License, Code of Conduct, & README

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>> [MUSIC]

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>> Kent C. Dodds: First things first here, for open source to be considered a open source it must have a license. The Opensource.org the organization responsible for creating the term, open source that was their one of the main stipulations, is that there is a license associated with it. And there are ten criteria for that license to meet.

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And so that's something that we're definitely going to add. There are actually. You know what we're gonna do, I'll go to opensource.org/osd. Stands for Open Source Definition. So I recommend that you check this out. And there are, I believe licenses that you can find on here, where you can find a whole bunch of different licenses that fit in these standards that the Open Source Definition enforces them on library licenses.

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So the MIT license, I've gone through some of these licenses they all have kind of different different appeals. I like MIT. I actually started using MIT, because I thought it was reference the school. And I was like, MIT, school with smart people, I'll just use that. I have since actually learned what that license is and I like it, and so I use it.

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So yeah, check out what these licenses are, the restrictions they place on people using your code and choose the one that you want. For this library today, we're gonna use the MIT license. But before you publish your own, you can change it if you want to. The other thing is a code of conduct, a CoC.

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So a code of conduct is not technically required for an Open Source library, not by the definition of Open Source anyway. But I think that it's a really important part of Open Source, is having a code of conduct. I have never had to enforce my code of conduct on anyone in any of my libraries, but I think it's because I have one.

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And so the Open Source world can be kind of a scary and unkind place at some times and that's a real tragedy. So having a code of conduct that you can point people to when they're behaving inappropriately and making people feel uncomfortable or just being rude is a good way to deter people from misbehaving in a community that you're trying to build around your Open Source library.

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And then finally a README is really important. And we'll talk a little bit more about what you put in the README and how you communicate the purpose of your library when I talk about community stuff at the end.