Shane is founder of Punderthings℠ LLC consultancy, helping organizations find better ways to engage with the critical open source projects that power modern technology and business. He blogs and tweets about open source governance and trademark issues, and has spoken at major technology conferences like ApacheCon, OSCON, All Things Open, Community Leadership Summit, and Ignite.
Shane Curcuru serves as VP Brand Management for the ASF, wrote the trademark and branding policies that cover all 200+ Apache® projects, and assists projects with defining and policing their trademarks, as well as negotiating agreements with various software vendors using Apache software brands. Shane is serving a seventh term as an elected Director of the ASF, providing governance oversight, community mentoring, and fiscal review for all Apache projects.
Otherwise, Shane is: a father and husband, a BMW driver and punny guy. Oh, and we have cats! Follow @ShaneCurcuru and read about open source communities and see my FOSS Foundation directory.
Authored Comments
Thanks for the code!
One of the hardest things starting to open source your work is the "is it good enough?" thought. This is a natural human reaction, but is really not something to worry about. First, look around in the world of open code: it won't take you long to realize everyone has quirks in their code, and you'll find plenty of places where you can say "wow, that code would be so much better this way!"
Turn that around, and you get the other benefit of opening your code: someone else will come and help you fix bugs or make improvements in your code. This is both a project win - better code - and a personal win - learning from others.
It's great to have such strong support for openness in the company - that makes starting this journey easier. But in the long term, the best driver is understanding that your project and your skills increase when you share your work, and when other people then give you feedback. The big win is seeing other people use and improve on your work.
Both good answers. For licenses, by far the most important point is to HAVE A LICENSE. Some of the github generation seems to not care, but companies and experienced developers alike in the FOSS world know that code without a license is just copyrighted, and the rest of the world has no rights to it - meaning, we're unlikely to contribute to your unlicensed project.
ChooseALicense is a great service. Personally, I like the Apache license. While it's longer than the MIT license, it's the de facto standard for most major new projects that aren't going the GPL route. If you're not a lawyer, you don't need to worry about the extra clauses; the net is that it protects the original author(s) more than the MIT license, and it's slightly more business friendly (because of the patent language). Being business friendly tends to mean that more people will be interested in contributing...