Netlify Open Source accounts?

Do you contribute to an Open Source Project? Is it hosted on Netlify? Your project may qualify for an Open Source Project, which comes with more bells and whistles than a Starter account.

Open Source Projects must follow a few key guidelines - such as including a Code of Conduct, and supplying a link back to Netlify on the front page. No commercial entities are allowed.

If you are interested in finding out more, comment below!

Hi,

NUSMods is an open source timetable planner for the National University of Singapore run by students, and is completely open source.

We use Netlify to host a preview of master branch at https://latest.nusmods.com/, and we deploy pull request builds to Netlify. Our team name on Netlify is NUSMods.

Hi @ZhangYiJiang! Welcome to netlify community.

Today we launched a new application process for open source teams.

Please start by reading the requirements and what we provide for qualified teams; your project will need to comply with all of them to be sponsored.

Then, please complete this form with more information about your project. Once you’ve met all the criteria, it should only take a couple minutes of your time, and we’ll verify if your project fits our policy and respond via email to confirm or ask clarifying questions when we have time.

Thank you!

Hi, I’m sorry for bumping this old thread, but I’ve got some questions regarding the open source plan and its requirements, and I want to ask here first before submitting the form, because I’m not sure whether it’ll get rejected and whether a second attempt will get ignored.

I’m one of the developers of a rather popular python-based CLI tool (BSD-2-Clause). Its documentation gets built via python-sphinx and everything is hosted on Github. The reason why I’m currently looking into a Netlify integration is that reviewing changes to the documentation in pull requests is always a bit tedious since Github doesn’t provide any features for deploying preview builds. Netlify supports this beautifully, even with pull request statuses, which is exactly what we’re looking for. We still want to keep our documentation hosted on Github and only want to use Netlify for occasional pull request previews. I have already set up a secondary test account with a configuration in a secondary test repository to see whether Netlify suits our needs, and it does.

The only reason why the open source plan is interesting for us is that it enables us having multiple maintainers on the team/account instead of just one. For FOSS projects with multiple developers, this is essential. The starter plan doesn’t allow this and sharing a single account is prohibited via the ToS. Interesting is also the increased monthly build time that’s available, but I don’t think it matters much to us, as the build times are very quick and we also don’t intend on running production builds from the master branch or builds from pull requests which don’t include changes to the documentation (all filtered out via the build ignore config).

The “Open Source Account” form requests having a CoC and a link to Netlify on the hosted website, and this is why I’ve got the following questions:

  1. We currently don’t have a CoC, as we keep things very simple and contribution-friendly by default. We don’t have a problem with adding a CoC, but if we do so, it would be kept in a very minimalist way. And this makes me wonder if this is okay when applying or if it’s even necessary to add one. Is it a hard requirement?

  2. Since we’d only use Netlify for occasional preview builds of the documentation in pull requests and don’t want to use it for hosting the actual documentation, we are not sure what an appropriate link to Netlify in the docs would look like. Would a simple thank-you note and a link somewhere on the index page be enough? I couldn’t find any informations about cases like ours, as every comment implies that projects using the open source plan are using Netlify for their main website.

I appreciate your help! Thank you very much!

hey @bastimeyer! Please do apply for an open source plan - seems like it would be a good fit.

A CoC is a requirement, but even a simple/minimalist one would do.

A simple thank you note and link to Netlify on the index page should suffice!

I hope this answers your questions :slight_smile:

@perry We are looking to move to Netlify for a few scientific open source projects we’re developing. I’d like to apply for the OSS account, but since we haven’t yet moved to Netlify there’s no link to share. Also, is there some wiggling room around where the link goes? E.g., on one project we have a Sponsors page, which would be a perfect fit, but it’s not the front page.

hey @stefanv , we’d love to have you here on netlify! we do have the requirement that the link either either on the main page or on all the sub pages.

Are you aware you’ll also need a code of conduct? just mentioning that as it is a definite requirement.

Once you have moved to us, please go ahead and apply here:

https://opensource-form.netlify.com/

Thanks, @perry. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem: I need to make the organization so I can do the builds, so I can reconfigure DNS, and make the move. Is there a way to sign up and have the team review the pages to ensure they’re happy before they go live?

Code of conduct is no problem; all our projects have those already (we’re talking about NumPy here, e.g.).

You can prep the site ready for go-live with a .netlify.app address before migrating. We can assess your application against the .netlify.app site! :slight_smile:

Can a person move a site from one group to another? I can start it on my private account, if we can easily migrate it to the new group later.

yes, not a problem. go ahead and set up your site(s), and we can then change your account type.