Author: Ben Cotton

Ben formerly led open source messaging at Docker and was the Fedora Program Manager. He is the author of Program Management for Open Source Projects. Ben is an Open Organization Ambassador and frequent conference speaker. His personal website is Funnel Fiasco.

Don’t try to be too formal in policy writing

Don’t emulate legal language when writing policies for your community. The simpler the language, the easier everyone will understand.

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Open source trends for 2024

With 2024 here, I take a look at a few trends I see in open source this year.

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Open source leadership resolutions for 2024

If you’re looking for some inspiration for your new year’s resolutions, here’s what I’m thinking about for 2024.

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How to get started in project management

Do you want to get started in project management but you’re not sure how? Open source projects have plenty of opportunity to jump in & help.

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Focus release criteria on user-visible behavior

Focusing on user-visible behavior allows you distinguish between what you should fix and what you must fix.

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Understand your community’s scope

It’s hard to say “we want to be for everyone” and continue on to “who is also interested in this work.”

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It’s okay for your project to end

Open source projects don’t last forever, and that’s okay. The end of a project can be a sign of success, or at least partial success.

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Save 40% on Program Management for Open Source Projects (and other ebooks)!

Use promo code turkeysale2023 at pragprog.com, to save 40% on ebooks and audio books through November 29.

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Translations represent the hardest part of bootstrapping trust

The difficulty in reviewing translations is what makes those contributions so important. But how do you bootstrap trust for your translators?

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New project repo basics

Before you start writing any code, what do you fill a new repo with? I’ve created a sample repository with some really basic examples.

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