Intellectual property and open source

Preface

    Why Write This Book?
    Who Should Read This Book?
    Sources
    Acknowledgements

        For the first edition (2005)
        For the second edition (2022)

    Disclaimer

1. Introduction

    History

        The Rise of Proprietary Software and Free Software

            Conscious Resistance
            Accidental Resistance

        "Free" Versus "Open Source"

    The Situation Today

2. Getting Started

    Starting From What You Have

        Choose a Good Name

            Own the Name in the Important Namespaces

        Have a Clear Mission Statement
        State That the Project is Free
        Features and Requirements List
        Development Status

            Development Status Should Always Reflect Reality

        Downloads
        Version Control and Bug Tracker Access
        Communications Channels
        Developer Guidelines
        Documentation

            Availability of Documentation
            Developer Documentation

        Demos, Screenshots, Videos, and Example Output
        Hosting

    Choosing a License and Applying It

        The "Do Anything" Licenses
        The GPL
        How to Apply a License to Your Software

    Setting the Tone

        Avoid Private Discussions
        Nip Rudeness in the Bud
        Practice Conspicuous Code Review

            Case study

        Be Open From Day One

            Waiting Just Creates an Exposure Event

    Opening a Formerly Closed Project
    Announcing

3. Technical Infrastructure

    What a Project Needs
    Web Site

        Canned Hosting

            Choosing a Canned Hosting Site
            Hosting on Fully Open Source Infrastructure
            Anonymity and Involvement

    Message Forums / Mailing Lists

        Choosing the Right Forum Management Software

            Spam Prevention
            Identification and Header Management
            The Great Reply-to Debate
            Archiving
            Mailing List / Message Forum Software

    Version Control

        Version Control Vocabulary
        Choosing a Version Control System
        Using the Version Control System

            Version Everything
            Browsability
            Use Branches to Avoid Bottlenecks
            Singularity of Information
            Authorization

        Receiving and Reviewing Contributions

            Pull Requests / Merge Requests
            Commit Notifications / Commit Emails

    Bug Tracker

        Interaction with Email
        Pre-Filtering the Bug Tracker

    Real-Time Chat Systems

        Chat Rooms and Growth
        Nick-Flagging and Notifications
        Chat Bots

            Commit Notifications in Chat

    Wikis

        Wikis and Spam
        Choosing a Wiki

    Translation Infrastructure
    Social Networking Services

4. Social and Political Infrastructure

    Forkability
    Benevolent Dictators

        Who Can Be a Good Benevolent Dictator?

    Consensus-based Democracy

        Version Control Means You Can Relax
        When Consensus Cannot Be Reached, Vote
        When To Vote
        Who Votes?

            Not All Maintainers Are Coders
            Adding New Maintainers

        Polls Versus Votes
        Vetoes

    Writing It All Down
    Joining or Creating a Non-Profit Organization

5. Organizations and Money: Businesses, Non-Profits, and Governments

    The Economics of Open Source
    Goals of Corporate Involvement
    Governments and Open Source

        Being Open Source From Day One is Especially Important for Government Projects

    Hire for the Long Term

        Case study

    Appear as Many, Not as One
    Be Open About Your Motivations
    Money Can't Buy You Love
    Contracting

        Hiring From Within the Community
        Hiring From Outside The Community
        Contracting and Transparency
        Review and Acceptance of Changes

            Case Study: the CVS Password-Authentication Protocol

        Update Your RFI, RFP and Contract Language
        Open Source Quality Assurance (OSQA)
        Don't Surprise Your Lawyers

    Funding Non-Programming Activities

        Technical Quality Assurance (i.e., Professional Testing)
        Legal Advice and Protection
        Documentation and Usability

            Funding User Experience (UX) Work

        Providing Build Farms and Development Servers
        Running Security Audits
        Sponsoring Conferences, Hackathons, and other Developer Meetings

    Marketing

        Open Source and Freedom from Vendor Lock-In
        Remember That You Are Being Watched

            Case Study: You Can't Fake It, So Don't Try

        Don't Bash Competing Vendors' Efforts
        "Commercial" vs "Proprietary"

