Expose open source contribution to some common misunderstandings

In the long run, the contribution of open source must be a two-way street. However, recent statistics show that the company's contribution to open source projects is much lower than the enterprise's use of open source code. As more and more companies increase their contributions to open source projects, there is a need to debunk some common misconceptions about open source contributions.

1. Open source has already earned the eye

A young woman named Kitty Genovese was a victim of public indifference in 1964, sparking a "bystander effect" debate. Simply put, the term describes a phenomenon that suggests that people are reluctant to take action when there are enough bystanders around.

If you understand what is said above, you can imagine what has contributed to the Heartbleed to some extent, which is a threat to the Internet. Open source software can provide enough eyeballs in the IT industry, and in principle these eyeballs are used to uncover security vulnerabilities and flaws. However, many people use this idea to take extreme measures, in many enterprises rely heavily on open source projects to tamper with, causing unimaginable consequences.

By a small group of volunteers in the absence of a large number of donations or external contributions to maintain the http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/9511.html ">openssl project, so that it formed a core part of network security." In essence, it has become a victim of a "bystander effect" because many people believe that someone will contribute to the project to make sure it is safe. As Lou Shipley warns: "Open source must be a two-way street." ”

2. The only way to contribute is to write code

Many companies are desperately short of developers and engineers, so that people are nervous when they contribute to the open source community. So they always give an apologetic answer when asked about their lack of contribution. However, giving code is not the only way to do it. Some other ways of contributing include:

Identify problems and report problems.

Fix a simple vulnerability.

Help build more sophisticated documentation.

Organize or sponsor parties.

Do something for the standards committee.

The donation--openssl only thousands of dollars of donations, but it has benefited tens of thousands of businesses.

In addition, you can view the various other ways that Barbara Shaurette writes about contributing to the community.

3. The project is finished uploading

Once you upload a project to a GitHub or similar site, you can't assume that your business is over and that your project code is now open source. "Unless you can explicitly provide a license, because you may have all the rights and responsibilities for this project code." Through Black Duck's scanning software, we found that over three-fourths of the projects in GitHub last year did not provide relevant, valid licenses. It's hard for someone to make a contribution to your job. Once you start this project, you need to declare a license so that others can believe it is truly open source.

4. The GPL requires you to sign waiver of copyright

There is a popular saying that the GPL and the popular copyright license allow you to assign your copyright to a third party (FSF or others). The following is general Counsel's exposition on this issue:

Although the GPL requires the sharing of source code, the author does not need to assign or transfer copyright to any entity units. Under the GPL, you may need to incorporate all the work under the GPL and be free of charge. However, you do not need to assign your copyright.

Companies can strategically release code under some GPL licenses to want others to adopt code and improve code quality. At the same time, the same company can allow the same code to be given to OEMs, for example, to charge fees as long as it does not contain other Third-party GPL code.

5. Building communities will have contributors

Many companies strategically use their open source contributions to build a technology community. However, they just fantasize that they can catch the dream. "Build a community and the contributors will come." In fact, the community is unlikely to become a full-fledged open source community because you have uploaded the project to GitHub and provided a license. ohloh--is the Black Duck Open Center, its statistical results show that most projects do not have strong community interests, can not arouse the interest of contributors.

There is not much difference between building an open source community and building a community. What you need to create is a vision that will initially invest enough effort to make the community work, through documentation and high-quality code to make the project easier to understand, to contact the members of the community concerned, and, most importantly, to communicate the value of the project to the public.

Original link: http://code.csdn.net/news/2820021