Certified Open Source Developer for Enterprise study plan

Explain how open source projects differ from proprietary development in governance, distribution, and contribution flow, in your own written notes

Trace the lifecycle of a real project release (issue, pull request, review, merge, release tag) using one public repository and diagram each stage

Define and contrast the common project governance models (single maintainer, meritocracy, foundation-backed) with one real example each

Set up your working environment: git configured, a hosted account, and a scratch repository you can experiment in

Describe how upstream projects and downstream consumers interact, including fork, upstream, and vendoring terminology

Identify the components of a typical open source project's health signals (release cadence, issue response, contributor diversity) and score three candidate libraries

Practice reading a project's README, CONTRIBUTING, and release notes to extract compatibility and support expectations

Compare two libraries that solve the same problem using health signals rather than popularity alone

Build a dependency inventory for a small sample application, listing direct and transitive dependencies

Interpret a lockfile and explain how version pinning and range constraints affect reproducibility

Run a vulnerability scan on the sample application and triage findings by severity and reachability

Explain the difference between a known vulnerability, an unmaintained package, and a license concern

Map the obligations of permissive, weak-copyleft, and strong-copyleft licenses onto concrete distribution scenarios

Identify the license of every dependency in your inventory and flag any that conflict with a stated distribution model

Explain how license compatibility works when combining components under different licenses

Draft a short internal policy statement describing approved, review-required, and prohibited license categories

Apply a repeatable evaluation checklist to decide whether to adopt, wrap, or replace an open source component

Draft the attribution and notice file required for a distribution that includes third-party components

Explain how software composition analysis fits into a build pipeline and where it should fail a build

Document an upgrade and end-of-life plan for a dependency with a known unmaintained status

Find a beginner-friendly issue in a project you actually use and read the surrounding discussion and prior attempts

Reproduce the reported problem locally and write up your findings before changing any code

Prepare a pull request that follows the project's contribution guidelines, including tests and commit message conventions

Respond constructively to review feedback and document what you changed and why

Explain the difference between contributing code, documentation, triage, and community support, and where each creates leverage

Describe how a contributor moves toward maintainer or reviewer responsibility in a typical project

Draft an internal contribution policy covering approval to contribute on company time and handling of employer IP

Outline how an organization tracks its upstream contributions and their strategic value

Assemble a program-level view: inventory, license policy, contribution policy, and scan cadence in one operating model

Define owners, review cadence, and escalation paths for open source decisions in an organization

Design a metrics set that shows program health without encouraging gaming

Review your earlier deliverables for gaps and correct at least three weaknesses you find