> I'm begging project leaders everywhere - please read up on the social contract and the consent of the governed.
I do not need consent as I am not governing anyone like king or president governs.
If someone is using my project they are also not really entitled to anything, beyond what stated in license and similar documents if any.
If they dislike it, they can fork my project and go away.
If someone wants to be entitled to anything, they are free to make a contract and pay for service they desire. But while many are happy to demand nearly noone is willing to help. Or even fork project.
Instead they make entitled demand and treat open source developers as servants or slaves or their pets.
No, you are not entitled to your preferred governance model to be used in my software project.
show comments
alphazard
Comparing software projects to governments usually produces the wrong intuition. The stakes are much lower, and risk tolerance should be much higher with a software project. Dictators are good, forks are good, even conflict can be good because it means people care. On the contrary, democracy leads to mediocre decisions, designs by committee, and sluggishness.
Unlike with a government, you can easily walk a way from a software project or create a fork. There is almost zero friction to "voting with your feet" in software and it works.
show comments
bArray
> Which is why I am delighted that the Mastodon project has shown a better way to behave.
I think we should hold our breath for a moment. The wars waged over concession don't always happen immediately, and not always involving the expected parties [1].
> Today, we’re marking another momentous step in this ongoing process as our Founder and now former CEO Eugen Rochko begins his transition into a new role with Mastodon. We are thrilled that he will continue on in an advisory role with our team.
The problem with the undead King is if they ever feel the need to exercise any form of power.
The whole “why I contribute to open source” has been on my mind lately after I published my first open source project and it’s gotten moderate attention from the data engineering community (200 GitHub stars):
The transition from being the sole architect of “my” project into more of a maintainer, organizer, director, has been a unique experience and interesting to reflect on.
What’s the future hold? I really don’t know.
show comments
1970-01-01
Linux will be the ultimate test for this. Linus will eventually retire or die. The individual that takes it from there sets the future for all open source. I cannot imagine open source existing if the kernel maintenance is squandered.
show comments
gassi
I run a semi-popular open source project (https://romm.app/), and this is a topic we tend to revisit regularly. While there will always have to be someone at the top who owns the project, we've tried to organize ourselves in a way that should prevent a complete hostile takeover:
* Gihub organization is co-owned (2 Owners)
* I own the domain, they run the Discord server
* Finances are handled by https://opencollective.com/
* All code is GPL or AGPL licensed
In the event either (or both) of us step away, temporarily or permanently, the core team is has the power and permissions to continue running the project indefinitely. While I would be able to remove them as co-owner on Github in a takeover scenario, I won't have access to the finances or the Discord community.
show comments
JimDabell
A long-standing succession plan also reduces the likelihood of a supply-chain attack. A fed-up maintainer deciding to quit is the worst possible time to pick a successor.
show comments
riazrizvi
This is a testament to how we can get lost in the weeds with ideas. The economic reality is that there’s little money in open source, on an hourly pay basis. There’s no barrier to entry, put in the hours and you can have a reason to work in all your spare time too. It’s silly to compare how people treat positions of real economic power to them.
show comments
andremat
> Build an organisation which won't crumble the moment its founder is arrested for their predatory behaviour on tropical islands.
Or gets convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife.
ferguess_k
I think it depends on what kind of OSP they are.
For example, Linux kernel is definitely widely used and I'd argue that it is one of the few things that have achieved globally acknowledgement and usage, i.e. a "human" thing, as the aliens said. Such a project would naturally require some strong leader (Linus is famous for being straightforward and none-BS) and a bunch of able enforcers (maintainers). I don't think we are short of able enforcers, although the total number of Linux maintainers who understand the full picture may be small, but we don't need a lot of them anyway. The key is to elect an equally good and strong leader, without which the project may degrade slowly, like all human projects. I'd hope someone with both the technical knowledge as well a strong character to take over whence Linus retires -- but Linus is only 55 years old so I believe he and the community still have many years to search for the next leader.
ziml77
Sorry for commenting about the page itself, but did anyone else have to go into reader mode to read it? The page is bouncing up and down, the text is extremely blurry and varying in size letter by letter, and every element seems randomly slanted.
show comments
asim
I have tried to hand off a project for years with many failed attempts. In the case of Mastodon they have some very high profile names that effectively want to relive the glory days of Twitter and take it over. In the case of smaller projects, you have to very diligent when deciding who to hand off too. I don't think there are great answers here.
Why would I care when I am dead. It's just software and "bloody civil wars" is not something that happens over software governance. Oh no, some people might say mean things to eachother and someone might fork the software. Big Deal. Figure it out for yourselves like adults. Remember, the license says AS-IS and NO WARRANTY. Use at your own risk. I don't owe you anything. If you want work done on it - do it yourself or pay me.
