OpenSource from inside

What is OpenSource?

My perception of it changed

• Before.
• After.

Perfeception before

• I don't have to pay for it! Yay!

How it sucked me in

• In 2005 I worked for Siemens.
• In 2007 I've outsourced and used Java.
• Private projects weren't convinient to deploy with Java...
• So I've used PHP. CodeIgniter.

Yii

• At some point I was disappointed about CodeIgniter.
• Tried ZF, Symfony, CakePHP and more.
• Visited Yii website by accident. Site was awful.
• Read docs and docs made sense.
• Launched yiiframework.ru (2009).
• Started to contribute actively.
• Was invited to core team (2010).

Perception after

• Collective work where every participant benefit.
• Free to use but isn't free to create.

What for?

• Together you can build better product.
• More testing that you'll ever be able to do alone.
• Can learn from others.
• New faces.
• Can learn to work remotely and improve your English.
• Profit?!

Problems

• Time.
• Energy.
• Money.
• Expectations.
• Popularity.

Time

• There's not enough time for everything.
• Hero syndrome and a cult of being busy.

Energy

• Burnout.
• Emotional drain.

• Every year there is the same topic at Linux conferences: "Is Linus happy?".
• In Yii community burnouts happen and aren't that rare.
• There were cases in the core team.
• Example from Doctrine.

Money

Where are money in OpenSource?!

Not Yii cases

• Selling licenses (MariaDB).
• Consulting. Not so good... (Sphinx).
• Paid learning materials (Laravel).
• Complimentary SAAS with recurrent payments (Laravel).

What about Yii?

No money. At least for now...

?!

• Yes, I've worked on Yii for 8 years for free.
• Yes, the rest of the core team as well.

And it's not bad

• Consulting (not much but still there's some).
• Cool jobs (CleverTech, Stay.com).
• Conferences.
• Gifts (hello, JetBrains).

Patreon

A service to finance a project or a person with recurrent payments.

• Launced a campaign there.
• Got enough to dedicate at least some time to work on Yii.
• If I'll get more there will be no need to do anything else.
• Good motivation.

Expectations

Many people do think that Yii is commercial company and that core team are employees.

OpenSource is about doing it together.

Popularity

There are always unhappy users.

• New issue and pull requests are created continuously.
• Different feedback. Negative is voiced often. Positive is voiced rare.

What to do with all that?!

• The project is definitely needed.
• We want to enjoy life.
• Time is finite.

• Enjoy positive part of it.
• Constructive critics and haters aren't the same.
• Do not try to do many things at the same time (if possible).
• Do not try to do more than you can.

Useful part

Which you can actually apply...

Checklist

+10 to attractiveness of your project.

Main points

• Short description: what it is and what is it for.
• English!
• Documentation.
• phpdoc (jsdoc, javadoc).
• Tests and CI.
• Put more attention into readme.
• Screenshots and logo.

Main points

• Coding standard (PSR or any other).
• Handle issues for real.
• Announce it everywhere (Facebook, YiiFeed, forums, reddit).
• Choose a good license.
• Choose versioning policy and follow it.
• packagist (npm, bower).

These are important as well

• Support website.
• Website and repo should be cross-linked.
• Turn off wiki and projects if these aren't used.
• Fill GitHub tags.
• CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Announce releases.

Some links

• samdark.github.io
• https://www.patreon.com/samdark
• http://www.yiiframework.com/
• Starting an Open Source Project

Some self-advertising

• https://www.patreon.com/samdark
• I can polish your OpenSource project.
• I can do code review: Yii, security, code overall.
• I can consult.
• I can train.
• I can implement small OpenSource solutions for your problems.
• I can write articles.

Questions time!