Shopify & the HTML5 Boilerplate

On the 24th August I received the first issues of HTML5 Weekly, a "free, once–weekly round-up of HTML5 and related technology news and links". There's a few other bits and pieces in the email you may be interested in (go subscribe) but what caught my eye was "HTML5 Boilerplate 2.0: One Year Old, Many New Improvements". I've used the boilerplate code a few times times, and have been meaning to work it fully into my new site routine for a few months. Parallel to these thoughts has been the idea that I really should write a good base template for all the Shopify shops that I keep building for people. I have one about to go live for a clothes shop, another about to be started and a few more on the horizon. I have plenty of off the shelf components that I use on all my projects nowadays and they all need rolling in as well.

The HTML5 Boilerplate code gives me the ideal starting point and after mentioning it on twitter and receiving at least some enthusiasm, including some from Paul Irish, co-creator of HTML5 Boilerplate, I've decided to give it a go.

There's a few blockers, for one, although I've worked with Git & Github on a lot of projects, I've never actually had my own project there that I have run myself, I've also, never released any open source code. I'm wary about being quite so open for criticism from my peers but I suppose I can only get better by doing so. Also - I am thinking of the cost implications, although I want to do this for free, and frankly, I was going to do it for myself anyway, there is an overhead of running the project, keeping up to date with the master HTML5 Boilerplate project, adding docs etc. I do have a mortgage to pay and a baby to keep in (expensive, you realise the minute they stop drinking milk) pots of blended food. I'm considering just putting up a small site with all the info and DL links, along with a (optional OFC) PayPal donation link, or my affiliate link through to Shopify - would that be acceptable in the open source world?

Looking forward to some feedback and discussion on this one.