Nevermark
> The great selling point of democracy is that it allows for the peaceful transition of power.
This is the true benefit of democracy that it actually delivers.
Most stated benefits of democracy are partially true, but with a solid remainder supplied via the rose colored lenses of denial and hope. There is much work that remains to be done.
szszrk
I struggle to find out who is this aimed at, really.
It's clear there is a lot of drama in Opensource projects lately, but there are countless projects where the maintainer would be thrilled to have one or two people that would actually want to invest their time into reviewing some code with him. Day they find others pumped by their work and willing to invest some time would be celebrated with cake each year.
Just because someone else's broken CI pipeline does "Several thousands of downloads of NPM package per day" should not make you feel bad that you have not "Build an organisation which won't crumble" yet.
That's backwards. You want to help those people? Create that organization. Create another Apache org and take over important projects that need that.
It really feels like banging the wrong drum. Just another person having a broken curl setup and blaming Daniel Stenberg for it.
lapcat
I'm not sure there's much utility in this article. It feels like the point was mainly to dunk on Ruby on Rails and WordPress without mentioning them by name. And such dunking may be justified, but it's not particularly interesting and won't lead to an enlightening discussion.
I think it's crucial to point out, though, that Eugen Rochko's motives for stepping down were explicitly personal. He's still quite young, Mastodon itself is still quite young, less than a decade old, and Rochko could have continued in his position for some time. He stepped down because he wanted to step down, not for some selfless reason like succession planning. And I'm not criticizing Rochko for that; he can live his life the way he chooses and do what makes him happy, avoid what he finds unpleasant. And he's to be commended for the mentioned peaceful transition of power. However, there's no inherent reason why Matt Mullenweg or DHH should step down just because Rochko stepped down; their personal goals are obviously different. And Rochko behaved very differently while he was still leading Mastodon.
The author clearly wants those other leaders to step down because he doesn't like those leaders and how they behave, not because of some abstract idea of succession planning. I don't think the metaphor of a king's death is apt here, because nobody has died or become incapacitated. They've just become overtly contemptible.
show comments
muragekibicho
'or if reading is too woke' Amazing piece and oddly relatable
smashah
There should be P.E Firms run by OSS devs concentrating in being the succession and exit plan for OSS founders while charging big tech cos ($1bn+) for support.
Might sound a bit evil at first but it is the way to bolster the whole xkcd issue.
> I'm begging project leaders everywhere - please read up on the social contract and the consent of the governed.
I do not need consent as I am not governing anyone like king or president governs.
If someone is using my project they are also not really entitled to anything, beyond what stated in license and similar documents if any.
If they dislike it, they can fork my project and go away.
If someone wants to be entitled to anything, they are free to make a contract and pay for service they desire. But while many are happy to demand nearly noone is willing to help. Or even fork project. Instead they make entitled demand and treat open source developers as servants or slaves or their pets.
No, you are not entitled to your preferred governance model to be used in my software project.
Comparing software projects to governments usually produces the wrong intuition. The stakes are much lower, and risk tolerance should be much higher with a software project. Dictators are good, forks are good, even conflict can be good because it means people care. On the contrary, democracy leads to mediocre decisions, designs by committee, and sluggishness.
Unlike with a government, you can easily walk a way from a software project or create a fork. There is almost zero friction to "voting with your feet" in software and it works.
> Which is why I am delighted that the Mastodon project has shown a better way to behave.
I think we should hold our breath for a moment. The wars waged over concession don't always happen immediately, and not always involving the expected parties [1].
> Today, we’re marking another momentous step in this ongoing process as our Founder and now former CEO Eugen Rochko begins his transition into a new role with Mastodon. We are thrilled that he will continue on in an advisory role with our team.
The problem with the undead King is if they ever feel the need to exercise any form of power.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings
The whole “why I contribute to open source” has been on my mind lately after I published my first open source project and it’s gotten moderate attention from the data engineering community (200 GitHub stars):
TinyETL - Fast, zero-config ETL in a single binary https://github.com/alrpal/TinyETL
The transition from being the sole architect of “my” project into more of a maintainer, organizer, director, has been a unique experience and interesting to reflect on.
What’s the future hold? I really don’t know.
Linux will be the ultimate test for this. Linus will eventually retire or die. The individual that takes it from there sets the future for all open source. I cannot imagine open source existing if the kernel maintenance is squandered.
