This page collects several resources and best practices on how to maintain and grow an open source project. There is no one catch-all for how to best maintain an open source project, so some combination of the strategies here may be useful for your particular work.
We encourage your feedback and additional resources to share on this page using our contact form.
Contents
Increase visibility and usage
- Drive more users to your open source project
- Have clear READMEs, Getting Started guides, and avenues for giving feedback
- Have users properly cite your work and give credit to the authors of the project
- Include citation files and references to related publications
- Consider publishing your open source work via venues like the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS)
Improve community engagement
- Make it easy for users to contribute issues and improvements to your project
- Have clear contributing guides
- Use automated testing and Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) to improve
Create a sustainable open source ecosystem
- Find funding for your work
- See the OSPO’s page with related funding opportunities
- Participate in programs like the OSPO fellowship and Virtual Summer Internship Program
- Investigate how to join open source foundations
Resources
- 6 Things You Can Do Right Now To Improve Your Open Source Project – by Zach Chandler and Francesca Vera at the Stanford Open Source Program Office
- Provides a quick list of easy action items to improve visibility and engagement with your open source project
- repo-scaffolder
- A US federal repository resource that has a great overview of open source maturity tiers
- Open Source Projects – Beyond Code: A blueprint for scalable and sustainable open source projects [Digital link]
- This book has several chapters that discuss parts of the “open source ecosystem” lifecycle that can be useful to consider