A skilled developer knows his customers and his use cases well, which makes it possible for him to create an elegant and feature-rich solution. This understanding will assist the developer in succeeding and enjoying watching users loving and using the applications.
Building libraries require the best practices that we will discuss in this post.
For building developer libraries, you need to combine open source and an open mind to make a win-win situation. It’s because of the multiple benefits offered by open source related to personal development, community, and developer relations.
Let’s learn some of the benefits
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Feedback
Open source development can be rewarding for developers and outside contributors who have an open mind and are willing to learn and share knowledge with each other.
When you create a public repository for a library, you offer transparency to the public. Everything you do is accessible to anyone.
Moreover, by offering an open source library, you are providing an opportunity to users to understand your library better, to feedback, to find and fix bugs, to enhance their coding skills, to add their code to your repository. At times we fail to detect and review our codes- this job is done by other users in a better way.
Other than this, being an owner of the repository, you are sharing your code to external review and enhancement. If you find no trouble in accepting mistakes or changes made by outside reviewers and you are willing to learn from them then you can make a better library.
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Lower costs
With open source, you can have a lower cost of ownership which cannot be possible with traditional library systems. When it comes to open source, you don’t have to pay any license fees. Open source libraries enjoy the benefit of reduced costs offered by the cloud by reducing local support and hosting costs.
The money you save while selecting open source options can be used somewhere else for betterment.
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Contribution
It’s the best way to engage developers from outside with your library by making them a part of it. You should provide a contributing guide and share clear guidelines for them to follow when reporting bugs, pull requests submission and how they commit messages should appear among other users.
It promotes a healthy and constructive community by sharing and creating a code of conduct and makes it available through the contributing guide. Deserving developers get the recognition when outside users take the time to review their issues and provide them feedback, even if there is no urgent requirement.
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No Lock in
There is no such lock thing existing in library systems. Developers and users have an opportunity to pick and choose components and take advantage of better interoperability with open source answers.
The idea of open source is more sustainable- if a vendor goes out of business, he may be lost the software. With open source, it is always there and accessible and the entire community is involved in it to continue its development.
- Adaptation and innovation
Since there is no need for waiting for the next update or release with open systems and software, user expectations are exceeded. It approves more agile Asp.net development services and systems.
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Communicative documentation
Take an instance; you are a new user to access the library. You should know the basic steps to get started.
Every small and big detail matters. You must issue proper helping points for first times, all Devs, and advanced Devs for best output.
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Wide range of samples
Apart from important documentation, you need to share sample applications. Developers never deny to things working fast and they appreciate working applications that are simple to configure, create and run. In this way, the new users can learn in a jiffy and take an interest in experiments.
Few assumptions about open source that one should ignore
Open source gives freedom, not free beer
The concept of the open source is to share ideas for free. Software is an idea that can be rendered into an executable form. The open source offers freeloading of the shared idea or software to existing and new users for free.
Open source doesn’t imply volunteer labor
Most existing open source software success stories represent the product of volunteer development communities (decentralized). This phenomenon relies on these communities contributing to the open source library, however, this type of dependency is one-directional. An IT company could easily pick the option of adopting an open source methodology. Decentralized development communities are unable to function in an effective way without one.
It’s important for commercial firms to understand that open vs closed open source project only shows that state of a door. While there is a door left open for volunteer labor, there is no developer or a group of developers on the other side of the door waiting in a queue to contribute free code. When the door is closed, you get zero probability of receiving a contributed code. When you leave the door open, this probability increases.
