Sampler Ebook of Getting Unstuck: Advice For Open Source Projects

founder
founder

I'm Sumana Harihareswara, founder of Changeset Consulting. I've written and released a sampler from my upcoming book on rejuvenating open source projects: Getting Unstuck: Advice for Open Source Projects.

You can get this 38-page ebook for free when you subscribe to Changeset's email newsletter (1-10 updates per year).

Who this book is for and what you should get out of it:

You are about to get an open source project unstuck.

Maybe a bunch of work is piling up in the repository and users are getting worried, waiting for a release. Maybe developers have gotten bogged down, trying to finish a big rewrite while maintaining the stable release. Maybe the project's suffering for lack of infrastructure — testing, money, an institutional home.

You noticed the problem. So that means it's up to you to fix it. Or you're getting paid to fix it, even though you didn't start this thing.

A while ago I blurted out the phrase "dammit-driven leadership." Because sometimes you look around, and you realize something needs doing, and you're the only one who really gets why, so you say, “Dammit, okay, I'll do it, then.”

After reading this book, you should be prepared to:

  1. Assess a legacy project to decide whether you should get involved.
  2. Settle into a legacy project and become a competent and credible contributor.
  3. Take charge of a legacy project on a project, people, and financial level.
  4. Execute transformative change in a legacy project.
  5. Make a legacy project more sustainable, and pass leadership on to someone else.

This sampler is a 38-page ebook (PDF, ePub, and MOBI available) that includes:

  • Introduction
  • Conducting a SWOT analysis (assessing a project's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, with example analysis of the pip project)
  • How to start thinking about budgets and money
  • Teaching and including unskilled volunteers
  • An outline of the full forthcoming book

Get it for free when you subscribe to Changeset's email newsletter (1-10 updates per year).