Some things I think are important...that I want to articulate better:
- Understand where your project is, who has access to it, and what those with access can do with it.
- Retain access—in every possible way—to your own project. Respect this access: Value it, appreciate it, demand it. Be ready, at any time, to take you work with you and deploy it somewhere else. Or, at least, understand what steps would be involved to be able to do that.
- Work with people who respect that ability. Privilege those sorts of collaborations over those that seek and enforce propriety, isolation, feifdoms, etc.
- Be ready to articulate what exactly you want your work to do, why you're doing it, and why someone should take time with it.
- If you can't articulate something, capture that as a question, and take time at some point to consider it.
- Continue to articulate a lifecycle for your projects. Share this with others, so they know—and can possibly contribute to—your plans.
- Any engagement with your work, by anyone, is a good thing. Respect that, and the people who have any incliation to take some time with your work.
- Approach everything you build as if you plan to hand it off to someone else with the same time, interests, and motivations you do.
- Spend more time thinking about, and enabling, participation from others in your work than you do in actual features and fixes. Work to develop relationships with other people who might share in teh same interests and motivations you have for your work.