Panel: Making More of Open Source

This builds off of the Mapping Open Source project from the prior year. Here, we share three tools for successfully launching and sustaining open source software projects:

• GitHub Community Tools
• Mozilla’s Open Leadership Program
• It Takes a Village guidebook from Lyrasis

Panel Description

With over a hundred museums sharing an astonishing 1600 repositories on GitHub today, our sector has embraced publishing open source code. Indeed, the values embodied within open source are a good match for museums’ public-serving missions, but what does it really mean to make a project open source? Much of the code we’re posting publicly may primarily be intended for our own institution’s use, in which case, putting resources into support for external use doesn’t make sense.

But what if we have something that might be useful to others and that we want to see used and supported? Is publishing code enough, or do we also need to work toward building a community and sustaining the project?

A set of tools and best practices exist for successfully launching and sustaining open source software projects. This session will explore some of these resources, such as Mozilla’s Open Leadership Program, and the “It Takes a Village” guidebook from LYRASIS, and look at case studies of open source projects of all sizes that are putting these practices to use. Attendees working on, participating in, or thinking of launching an open source project will take away the tools to help take the next step.

Other Speakers/Participants

• Megan Forbes, Program Manager, CollectionSpace
• Hélène Martin, CTO, Nafundi