1.
Paris open source experience
-
Involving external
contributors in your
open source project

2.
Antoine THOMAS
Open source evangelist
@ttoine
blog.ttoine.net
linkedin.com/in/ttoine
10 years in Industry
10 years in IT
20+ years of open source
- Ubuntu Studio cofounder
- Middleware Java, Eclipse
Foundation, …
- 3+ years at PrestaShop
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

3.
Basics
Let’s break open doors
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

4.
Contributing to open source
You can do a looooooot of things
● Using the software
● Planning, sponsorising, or speaking at
events (meetups, conferences, ...)
● Designing (specifications, UX/UI, ...)
● Writing (translation, documentation,
blog posts, tutorials, video, ...)
● Gardening (sorting GitHub issues,
moderating community forum, ...)
● Helping community members
● Reporting bugs
And not only
● Writing code (require coding skills)
4
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

5.
Don’t expect that
smart people will
guess what you
want
Minimum documentation:
● How to install, run
● How to build
● Contribution requirements
● Licenses accepted in the project
● Records of important decisions
● Code of Conduct
● How to reach project roles
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

6.
Communication channels
Open source communities usually
collaborate through 5 main channels:
● Chat (used to be IRC, now Slack)
● Forum or Q&A
● Tracker (also called Forge)
● Wiki (collaborative doc)
● Events (CFP to highlight the
champions)
6
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

7.
Mandatory but
forgotten topics
Well Managed IP
● 4 years in a master in IT or CS
and no IP course (at all)
● Licenses of core and dependencies are
important
Neutral governance
● Put your project in a third party
organization
● Involve partners, customers, users, ...
7
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

8.
Common problems
● Internal fear of public judgement
● External pull requests not merged
○ Expectations not documented
○ Focus on contributions that solve problems
for most users
● Difficulties to give key roles outside the company
or project founders
● Internal people privilege
Bypassing documented rules is a very bad practice
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/helping-developers-engage-community-projects
8
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

9.
Keep in mind
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

10.
Best practice to grow an open source project’s ecosystem
More users
More developers
More
contributions
Better IP
1
3
4
2
release
merge
needs
improvements
Custom
 2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

11.
Example of dashboard: all the tasks and personas
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

12.
This presentation in one slide
● Be friendly and tolerant
(people might just not be fluent in
English)
● Respect the rules and
prerequisites
(no bypass for friends and
colleagues)
● Be patient, accept feedback, learn,
and practice
(the more you contribute, the more
you know, the more you become
trustable) 12
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

13.
Open Source
Means
Working Together
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project

14.
Antoine THOMAS
Open source evangelist
Let’s talk together
@ttoine
blog.ttoine.net
linkedin.com/in/ttoine
Dashboard template at
https://github.com/ttoine/open-source-software-dashboard
2021 - Paris open source experience - Involving external contributors in your open source project