Recommended reading for starting an open source project

#1

Congrats on finally making the plunge and “forking” the project. It’s something that I also felt needed to be done, so I’m happy that others have taken on the task.

I just wanted to point everybody to the amazing book Producing OSS, but especially the getting started chapter, which I think everybody should read before starting an open source project.

read this: Getting Started chapter from producing OSS

I think you guys have the basics down, but there are one or two points that could do with improvement:

  1. Choose a good name

    Is not the same as some other project’s name, and does not infringe on any trademarks. This is just good manners, as well as good legal sense. You don’t want to create identity confusion. It’s hard enough to keep track of everything that’s available on the Net already, without different things having the same name.

    I did a little bit of checking, and famo.us doesn’t have a trademark for the name. Still however, considering how negative the perception is of the existing stuff, I think it makes more sense to have as complete a break as possible with the past.

  2. Setting the tone

    Because of how this project started, I think we need to be very aware of the fact that we are all going to be prone to ranting about famous labs. This is not something we can really afford to do though, because that kind of negativity becomes part of the base culture of your project.

We should also probably take a look at the section about forks.

read this: Forks chapter in Producing OSS

2 Likes
#2

Interesting thing is, some of us decided NOT to fork anything and go about it on our own.

I think this group has moved on from that already. :slight_smile:

#3

which is why the forking was in (air?) quotes =P

and I think you’re right about being past that, I was just bringing attention to the fact that we need to be explicit about not allowiung negative behaviours to take hold

#4

In addition to what Talves said, the name is temporary.

As for tone, it’s more or less implicit and a matter of common sense.

#5

Yep, we’re making our own library. A few of us are making our own prototype with intent to merge ides into a single project.

I fully agree. Any topics that bring the topic of “What recently happened to Famous Labs” will be closed and moved to the private vault.