Approachable Open Source

Approachable Open Source is a perennial, full-spectrum primer on the open source software landscape. Discover the broad connections between you, your team, your company, and your community. Learn how to approach and enable impactful, equitable, and attainable outcomes.

This book is for the curious, the busy, or the eager technologist that wants to level up their relationship with open source software. That might be you! You use open source software today at work or at school, and I promise your talent and perspective, intentionally channeled, is the latent energy many communities need.

This book appeals to students, maintainers, and enterprise. Understand the history, context, and potential of open source software. Level up your repo with purpose. Create self-sustaining community. Avoid burn-out. Start, and scale. Secure open source dependencies and understand legal risks. Unlock your teams' future.

Participation in open source as a movement takes all of us working in whatever capacity we can. Increasingly that capacity is strained and distracted. But this isn't a time for guilt-this is cause for celebration! I promise you, there are a lot of avenues to engage. We are part of something larger than our current issue, project, role, or company.

It's the contributions, large and small, sustained and one-time, that add up to more. We have agency to act upon this spectrum of engagement. Best of all, maintainers can design for these outcomes with intention and tooling. Discover firmer footing than ever that open source needs you, and that you are enough to sustain it.