Opensource.guide: Historical vignettes

[bkeepers]

While chatting with @arfon about data vignettes, he also suggested doing the same thing with historical tidbits and random facts.

A few examples:

• Why is it called the MIT license?
• Where did the word "open source" come from?
• Why is it called a README?

These would be really short snippets and interesting facts that aren't necessarily required to successfully release a project, but accidentally teach the reader about the history and culture of open source.

[sophshep]

teach the reader about the history and culture of open source.

I realllly love this idea! Makes it feel much more inclusive!

[steveklabnik]

These are good, but rife with opportunities for People On The Internet to Get Mad. For example

Where did the word "open source" come from?

will end up drawing a bunch of links to http://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler if you don't acknowledge it, yet it is a very... negative... answer to this question, so. It can be tough.

I'm not saying that this wouldn't add some good flavor to the book, but the history of open source is fraught with political landmines, so taking caution here is probably good.

[bkeepers]

These are good, but rife with opportunities for People On The Internet to Get Mad.

Yeah, we'll have to be careful in how we approach this.

[mlinksva]

I suggest caution with historical vignettes from another direction. Do they make the reader more effective, or weigh down with baggage? Do they, even if critical, promote an elite/heroic (whether institutional or individual) narrative and thus discourage welcoming communities and inclusive participation?

[bkeepers]

I guess I was imagining they would be more fun and light hearted. For example, Preparing for launch ends with:

Sometimes, it takes a long time before people notice your open source project. Your project will likely go through multiple phases of activity. That’s okay! Some of the most popular projects today took years to reach high levels of activity.

What if this was followed by a vignette like this:

In 1991, after 4 months of hard work, Linus Torvalds announced he was working on a new operating system. It was "just a hobby", but Linux, now regarded as critical infrastructure and one of the most successful free software projects in the world, took years to reach maturity and see significant adoption. Today, things move much faster, but Linux reminds us that making the source code available is just the first step. Hang in there. source

[mlinksva]

I'm sure there are lots of fun, light hearted, and illuminating vignettes that would serve the handbook and its readers well.

The one above is in the class that I suggest caution with. Does the reader need to work hard for 4 months before announcing their project? Does the next step include berating contributors for the next decades? Finally, Linux had tremendous buzz from the moment it was announced, even if it took years to become a category killer. It's not an example of persevering in the face of disinterest that most new projects face.

Yours,
Another mad person on the Internet :smile:

[nayafia]

Historical vignettes! Here are a few that are hopefully neutral:

• Did you know that WordPress started as a fork of an open source project called b2? (http://opensource.guide/getting-started/defining/)
• Why do we write important files, like README, in all caps? Many command line environments use ASCIIbetical ordering, which means upper-case files appear first in a list. (http://opensource.guide/getting-started/preparing/)
• The Contributor Covenant is used by over 40,000 open source projects, including Kubernetes, Rails, and Swift. (http://opensource.guide/getting-started/preparing/)
• Django's original BDFLs (benevolent dictators for life), @adrianholovaty and @jacobian, both retired after 9 years when they felt the Django community had outgrown them. (http://opensource.guide/sustaining/healthy-communities/)
• Did you know that @gvanrossum started Python over a Christmas holiday? (http://opensource.guide/troubleshooting/getting-paid/)

We don't have to use all of these, just some ideas :) If you spot any issues, lmk.

[nayafia]

Closing via #173. All vignettes from my above comment have been added to the handbook.

If they end up getting special design treatment, we'll want to add a vignette page element, but we can do that separately.

If additional ideas come up for historic vignettes, feel free to re-open this issue.