Building Strong and Sustainable Open Source Projects
summary
Claims concrete practices that worked: a visualization library Yellowbrick with active governance, layered documentation (user tutorials contributor guide code docs), and a fiscal plan run by a board of eight that pays annual expenses. Community tactics actually used: Slack/forums, conference sprints and meetups, Google Summer of Code interns, and community hackathons that once produced 17 pull requests from ~30 participants. Operational fixes that reduce burnout include a recurring semester system of three-month roles; experiments and diversity work are deliberate, incremental, and measurable.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Building sustainable open source
- 8:15Key ingredients for strong projects
- 12:56Attitude and risk-taking
- 13:18Governance and collaboration
- 16:31Tasmania road trip story
- 23:59Engaging communities
- 33:12Benefits of contributing
- 35:27Q&A
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