Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project by Karl Fogel Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project
Book Review: Excellent guide for open source contributors and maintainers
Summary: 5 Stars
Karl Fogel does a fantastic job of covering everything you need to know about open source projects. It contains everything you need to know about contributing to an open source projects: how to interact with other contributors, working with version control, contributing code, etc. He also provides an excellent guide for running an open source project. The book covers a great deal of ground, giving excellent advice on a wide range of topics: selecting a license; maintaining a mailing list, defect tracking system and version control repository; providing a website; interacting with committers; dealing with technical people; gathering consensus; and understanding important project management concepts. Karl is a veteran of several highly visible and widely used open source projects, and clearly draws on his extensive experiences (both positive and negative). The style is pleasantly conversational, and it's clear that he really knows what he's talking about and is speaking from a position of authority.(Full Disclosure: I was a technical reviewer for this book, and was thoroughly impressed with it while reviewing it.)
Book Review: Excellent guide for open source maintainers and contributors
Summary: 5 Stars
Karl Fogel does a fantastic job of covering everything you need to know about open source projects. It contains everything you need to know about contributing to an open source projects: how to interact with other contributors, working with version control, contributing code, etc. He also provides an excellent guide for running an open source project. The book covers a great deal of ground, giving excellent advice on a wide range of topics: selecting a license; maintaining a mailing list, defect tracking system and version control repository; providing a website; interacting with committers; dealing with technical people; gathering consensus; and understanding important project management concepts. Karl is a veteran of several highly visible and widely used open source projects, and clearly draws on his extensive experiences (both positive and negative). The style is pleasantly conversational, and it's clear that he really knows what he's talking about and is speaking from a position of authority.(Full Disclosure: I was a technical reviewer for this book, and was thoroughly impressed with it while reviewing it.)
Book Review: Destined to become a classic
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is excellent, for the following reasons.1. It provides a lot of very useful, non-obvious advice that I don't think is available in other books. At least, I have read 5 or 6 other books on open-source software, and none of them cover much of the material in this book.
2. The writing style is clear and conversational, which makes it easy to read.
3. The book is short, which makes a welcome change from the bloated 800+ page books that are so common in the computer industry.
I am currently writing some software that I hope to release under an open-source license. I am confident that I have sufficient skills to write the software and even document it. However, there is much more to releasing open-source software than that, and this book has educated me about loads of issues that I am likely to face.