Producing Open Source Software
How do you set up a Free Software project? How do you license it, attract developers, keep the lines of communication open, decide contentious issues, maintain the repository, track bugs, make releases, support users, motivate developers and deal with troublemakers?
Karl Fogel describes all this and more in his book Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project. You can order it on paper from O’Reilly Media, or read it online in HTML, PDF or a number of other formats.
Karl draws extensively on his experience within the Subversion project, but he has experience with a wide range of other projects too. The book is very readable, and makes a lot of sense. I hope to apply many of the principles and practices described here to my own projects.
True to his beliefs, Karl has made this book available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. You can copy and distribute the book or derivative works, even commercially.