Managing an Open Source Project

Kent C. Dodds

Utah

1 wife, 3 kids

PayPal, Inc.

@kentcdodds

@kentcdodds

kcd.im/manage-oss

Please Stand...

What this talk is

• Managing an open source project
• Tips and tricks from personal experience

What this talk is not

• The definitive guide
• Perfect advice for all scenarios

Must Haves

what EVERY project needs

LICENSE

It's not open source without one

Code of Conduct

Make your community a friendly and safe one

Define Project Scope

What does "done" mean?

ROADMAP.md

will/wont/might do

Extensibility

Redux is "done"

Automate stuff

avoid repetition

Saving time is not the only reason to automate workflows

kcd.im/automation

Simplify Setup

$ git clone git@giturl.git
$ cd project
$ npm run setup

Automate Code Quality

• eslint
• code coverage
• husky
• opt-cli

Automate Releases

semantic-release + Travis

Community

Open source === people

Documentation

Community Sites

• help.your-lib.com → jsbin.com
• issue.your-lib.com → jsbin.com
• learn.your-lib.com → getting started guide
• question.your-lib.com → Stack overflow (with tag)
• changelog.your-lib.com → ... your guess...
• chat.your-lib.com → ... obvious...

Issues

Pull Requests

Getting Contributors

You can't do it on your own...

Your Contributor Pipeline

Encourage Contribution

Don't do everything yourself

CONTRIBUTING.md

Docs for Contributing

Support AMPAP

As Many Platforms As Possible

Don't commit generated files

They're confusing

kcd.im/generated

Roll out the Red Carpet for Newcomers

Helping newbies helps us all

Recognize contributors

even non-code contributions

MAINTAINING.md

The project should not die with you...

Give commit access

Freely and early