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Open source is just about the source, isn't it?

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Open source is just about the source, isn't it?
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611
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CC Attribution 2.0 Belgium:
You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
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Your project's code base is rock solid, you are rolling releases early andoften, your test suite is comprehensive and running regularly, your code iswell performing without any glitches. Everything is in place that defines asuccessful open source project - or isn't it? This talk tries to highlight some of the key questions software developerswill quickly be faced with when dealing with open source: In addition tocoding skills, topics like people management, naming, trademark enforcement,licensing, patents, pr and more become topics to deal with. After years of using open source projects, running my own projects, foundingmeetups and conferences, watching others thrive or fail I believe that codingskills alone aren't sufficient to turn a "private play ground code base" intoan open source project that other's can rely on. Inspired by 140 characters of truth published here:https://twitter.com/janl/status/... the talk will focus on what topics thatare usually not taught as part of programming courses will cross your way whendealing with open source - either as a user or as a contributor: * People: Is the project willing and able to attract more contributors? Is it able to survive if the leader looses interest or time to continue contributing? How does the project deal with requests coming from the user base? How easy is it for users to get their issues fixed? * Trademarks: Why should you care about trademarks from the beginning? How do you deal with others infringing on your trademarks? * Copyright: Why should you care, exactly which license you choose? * PR: While writing release notes is common practice and composing changelogs is pretty easy, the resulting documents are hard to grok for editors and won't get you on the front page of any magazine. Nor will they help you get visibility on common social media systems that might be key in informing your users about recent releases. While being excellent at all topics isn't vital from the start, answers togovernance questions decide what a project looks like a few years from it'sstart.