I run a semi-popular open source project (https://romm.app/), and this is a topic we tend to revisit regularly. While there will always have to be someone at the top who owns the project, we've tried to organize ourselves in a way that should prevent a complete hostile takeover:
In the event either (or both) of us step away, temporarily or permanently, the core team is has the power and permissions to continue running the project indefinitely. While I would be able to remove them as co-owner on Github in a takeover scenario, I won't have access to the finances or the Discord community.A long-standing succession plan also reduces the likelihood of a supply-chain attack. A fed-up maintainer deciding to quit is the worst possible time to pick a successor.
This is a testament to how we can get lost in the weeds with ideas. The economic reality is that there’s little money in open source, on an hourly pay basis. There’s no barrier to entry, put in the hours and you can have a reason to work in all your spare time too. It’s silly to compare how people treat positions of real economic power to them.
> Build an organisation which won't crumble the moment its founder is arrested for their predatory behaviour on tropical islands.
Or gets convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife.
I think it depends on what kind of OSP they are.
For example, Linux kernel is definitely widely used and I'd argue that it is one of the few things that have achieved globally acknowledgement and usage, i.e. a "human" thing, as the aliens said. Such a project would naturally require some strong leader (Linus is famous for being straightforward and none-BS) and a bunch of able enforcers (maintainers). I don't think we are short of able enforcers, although the total number of Linux maintainers who understand the full picture may be small, but we don't need a lot of them anyway. The key is to elect an equally good and strong leader, without which the project may degrade slowly, like all human projects. I'd hope someone with both the technical knowledge as well a strong character to take over whence Linus retires -- but Linus is only 55 years old so I believe he and the community still have many years to search for the next leader.
Sorry for commenting about the page itself, but did anyone else have to go into reader mode to read it? The page is bouncing up and down, the text is extremely blurry and varying in size letter by letter, and every element seems randomly slanted.
I have tried to hand off a project for years with many failed attempts. In the case of Mastodon they have some very high profile names that effectively want to relive the glory days of Twitter and take it over. In the case of smaller projects, you have to very diligent when deciding who to hand off too. I don't think there are great answers here.
If anyone is interested https://go-micro.dev
Why would I care when I am dead. It's just software and "bloody civil wars" is not something that happens over software governance. Oh no, some people might say mean things to eachother and someone might fork the software. Big Deal. Figure it out for yourselves like adults. Remember, the license says AS-IS and NO WARRANTY. Use at your own risk. I don't owe you anything. If you want work done on it - do it yourself or pay me.
> The great selling point of democracy is that it allows for the peaceful transition of power.
This is the true benefit of democracy that it actually delivers.
Most stated benefits of democracy are partially true, but with a solid remainder supplied via the rose colored lenses of denial and hope. There is much work that remains to be done.
I struggle to find out who is this aimed at, really.
It's clear there is a lot of drama in Opensource projects lately, but there are countless projects where the maintainer would be thrilled to have one or two people that would actually want to invest their time into reviewing some code with him. Day they find others pumped by their work and willing to invest some time would be celebrated with cake each year.
Just because someone else's broken CI pipeline does "Several thousands of downloads of NPM package per day" should not make you feel bad that you have not "Build an organisation which won't crumble" yet.
That's backwards. You want to help those people? Create that organization. Create another Apache org and take over important projects that need that.
It really feels like banging the wrong drum. Just another person having a broken curl setup and blaming Daniel Stenberg for it.
I'm not sure there's much utility in this article. It feels like the point was mainly to dunk on Ruby on Rails and WordPress without mentioning them by name. And such dunking may be justified, but it's not particularly interesting and won't lead to an enlightening discussion.
I think it's crucial to point out, though, that Eugen Rochko's motives for stepping down were explicitly personal. He's still quite young, Mastodon itself is still quite young, less than a decade old, and Rochko could have continued in his position for some time. He stepped down because he wanted to step down, not for some selfless reason like succession planning. And I'm not criticizing Rochko for that; he can live his life the way he chooses and do what makes him happy, avoid what he finds unpleasant. And he's to be commended for the mentioned peaceful transition of power. However, there's no inherent reason why Matt Mullenweg or DHH should step down just because Rochko stepped down; their personal goals are obviously different. And Rochko behaved very differently while he was still leading Mastodon.
The author clearly wants those other leaders to step down because he doesn't like those leaders and how they behave, not because of some abstract idea of succession planning. I don't think the metaphor of a king's death is apt here, because nobody has died or become incapacitated. They've just become overtly contemptible.
'or if reading is too woke' Amazing piece and oddly relatable
There should be P.E Firms run by OSS devs concentrating in being the succession and exit plan for OSS founders while charging big tech cos ($1bn+) for support.
Might sound a bit evil at first but it is the way to bolster the whole xkcd issue.