Guide

Open source, explained by people who maintain it. Nine modules, from your first pull request to funding a project, each one usable on its own.

Unfinished chapters say so at the top. To see them land, watch the repository.

This guide will take you approximately 4 h 29 min to read.

1. What Is Open Source?

   The rules, the history and the numbers behind open source, so the rest of the guide makes sense. Six chapters, no prerequisites.

2. Getting Started

   Where open-source projects live, how to judge one before you install it, build on it or contribute to it, how to talk to its maintainers, and the Git you need. Five chapters for first-timers.

3. Contributing

   From picking a project to a merged pull request, plus the community, the portfolio and the rough patches. For anyone who wants their name in a changelog.

4. Creating

   Turning a folder on your laptop into a project other people can use and improve. The idea, the plan, the repository, the community. Licenses have a module of their own.

5. Licensing & Legal

   What a license lets people do with your code, how to choose one, apply it and change it later. For anyone who publishes code or depends on it.

6. Maintaining

   The job nobody describes. Reviewing, updating dependencies, keeping a community, and not burning out. For anyone with the Maintain bit.

7. Promoting

   Making a good project findable without becoming a marketer. Why promotion isn't a dirty word, and a name, a logo and a voice that hold up.

8. Financing

   Where the money comes from, where it goes, and what it costs to ask. The funding models, and how to raise money without a legal department.

9. Open Source & AI

   What changes when contributions and reports come out of AI tools, and the rules projects wrote in response. For maintainers and contributors alike.