Upstream First: Open-Source Documentation Best Practices

Open-source projects continue to struggle with documentation – it is often cited as the weak spot of open source. Many projects have failed to attract docs contributors, and many companies that contr …

Open-source projects continue to struggle with documentation – it is often cited as the weak spot of open source. Many projects have failed to attract docs contributors, and many companies that contribute code don’t have processes for working with upstream docs. How can you, both as a corporate and individual contributor, help to create a healthy documentation set? What are best practices for writing and maintaining open docs?This session will introduce attendees to basic principles of fitting docs work into the open-source collaboration model. You will learn about open-source documentation what you may already know about open-source code: how to be a good community member, how to contribute meaningfully, and how to ensure the resulting docs serve the community well and can also be downstreamed easily.