Hosting Open Source Projects
A quick reference guide for organisations at Level 4 maturity—hosting, maintaining, and contributing projects to open source foundations.
1. Why Host Projects?
At Level 4, your organisation moves from contributing to existing projects to hosting your own open source projects. This can reduce maintenance burden by attracting external contributors, demonstrate technical leadership, and create industry standards around your approach.
See: Why Create An Open Source Project for the business case and strategic rationale.
See: Contributing A Firm Open Source Project for the lifecycle of inception, incubation, active use, and archiving.
2. Communities & Foundations
A successful open source project needs a healthy community. This requires investment in documentation, communication, and engagement.
See: 8Knot Presentation for Cali Dolfi's tool for open source community health analysis and contributor activity insights.
Open source foundations provide governance, legal support, and sustainability for projects. Contributing your project to a foundation can increase adoption, provide neutral governance, and reduce the burden on your organisation.
See: Open Source Foundations for understanding the role of foundations, choosing one, and sponsorship options.
See: Joining A Foundation for the practical steps of foundation membership.
See: Incubation for the process of bringing a project into a foundation.
3. Maintaining Projects
Hosting a project means taking on maintainer responsibilities: managing contributions, responding to issues, ensuring security, and building community.
See: Maintaining A Project for ongoing responsibilities of project maintainers.
See: Outbound Security for security considerations when publishing code.
4. Legal & IP Considerations
Publishing code externally requires careful attention to licensing, trademarks, and intellectual property.
See: Licenses for choosing the right license for your project.
See: CLAs and DCOs for managing contributor agreements.
See: IP Considerations for intellectual property implications of open sourcing.