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Descriptions

Welcome to the staging ground for new communities! Each proposal has a description in the "Descriptions" category and a body of questions and answers in "Incubator Q&A". You can ask questions (and get answers, we hope!) right away, and start new proposals.

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Comments on Open Source Software

Post

Open Source Software

Site Name

Open Source Software

Description

A site for people to ask about the open-source ecosystem, licensing, and other topics related to open-source software.

Topics

Topics covered would include:

  • Developing open-source software that others can use
  • Using and contributing to open-source projects
  • Questions about licensing (This would need some care; a previous proposal for a law community was rejected because we shouldn't try to armchair lawyer)

Exclusions

These topics or types of posts would be out of scope:

  • Legal advice
  • Programming (use Software instead)

Special Features

None that I can think of

Overlaps

  • Legal - Might overlap with a legal community, though that suggestion was shot down.
  • Software - This site would not include questions about programming or tooling except for those where the open-source aspect affects things. That is, don't simply post here just because your project is open-source, but because the answer would change based on whether it was or wasn't open source.
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3 comment threads

Overlap with software (4 comments)
Overlap with legal (3 comments)
The term "open source" originated in software development but is now used more widely. If the intenti... (4 comments)
The term "open source" originated in software development but is now used more widely. If the intenti...
Peter Taylor‭ wrote about 1 year ago

The term "open source" originated in software development but is now used more widely. If the intention is that the site is about software, I think that should be included in the name.

Moshi‭ wrote about 1 year ago

I'm actually kind of curious about how the term is used more widely; if it's similar to how it's used in software development, then there might be a case made to include it in the scope

matthewsnyder‭ wrote about 1 year ago

"Open source hardware" is used for electronics to indicate that plans/blueprints/schematics and/or firmware code is publicly available. The extreme case of this is DIY mechanical keyboards that provide 3D printer models.

For non-electronics (furniture, tools, jigs, DIY trinkets), there's been an informal "open source" community of people freely sharing plans and instructions for building things. Cooking is arguably an old open source community.

Open source intelligence has recently became prominent with wikileaks et al.

For non-software, the situation is that simply having the source does not trivialize creating the product. Anyone can type make build in a terminal, but following plans to construct a chair requires skill not everyone has. Conversely people are less zealous about protecting their "source" with a license.

Moshi‭ wrote about 1 year ago

That makes sense - I think there those areas are significantly different enough that it wouldn't make sense to include in this scope.