in Software Supply Chains - Article about what to consider when making sure products based on open source are compliant to the open source licenses
Blue Oak Council - Resources around legal licensing questions, focused on permissive licenses

Project quality

OpenSSF Best Practices Badge Program - The Open Source Security Foundation's self-certification program for demonstrating adherence to best open source practices
How you know your Free of Open Source Software Project is doomed to FAIL - Tom Callaway's famous post about what not to do when running an open source project
What does a sustainable open source project look like? - Criteria of what makes an open source project sustainable
Methodologies for measuring project health - What are meaningful metrics for measuring health of a project?
Community Health Analytics Open Source Software (CHAOSS) - Project to define metrics for community health
How to Select Open Source Components - Selection criteria for open source components
Open Source Project Criticatility Score - Project and tool to quantify criticality of open source projects
fosstars-rating-core - Framework for defining ratings for open source projects
Open Source Insights - Tool to show details about dependencies of open source packages
publiccode.yml - Standard to express meta data for a repository, used in code for public administration
The Rights-Ratchet Model - Description of risks with license changes in single-vendor projects
endoflife.date - Collection of life cycle information of many projects

Support

Organizations

FLOSS Foundations - Directory of Free and Open Source Software foundations
Growing Open Source Projects with a Stable Foundation - Primer about the role of foundations in the open source ecosystem

Big Free and Open Source Software Foundations

Free Software Froundation (FSF) - Organization behind the GNU project, including the family of GNU Public Licenses
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) - European organization advocating for Free Software
Open Source Initiative (OSI) - Organization stewarding the Open Source Definition
Linux Foundation - Organization supporting open source communities and industries through governance, events, and training
Apache Software Foundation - Organization providing home and governance to a large set of open source projects, including the Apache HTTP Server
Eclipse Foundation - Organization home to the Eclipse IDE and hundreds of other projects in domains such as IoT and others

Umbrella Organizations

Umbrella Organizations - List of organizations acting as umbrella organizations for open source projects
Software Freedom Conservancy - Non-profit organization supporting open source communities in legal matters
Software in the Public Interest - Non profit organization acting as fiscal sponsor to many open source projects
Commons Conservancy - Umbrella organization for open source projects, based in Europe
NumFOCUS - Umbrella organization for open source scientific compute projects
OASIS Open Projects - Program to support projects bringing together open source and open standards

Conferences

foss.events - Collection of Free and Open Source Software events
LWN.net Community Calendar - Calendar tracking events, such as conferences, relevant to the open source community
List of Free Software events - Detailed list of events related to open source
FOSDEM - Biggest open source developer event in Europe, taking place each February in Brussels
Open Source Summit - Linux Foundation's main event
OSCON - O'Reilly's now discontinued commercial open source conference
Linuxtag - Now discontinued annual event which was instrumental in making open source popular

Research

On the abandonment and survival of open source projects: An empirical investigation - What happens when maintainers leave a project
Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure - Extensive report about the challenges of maintaining open source as digital infrastructure
TheFLOSSary - Glossary of Free/Libre and Open Source Software related terms, reusable in LaTeX documents
The Hidden Benefit of Giving Back to Open Source Software - Report about study how contributing to open source projects allows companies to capture more value form using these projects
Getting Started with FLOSS Governance and Compliance in Companies - Research about what the best practices are to introduce a governance program for commercial use of open source software
Socio-technical research using data excavation lab (STRUDEL) - Collection of research about topics such as sustainability and diversity in open source
Guiding Development of Contribution and Community Strategies in Open Source Software Requirements Engineering - Research and guidance about what to share and contribute in an open source community as corporation
A $5 Billion Value: Estimating the Total Development Cost of Linux Foundation's Collaborative Projects - Study about how much it would cost to develop open source projects from scratch
The impact of open source software and hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy - Study about economic impact of open source in Europe
The Value of Open Source Software - Study estimating the supply side and demand side value of global open source software and how the value is distributed in terms of programming languages and contributors

Surveys

Open Source Program Survey - Survey by TODO Group about open source adoption and open source programs
The State of Enterprise Open Source - RedHat report about relevance of open source in enterprises
Open Source Survey - GitHub's survey about open source development

History

Revolution OS - Documentary film about the history of free software, open source, and Linux from 2001
A Brief History of Free, Open Source Software and Its Communities - Short overview of early open source communities and foundations

Inner Source

Inner Source is not Open Source but there is a lot of overlap, especially in terms of culture, practices, and people. That's why it's a section on this list.

InnerSource Commons - Community of practitioniers of Inner Source
InnerSource Commons Spring Online Summit 2020 - Recordings of the talks from the InnerSource Commons Conferene in spring 2020
Adopting InnerSource - Book with case studies about how companies are doing Inner Source
Europace's journey to InnerSource - An example how you can do Inner Source by conducting experiments based on basic Inner Soure principles
The Inevitability of InnerSource - Inner Source in a nutshell, explaining what it is and why it's so powerful
Inner Source from a Financial Compliance Perspective - Explanation of Inner Source from an economic point of view
InnerSource Patterns - Tactics of applying Inner Source methodologies in the format of common patterns
The Business Impact of Inner Source and How to Quantify it - Research about how to look at the impact of Inner Source

This list is licensed under CC0.

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