Hey there.
Im working on a project for some software I want in the world. But I’m such a hobbyist that I’ve never thought of publishing any of my projects, but after doing so much work in it I kind of want other to have access to it after I feel its ready.
Whats the process of distribution? I guess I typically use github when interacting with FOSS community, but its still confusing for me to navigate as an end user sometimes, let alone being an uploader.
FWIW its simply a few python modules and other supporting txt and jsons. Targeting mostly Windows because that’s what I use.
Thanks! (If this isn’t the right place to ask please let me know!)
Edit: there are a bunch of great comments here! To clarify, I want to get it functional and somewhat bug free then fully upload everything so someone can see my idea and do it better. So I think I’m going to go with unlicense, because I don’t really care about getting credit or getting contributions necessarily. Thanks all!
Just slap a LICENSE file at the root of your repo with your license of choice. Boom, its open source.
I advise booking a city square, loud music, background dancers, printed flyers with the URL of your Github repo, and a big countdown clock when you change repo visibility to public (Github has an option for that, but you need to click it yourself at the exact time, there no option to publish it on timer).
👆
https://opensource.guide/starting-a-project/
Maybe Codeberg or Gitlab would be better than Github.
A lot of people are recommending version control. While it’s good practice, that isn’t a requirement of sharing your code. If you want to make it really simple at first, add a License (as others have mentioned) and just post the code anywhere. Upload a tar archive to a website, use sourceforge or even lemmy.
Learning git would still be useful for you and potential contributors but it is not a requirement. Open source just means you share the source and explicitely provide a license for others to use and modify it
Open source software literally means that the source code is available to anyone. In GitHub, that just means that your repo is public rather than private. But your method technically doesn’t matter. You could publish to a forum if you wish. That’s still open source!
Free OSS just means that anyone is free to use and modify the source code for any purpose. The details are usually defined in a LICENSE file.
I feel like you’re really asking about the common practices and methods used in FOSS. Right? If so, that’s entirely up to you as the maintainer. As the project matures, you may attract other contributors which will in turn will motivate change to your tools and methods.
Start with what works for you. Model after similar projects if you wish. Adjust as change is needed.
