What to keep in Mind while making the project open source?

What to keep in Mind while making the project open source?

Open sourcing your project is like allowing people to do whatever they want. Whether they want to use something from that or add values into that. Anyone from the internet will be able to use your project for their purpose.

So there are some points you should always cross-check before uploading your project on any open source platform.

  1. Never forget to remove API key: While working on software-based projects we use a different type of API for different purposes. Every organization or individual own a particular API key as per their user identity. And when someone else will access your project with your API key then someone may misuse that or you may face some kind of data and security issue.

  2. Remove crucial resources: Never forget to remove resources like images, videos, documents, etc that was used for your own purpose.

  3. Add Contribution Guide: If you are asking for people's contribution then your project must have a brief guide about "How to contribute?", "What to keep in mind while contributing?", etc. When there will not be any guide, people will send PRs without thinking about anything, without valuing your rules, code formatting, architecture n all.

  4. Add proper licenses: If you are open sourcing something which will be reused by other developers, and they have to follow rules and regulations of that project like library, framework, dependencies, tool, etc, then your project must have every licenses that your project support.

  5. Never share any business requirements with the project: Sometime, we work on some client based project and later we plan to make that open source. While doing that cross-check your whole project file whether it has any type of things that will affect your business deal.

  6. Lastly, add a well explained README.md file. Your open source projects are just a kind of waste if it has not any README.md. Here are some of the inspiration for README.

Check these out:

Keep Contributing.

Keep Building.

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