Every project is a software project

A laptop sitting on a table with code displayed on the screen.

One thing that came up when discussing the Open Source Project Security Baseline with a colleague was the distinction between software projects and other projects (design, documentation, etc). Mike astutely pointed out that every project is a software project in some sense. Whether or not the project is producing software, it is consuming software: applications, git forges, issue trackers, and so on.

The specific context of our conversation was supply chain security. Projects that don’t produce a single line of code can still be the victim of supply chain attacks.

Then again, it’s pretty rare that a project doesn’t produce a single line of code. Even if a project exists to write documentation, create visual art, or do something else that isn’t producing a piece of software, there’s probably at least some tooling it has created to make life a little easier. Fedora Magazine, for example, has a small script for converting SVG files to JPG.

It’s a good reminder that our audience is broader than we might think and we should act accordingly.

This post’s featured photo by James Harrison on Unsplash.

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.

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