Documentation

Welcome! This is a place dedicated to the discussion, creation, and evolution of Sustainable Free and Open Source Communities. We are organized around the development of a set of shared principles that we believe lead to healthy, sustainable open source communities.

Our conception of community is an expansive one – it covers developers, users, evangelists, venture capitalists – anyone who believes that software is better when it is built in a community, and that communities are formed because of a shared understanding between people.

In addition to the principles, we intend to publish a set of ready to use social contracts. These social contracts can be adopted by free and open source software projects, and go in to detail the expectations of the community around: leadership, contribution, codes of conduct, monetary investment, and more. We’re still working on those. :)

If you’re considering starting an open source project, and you intend to start a business around it, you might be interested in our explanation of the various open source business models. This includes why some create more sustainable communities than others.

Finally, you might want to read the book on the thought process and research that went in to the creation of SFOSC. It provides a detailed background of the initial motivations behind the community, and the framework by which the principles were created.