On Open-Sourcing Libraries
williamdurand.fr
On Open-Sourcing Libraries
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Re: On Open-Sourcing Libraries
#2he didn't mention the most important - write the docs http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KEakc...
Re: On Open-Sourcing Libraries
#3The most important thing on that list is the Licence. No licence and most people can't use it.
Re: On Open-Sourcing Libraries
#4Platforms.
Re: On Open-Sourcing Libraries
#5I would like to add that when open sourcing a library, meaning software designed to be included within or used by other applications, please don't license it under the GPL. Of course you can license it under whatever you want, it's your code, but you need to understand the consequences. If the library is GPL it can only be used by other GPL applications (if the application is distributed), which excludes major open source projects like Rails (MIT) and Django (BSD). It seriously limits amount of people that can use your library, and hopefully you are open sourcing a library because you want to help as many people as possible.
Even the LGPL doesn't make sense for interpreted languages or compiled languages that don't link like C. The wording of the LGPL is pretty ambiguous when it comes to languages that 'include' libraries into their code instead of linking against complied libraries. FSF argues it's not ambiguous [1], but that fact that they even have to make that argument proves it is. As the original author of Twisted Python wrote "It would be a halfway accurate statement that I selected the LGPL exactly because it doesn't make any sense." [2] Twisted is now MIT licensed
[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-java.html
[2] https://twistedmatrix.com/pipermail/twisted-python/2004-May/...
Re: On Open-Sourcing Libraries
#6I think it's interesting that in this time of fancy collaborative tools like github, the trend no longer seems to be collaboration but to reinvent everything as a "one man show". And it becomes apparent with new technologies like Go and redis where there are like 10 different implementations of the same database libraries at any given time, but they are all gone within a month...
Re: On Open-Sourcing Libraries
#7I would add, please use a known and widely-used license (IMO, preferably a 2-clause BSDL variant or LGPLv2, depending on your attitude towards derived works). Don't make up your own or just state that it's public domain. Public domain is actually not a well-defined concept internationally, and means different things in different countries.
Re: On Open-Sourcing Libraries
#8I would like to add that when open sourcing a library, meaning software designed to be included within or used by other applications, please don't license it under the GPL. Of course you can license it under whatever you want, it's your code, but you need to understand the consequences. If the library is GPL it can only be used by other GPL applications (if the application is distributed), which excludes major open s…
agreed! I will add a note on this
Re: On Open-Sourcing Libraries
#9I would add, please use a known and widely-used license (IMO, preferably a 2-clause BSDL variant or LGPLv2, depending on your attitude towards derived works). Don't make up your own or just state that it's public domain. Public domain is actually not a well-defined concept internationally, and means different things in different countries.
You're right :) I will add a note on this as well
Re: On Open-Sourcing Libraries
#10The most important thing on that list is the Licence. No licence and most people can't use it.
Its becoming less of an issue as more and more as software migrates to being "as a service". A webapp is not distributed, so the license doesn't matter at all.