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Program management for open source projects

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2024-03-01

Incentives power open source

A company making requests of a project has to explain the incentives in a way the project members will care, not in a way the company cares.

Categories Posts
2024-02-28

Grow by delegating

Don’t hoard responsibility. Give new contributors a sense of ownership so that they’ll stick around your community.

Categories Posts
2024-02-21

Semantic versioning in large projects

SemVer can work for large projects, but it’s not a fit for every case. Whatever you pick, document it clearly.

Categories Posts
2024-02-14

Keep your bug tracker unified

When your bug tracking is scattered across different platforms, you make it harder for your users to file reports.

Categories Posts
2024-02-07

Fork yes: embrace forks of your project

If you’ve done what you can to make your community a great place to contribute, then you can feel free to embrace any forks that happen.

Categories Posts
2024-01-31

Companies: fund work that isn’t new development

Failing to invest in your upstream projects presents a large business risk. Communities, like gardens, are more productive when tended to.

Categories Posts
2024-01-24

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.

Categories Posts
2024-01-17

Open source trends for 2024

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

Categories Posts
2023-12-27

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.

Categories Posts
2023-12-20

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.

Categories Posts

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About This Site

Learn how to get your ducks in a row, your cats herded, or any other animal metaphor you can think of.

2025 trends

Hand-drawn graphs on a sheet of white paper sitting on a desk.
Read my 2025 open source trends predictions.

Get the book

Cover of the book Program Management for Open Source Projects

Ebooks available from The Pragmatic Bookshelf. Print available from Bookshop and Amazon.

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Upcoming talks

Want to book me for your project or company? See the Speaking page for details.

Latest posts

  • It’s okay to be partial to your work2025-05-28
  • Growing your project means doing less coding2025-05-21
  • Adding pre-report bug discussion2025-05-14
  • Use reserved domains and IPs in examples2025-05-07

Except where noted, all content © Ben Cotton and provided under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license except where noted. Logo design by alexlexi.

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