Introduction

Hey everyone I am Hasnain Makada, Currently building out OSWH where I encourage every beginner to get started with contributing to open source and I also write blogs on DevOps, Flutter & Open-Source on Hashnode and Showwcase. You can check out my project on GitHub

In this blog, I will give you some tips while maintaining an open source project, How to stay up-to-date, how to deal with stale issues and PRs and how to encourage new beginners to get started with it. So without wasting any time, Let's get started.

Why Open Source?

Open-Source projects are a great way to gain experience and build a great developer portfolio, but they can also be quite challenging. Open Source software provides a collaborative and accessible approach to software development that can lead to more innovative and effective solutions.

Open source provides several benefits such as,

1. Collaboration and Innovation: Open-source software projects can benefit from the contributions and collaboration of a global community of developers, resulting in more rapid innovation and improvement.
2. Accessibility: Open-source software is often free to use and can be distributed without legal restrictions, making it more accessible to a wider range of people and organizations.
3. Transparency: The availability of source code in open-source projects provides greater transparency into the software's inner workings, helping to build trust among users and developers.

And the list goes on...

While maintaining an open-source project we should have to keep several factors in our mind such as, how will our project services the community, how can beginners can get started to contributing our etc... We have to keep in mind that not everyone is an expert so we have to keep our project in such a way that it is easy to understand by everyone.

Here are some tips to keep in mind,

Establish a clear vision

When it comes to open-source projects, every project has one thing in common. They are constantly providing something valuable to the community in one way or another. When you're creating an open source project, have a clear vision of what your project will serve the community because that is essential for the success of your project. You need to know what you want to achieve and how you will do it. Define your project's objective and also create a roadmap for its development.

Harness the power of community

Open-source projects are all about collaboration, Encouraging more and more users to get started with your project by providing them with the tools they need and creating a welcoming community where every beginner is appreciated for what they have done or going to do for the community.

Stay organized

The organization is key when it comes to managing an open-source project. Keep track of tasks, prioritize bugs and create detailed documentation to help others understand your project.

Make sure the license stays up-to-date

While maintaining an open-source project, we should keep in mind that the license stays up-to-date because many times the maintainers forget to update the license and someone might violate the rules because of the expired license. Keep a date or note down in your calendar the date when you last updated your license. In that way, it will help you as a reminder to update your license yearly to yearly.

Make sure the issues are not open for a longer period

In many OSS projects, we've often seen that some issues are not solved and they are open for months and months. This is a very bad practice by the way, In my open-source project, I ensure that no issue is open for more than 2 months, Yes that is pretty much enough time for a developer to solve an issue, If the issue is solved within 2 months, then the maintainers should close that issue or assign it to themselves.

Conclusion

Maintaining an open-source project can be a daunting task, but it's also incredibly rewarding. So I hope that by now, you must have got an idea of how to maintain an open source project and what are some of the factors to keep in mind when creating one. If you have any doubts related to DevOps, Flutter and Open-Source, feel free to reach out on Twitter and Showwcase