publish free software

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-title: "Getting involved"
+title: Getting involved
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diff --git a/content/learn/participate/publish.md b/content/learn/participate/publish.md
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 title: Publish free software
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+
+Got a great idea for a new free software project and itching to publish it?
+Wonderful! Here are the steps:
+
+1. Write it!
+2. Choose a software license
+3. Publish your project
+4. Build a community*
+
+\* optional 😉
+
+## Writing your software
+
+We can't help you much with this part, of course. However, one word of advice:
+**publish early**. Many new maintainers are hesitant to publish their code,
+worried that poor documentation, missing features, abundant bugs, or even just
+poor code -- it all needs to be fixed before it's ready for the world. Not so!
+Releasing early is a crucial step for getting rapid feedback and is essential to
+attracting others to help. Get your code out there as soon as possible.
+
+## Choosing a license
+
+Before you publish, however, you need to choose a free software license that
+suits your needs. You *can* write one yourself, but this is **strongly** advised
+against, even for big corporations that can hire a lawyer to help. There are
+plenty of licenses out there to suit every need, and we go over how to choose
+the right one for you in [choosing a license][0].
+
+[0]: /learn/participate/choose-a-license/
+
+Choosing a license is **required** when publishing a free software project -- in
+the absence of a license your work is non-free. Your choice may also have
+significant long-term consequences for your project, so choose carefully. This
+is an important step.
+
+## Publishing your project
+
+When you're ready to publish your work, the easiest way is to upload it to a
+**software forge**. There are many to choose from, each offering numerous tools
+to make development and collaboration easier for you. Many of these software
+forges are themselves free software -- we recommend using these over the
+non-free alternatives. Here are a few suggestions to check out:
+
+- [Codeberg](https://codeberg.org)
+- [SourceHut](https://sourcehut.org)
+
+You can also host your project on your own infrastructure. Something as simple
+as a tarball on a web server will do, but you can also run an entire software
+forge in your own datacenter if that's better for your project.
+
+<!--
+
+Feel free to add forges here. Criteria for inclusion:
+
+- Reasonably feature complete and useful for hosting projects with minimal fuss
+- Hosted on stable infrastructure (self-hosted forges will not be considered)
+- Trustworthy and transparent maintainership
+- Free software, of course
+
+Add new hosts in alphabetical order.
+
+-->
+
+## Building a community
+
+One of the chief advantages of publishing free software is that your community
+can get involved to help make it better than you can do alone. Managing your
+community is important to make sure that your software is the best it can be.
+[We publish articles][blog] on a variety of subjects of interest to free
+software participants, including advice on community building and management.
+Check it out!
+
+[blog]: /blog/