Google Open Source Website

Google announced its new Open Source website:

Today, we’re launching opensource.google.com, a new website for Google Open Source that ties together all of our initiatives with information on how we use, release, and support open source.

This new site showcases the breadth and depth of our love for open source. It will contain the expected things: our programs, organizations we support, and a comprehensive list of open source projects we’ve released. But it also contains something unexpected: a look under the hood at how we “do” open source.

The site currently features over 2,000 open source projects that Google has released and contributes to.

Mautic: Open Source Marketing Automation Software

Mautic is an Open Source marketing automation software, which provides a whole bunch of functionality around contact tracking, campaign management, mass mailing, landing pages, and more.  It can be self-hosted or used as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).  The source code is on GitHub and licensed under GPLv3.

It provides an API, and is already integrated with a whole lot of services, varying from social networks and instant messengers, to CMSes and CRMs.  Scroll down the Tour page for a comparison table against such alternatives as Marketo, InfusionSoft, Hubspot, Pardot, and Eloqua.

 

Shields.io – quality metadata badges for open source projects

Shields.io provides a large collection of badges that you can use in your project documentation (like README.md over at GitHub or BitBucket), which shows a variety of metrics for the project – latest version, number of downloads, build status, and more.  Pretty much anything that you’ve seen used by any project on GitHub is supported (I couldn’t think of a badge that wasn’t).

Now, if only there was a way to insert these things automatically somehow …

GitHub adds Open Source license descriptions

GitHub added Open Source license descriptions.  This is a tiny, but very useful feature, especially for those people who are not very well versed in the differences between GPL, MIT, BSD, and other licenses.  I wish there was a way to have something like this proprietary applications.  Maybe then people would pay attention to the end user license agreements (EULAs).

GitHub starts the Open Source Guides

GitHub blog is “Announcing Open Source Guides“:

we’re launching the Open Source Guides, a collection of resources for individuals, communities, and companies who want to learn how to run and contribute to open source.

[…]

Open Source Guides are a series of short, approachable guides to help you participate more effectively in open source, whether it’s:

  • Finding users for your project
  • Making your first contribution
  • Managing large open source communities
  • Improving the workflow of your project

These guides aim to reflect the voice of the community and their years of wisdom and practice. We’ve focused on the topics we’ve heard about most, and curated stories from open source contributors across the web.

I think it’s a great idea and I really like the execution too.  Most of what I know about Open Source comes from years of participation, and from reading old books, manuals and licenses – not something that is easy to share with people who are just getting their feet wet.

GitHub’s Open Source Guides are very simple, concise and specific.  And they cover a variety of subjects, not just the legal or technical side of things, but also communications, support, marketing, etc.