Skimming through freshmeat.net provides mountains of reasons for this
HOWTO's existence--the Internet is littered with excellently
written and useful programs that have faded away into the universe
of free software forgottenness. This dismal scene made me ask
myself, "Why?"
This HOWTO tries to do a lot of things (probably too many), but it
can't answer that question and won't attempt it. What this HOWTO
will attempt to do is give your Free Software project a fighting
chance--an edge. If you write a piece of crap that no one is
interested in, you can read this HOWTO until you can recite it in
your sleep and your project will probably fail. Then again, you can
write a beautiful, relevant piece of software and follow every
instruction in this HOWTO and your software may still not make
it. Sometimes life is like that. However, I'll go out a limb and
say that if you write a great, relevant pieces of software and
ignore the advise in this HOWTO, you'll probably fail more often.
A lot of the information in this HOWTO is best called common
sense. Of course, as any debate on interfaces will prove, what is
common sense to some programmers proves totally unintuitive to
others. After explaining bits and pieces of this HOWTO to Free
Software developers on several occasions, I realized that writing
this HOWTO might provide a useful resource and a forum for
programmers to share ideas about what has and has not worked for
them.
As anyone involved in any of what seems like an unending parade of
ridiculous intellectual property clashes will attest to, a little
bit of legalese proves important.
This document is copyrighted (c) 2000 Benjamin "Mako" Hill and is
distributed under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License, Version 1.1 or any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant
Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy
of the license can be found in Appendix A.
No liability for the contents of this documents can be accepted.
Use the concepts, examples and other content at your own risk. As
this is a new edition of this document, there may be errors and
inaccuracies, that may of course be damaging to your project (and
potentially your system). Proceed with caution, and although this
is highly unlikely, the author(s) does not take any responsibility
for that.
All copyrights are held by their by their respective owners, unless
specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document
should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark
or service mark.
Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen
as endorsements.
This version is the part of the third pre-release cycle of this
HOWTO. It is written to be released to developers for critique and
brainstorming. Please keep in mind that this version of the HOWTO
is still in an infant stage and will continue to be revised
extensively.
The latest version number of this document should always be listed
on the projects
homepage hosted by yukidoke.org.
The newest version of this HOWTO will always be made available at
the same website, in a variety of formats:
In this version I have the pleasure of acknowledging:
Fellow Debian developer Martin Michlmayr and Vivek
Venugopalan who sent me information and links to extremely
interesting articles. I've added both to the bibliography and I've
added information from each into the HOWTO. Thanks to Andrew Shugg
who pointed out several errors in the document. Also, a big thanks
to Sung Wook Her (AKA RedBaron) who is doing the first translation
of the HOWTO into Korean. I've been happy to see that people have
enjoyed and benefited from the HOWTO so far.
Older thanks that I don't want to take out yet include: Josh
Crawford, Andy King, and Jaime Davila who all read through this in
entirety and gave me feedback that has helped me make changes and
improvements to this document. I can't thank you guys enough for
your help. An extra "Thank You" goes to Andy King who
who read through this several times and submitted patches to make
life easier for me.
Karl Fogel, the author of Open Source Development with
CVS published by the Coriolis Open Press. Large parts
of his book are available on the web. 225 pages of
the book are available under the GPL and constitute the best
tutorial on CVS I've ever seen. The rest of the book covers,
"the challenges and philosophical issues inherent in running
an Open Source project using CVS." The book does a good job
of covering some of the subjects brought up in this HOWTO and much
more. The book's
website has information on ordering the book and provides
several translations of the chapters on CVS. If you are seriously
interested in running a Free Software project, you want this
book. I tried to mention Fogel in sections of this HOWTO where I
knew I was borrowing directly from his ideas. If I missed any, I'm
sorry. I'll try and have those fixed in future versions.
Karl Fogel can be reached at <kfogel (at) red-bean (dot)
com>
Also providing support material, and inspiration for this HOWTO is
Eric S. Raymond for his prolific, consistent, and carefully
crafted arguments and Lawrence Lessig for reminding me of the
importance of Free Software. Additionally, I want to thank every
user and developer involved with the Debian Project. The project
has provided me with a home, a place to practice free software
advocacy, a place to make a difference, a place to learn from
those who have been involved with the movement much longer than I,
and proof of a free software project that definitely, definitely
works.
Above all, I want to thank Richard Stallman
for his work at the Free Software Foundation and for never giving
up. Stallman provides and articulates the philosophical basis that
attracts me to free software and that drives me toward writing a
document to make sure it succeeds. RMS can always be emailed at
<rms (at) gnu (dot) org>.
Feedback is always and most certainly welcome for this
document. Without your submissions and input, this document
wouldn't exist. Do you feel that something is missing? Don't
hesitate to contact me to have me write a chapter, section, or
subsection or to write one yourself. I want this document to be a
product of the Free Software development process that it heralds
and I believe that its ultimate success will be rooted in its
ability to do this. Please send your additions, comments, and
criticisms to the following email address:
<mako at debian.org>.
I know that not everyone speaks English. Translations are nice and
I'd love for this HOWTO to gain the kind of international reach
afforded by translated versions.
I've been contacted by a reader who promises a translation into
Korean. However, this HOWTO is still young and other than the
promise of Korean, English is all that is currently available. If
you would like to help with or do a translation, you will gain my
utmost respect and admiration and you'll get to be part of a cool
process. If you are at all interested, please don't hesitate to
contact me at: <mako at debian.org>.
Free eBook: 
