I've written and released a sampler from my upcoming book on rejuvenating open source projects: Getting Unstuck: Advice for Open Source Projects. It's like a lengthy trailer in text form.

You can get this 38-page ebook for free when you subscribe to Changeset Consulting's email newsletter (1-10 updates per year).

Who this book is for and what you should get out of it:

You are about to get an open source project unstuck.

Maybe a bunch of work is piling up in the repository and users are getting worried, waiting for a release. Maybe developers have gotten bogged down, trying to finish a big rewrite while maintaining the stable release. Maybe the project's suffering for lack of infrastructure — testing, money, an institutional home.

You noticed the problem. So that means it's up to you to fix it. Or you're getting paid to fix it, even though you didn't start this thing.

A while ago I blurted out the phrase "dammit-driven leadership." Because sometimes you look around, and you realize something needs doing, and you're the only one who really gets why, so you say, "Dammit, okay, I'll do it, then."

After reading this book, you should be prepared to:

1. Assess a legacy project to decide whether you should get involved.
2. Settle into a legacy project and become a competent and credible contributor.
3. Take charge of a legacy project on a project, people, and financial level.
4. Execute transformative change in a legacy project.
5. Make a legacy project more sustainable, and pass leadership on to someone else.

This sampler is a free 38-page ebook (PDF, ePub, and MOBI available) that includes:

• Introduction (including my controversial? "Basic assumptions about open source and the tech industries")
• Conducting a SWOT analysis (assessing a project's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, with example analysis of the pip project)
• How to start thinking about budgets and money (including two exercises)
• Teaching and including unskilled volunteers (with twelve specific tactics)
• An outline of the full forthcoming book

Thanks to Julia Rios for paid services editing and producing this book, including the cover! Julia is a Hugo Award-winning editor as well as a writer, narrator, and podcaster, and is available for freelance work!

A special note for my blog readers: I'm keenly interested in your feedback once you read the sampler. Have you solved any of these problems in a different way? Would a different structure, for each chapter or for the book, help you better? Did any of my examples or phrasings particularly ring true? Are there things I've written that you have found useful and that you hope I will incorporate into this book? Email me with "Unstuck" in the subject line.

Next: In 2021 I'm looking forward to finishing this book and either self-publishing or working with a publisher. And I will likely bring this sampler from behind the subscribewall once I produce a new edition of it that can have a "the full book is coming on [date] from [publisher]!" line. In order to do that, I need to finish the book proposal, submit it to publishers, and get cracking on the rest of the book.

Get the sampler for free when you subscribe to Changeset's email newsletter (1-10 updates per year).