A Few Tips for Marketing Open Source Projects in the Non-Profit Tech Sector

You need a strategy and a checklist to successfully market an open source project. This includes publishing code, defining marketing goals and inviting feedback.

- benny Vasquez

Reimagining marketing as a force for genuine community engagement and empowerment is pretty important when dealing with open source projects in the non-profit tech sector. Marketing your open source projects definitely requires some careful planning and strategic execution that can be time-consuming, but it usually pays off in the end. Just like a pre-flight checklist can help a pilot ensure a smooth takeoff, a checklist can help streamline your efforts while maximising the impact of your project. Regardless of your goals, here are some basic (yet very helpful) steps that can make sure you start on the right footing.

Give it an OSI licence and decide on CLAs

In the vast ecosystem of code hosted on platforms like GitHub, it may be surprising to note that more than half of the projects are unlicensed. While this oversight may seem insignificant at first, it can lead to default copyright laws restricting the usage and distribution of the code. As creators, it's essential to understand the significance of retaining all rights to your source code so that no one may reproduce, distribute or create derivative works from your work.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) serves as the steward of the definition of open source. Their purpose is to endorse and approve software licences that adhere to the definition of open source. However, it is very easy to get overwhelmed by the extensive list of licences to choose from. There are many resources available to help you on your journey -- just be sure you read more than a few articles to help you understand clearly why you're choosing the licence that you do.