    Open Source and the Organization

        Dispel Myths Within Your Organization
        Foster Pools of Expertise in Multiple Places

            Establish Contact Early With Relevant Communities

        Don't Let Publicity Events Drive Project Schedule
        The Key Role of Middle Management
        InnerSourcing

    Hiring Open Source Developers

        Hiring for Influence

    Evaluating Open Source Projects
    Crowdfunding and Bounties

6. Communications

    Written Culture
    You Are What You Write

        Structure and Formatting
        Content
        Tone
        Recognizing Rudeness
        Face

    Avoiding Common Pitfalls

        Don't Post Without a Purpose
        Productive vs Unproductive Threads
        The Smaller the Topic, the Longer the Debate
        Avoid Holy Wars
        The "Noisy Minority" Effect
        Don't Bash Competing Open Source Products

    Difficult People

        Handling Difficult People
        Case study

    Handling Growth

        Conspicuous Use of Archives

            Treat All Resources Like Archives

        Codifying Tradition

    Choose the Right Forum

        Cross-Link Between Forums

    Publicity

        Announcing Releases and Other Major Events
        Announcing Security Vulnerabilities

            Receive the Report
            Develop the Fix Quietly
            CVE Numbers
            Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Scores
            Pre-Notification
            Distribute the Fix Publicly
            Further Reading on Handling Security Vulnerabilities

7. Packaging, Releasing, and Daily Development

    Release Numbering

        Release Number Components
        Semantic Versioning
        The Even/Odd Strategy

    Release Branches

        Mechanics of Release Branches

    Stabilizing a Release

        Dictatorship by Release Owner
        Voting on Changes

            Managing Collaborative Release Stabilization
            Release Manager

    Packaging

        Format
        Name and Layout

            To Capitalize or Not to Capitalize
            Pre-Releases

        Compilation and Installation
        Binary Packages

    Testing and Releasing

        Candidate Releases
        Announcing Releases

    Maintaining Multiple Release Lines

        Security Releases

    Releases and Daily Development

        Planning Releases

8. Managing Participants

    Community and Motivation

        Delegation

            Distinguish Clearly Between Inquiry and Assignment
            Follow Up After You Delegate
            Notice What People Are Interested In

        Praise and Criticism
        Prevent Territoriality
        The Automation Ratio

            Automated testing

        Treat Every User as a Potential Participant
        Meeting In Person: Conferences, Hackfests, Code-a-Thons, Code Sprints, Retreats

    Share Management Tasks as Well as Technical Tasks

        "Manager" Does Not Mean "Owner"

            Patch Manager (or Pull Request Manager)
            Translation Manager
            Documentation Manager
            Issue Manager

    Transitions
    Committers

        Committers vs Maintainers
        Choosing Committers
        Revoking Commit Access
        Partial Commit Access
        Dormant Committers
        Avoid Mystery

    Credit
    Forks

        "Development Forks" versus "Hard Forks"
        Figuring Out Whether You're the Fork
        Handling a Fork
        Initiating a Fork

9. Legal Matters: Licenses, Copyrights, Trademarks and Patents

    Terminology
    Aspects of Licenses
    The GPL and License Compatibility
    Choosing a License

        The GNU General Public License

            The "or any later version" Option: Future-Proofing the GPL
            The GNU Affero GPL: A Version of the GNU GPL for Server-Side Code
            The Copyright Holder Is Special, Even In Copyleft Licenses
            Is the GPL Free or Not Free?

    Contributor Agreements

        Doing Nothing
        Contributor License Agreements

            Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO): An Easier Style of CLA

    Proprietary Relicensing

        Problems with Proprietary Relicensing

    Trademarks

        Case study: Mozilla Firefox, the Debian Project, and Iceweasel
        Case study: The GNOME Logo and the Fish Pedicure Shop

    Patents
    Further Resources

A. Copyright

    Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

        Using Creative Commons Public Licenses
        Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License

            Section 1 -- Definitions.
            Section 2 -- Scope.
            Section 3 -- License Conditions.
            Section 4 -- Sui Generis Database Rights.
            Section 5 -- Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability.
            Section 6 -- Term and Termination.
            Section 7 -- Other Terms and Conditions.
            Section 8 -- Interpretation.

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