Are you planing to embark on the journey of open-sourcing your app? It can quickly become overwhelming. To ease this transition, here is a simple guide, drawing from my own team’s experience in open-sourcing an existing application.

Phase One: Repository Refinement

1. Securing Commit History:
   Scrutinising your project commit history for any sensitive data like passwords, API keys, etc. and removing them to safeguard your project. This is the single most important step in open sourcing your existing project.

2. Streamlining Repository Size:
   Identify and review any large files from your git history, as they can obstruct repository operations and create problems for people who want to clone your repo or contribute.

3. Guard Against Future Slip-ups:
   Implement commit hooks to avoid any accidental inclusion of sensitive information or oversized files. You need to do this because you dont know who who will try to add commits to your repo and the expertise level of the contributor.

4. Commit History Clarity:
   Tidy up your commit history to make it more comprehensible and collaborative-friendly. Without this you will end up putting your source code in the open source and nobody ever visits your repo.

5. Code Cleanup:
   Purge the codebase of any redundant, unused code or irrelevant code. I suggest archiving potentially useful snippets separately so that they can be referred later.

6. Continuous Integration Integrity:
   Ensure that your CI processes are in place and are running smoothly. Fix any failing tests right on day 1.

7. Initiate a Formal Release:
   If your project has versioned releases, prepare and publish a new release by adding a relevant tag to your project.

8. Security First:
   Make it a priority to address any security vulnerabilities, particularly those flagged in tools like GITHUB’s Security alerts.

9. Dependencies Updated:
   Activate automation tools via Github actions for dependency updates to keep your project current and secure.
   

Phase Two: Documentation & Compliance

1. Project Licensing: Choose an appropriate open-source license for your project depending on your requirements and include it in your repository under the LICENSE.md file.
2. Write the perfect README: Craft a README that is informative, intuitive & engaging at the same time. Make sure thay it has clear explanations, visuals and a coherent structure. Keep it in mind that your project’s README is the first touchpoint with your product users as well as contributors.
3. Guidelines for Contributions: Include a CONTRIBUTING file and a CODE_OF_CONDUCT file to encourage & regulate community contributions. Without this you will end up with an open source repository that nobody wants to contribute to.

4. Elaborate Documentation:
   Develop a comprehensive documentation covering all aspects of your project, right from setup to troubleshooting. Try to use tools like docusaurus that are open source to create beautifully documentation.

5. Structured Issue Reporting:
   Implement issue templates in Github to streamline & standardize the process of reporting and resolving issues.
   

6. Test Thoroughly:
   Make sure that follow your own documentation to test the project, ensuring that everything works as intended before every release starting from the first one.

Phase Three: Engaging the Community

1. Targeted Outreach:
   Directly reach out to relevant individuals in the open source community or groups for feedback & to increase project visibility.
   Help us reach more contributors by starring the repo of our open source project OpenSign - the free & open source DocuSign alternative.
   ⭐ OpenSign on GitHub

2. Wider Exposure:
   Depending on the category of your project make a list of groups and social media communities that you should inform about the launch of your new open source project. Share your project in these communities and platforms where potential users and contributors gather.

Celebrating Your Journey:
After meticulously preparing your project for the open-source community, take a moment to celebrate your dedication and hard work! You deserve it.

Visit OpenSign on GitHub and see how our open source project is being managed. Your inputs & contributions are welcome.