Free Software Project Management HOWTO

Benjamin "Mako" Hill

mako at debian.org

Revision History
Revision v0.3.2	15 April 2002	Revised by: bch

Revision v0.3.1	18 June 2001	Revised by: bch

Revision v0.3	5 May 2001	Revised by: bch

Revision v0.2.1	10 April 2001	Revised by: bch

Revision v0.2	8 April 2001	Revised by: bch

Revision v0.01	27 March 2001	Revised by: bch
Initial Release

This HOWTO is designed for people with experience in programming and some skills in managing a software project but who are new to the world of free software. This document is meant to act as a guide to the non-technical aspects of free software project management and was written to be a crash course in the people skills that aren't taught to commercial coders but that can make or break a free software project.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1. Copyright Information
1.2. Disclaimer
1.3. New Versions
1.4. Credits
1.5. Feedback
1.6. Translations

2. Starting a Project

2.1. Choosing a Project
2.2. Naming your project
2.3. Licensing your Software
2.4. Choosing a Method of Version Numbering
2.5. Documentation
2.6. Other Presentation Issues

3. Maintaining a Project: Interacting with Developers

3.1. Delegating Work
3.2. Accepting and Rejecting Patches
3.3. Stable and Development Branches
3.4. Other Project Management issues
3.5. Forks

4. Maintaining a Project: Interacting with Users

4.1. Testing and Testers
4.2. Setting up Support Infrastructure
4.3. Releasing Your Program
4.4. Announcing Your Project

Bibliography

A. GNU Free Documentation License

A.1. 0. PREAMBLE
A.2. 1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
A.3. 2. VERBATIM COPYING
A.4. 3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
A.5. 4. MODIFICATIONS
A.6. 5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
A.7. 6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
A.8. 7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
A.9. 8. TRANSLATION
A.10. 9. TERMINATION
A.11. 10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE