> 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.
I think you've read something into my post that I didn't intend.
I'm specifically talking about the community of people who do contribute. If you look at the recent shenanigans of WordPress and Ruby, they are causing discontent within the existing organisation of contributors.
Those contributors are, of course, free to fork off if they want. But if you're trying to build a long-term viable project, then you need a way to ensure that the people working with you are treated fairly.
You've got your finger on the pulse of something that open source has always represented to me: freedom of the creator and others to just... do what they want with it (subject to the license of course).
Don't like what the main developer is doing with it? You're free to fork and continue on your way if they don't see it your way. If you lack the skills or time to do that, that's your problem - you're not entitled to the maintainers' labor.
The freedom cuts both ways, and by adding in elements of social contracts and other overlays onto the otherwise relatively pure freedom represented by OSS, you end up with the worst of both worlds.
THAT ALL SAID - there's an important distinction between a given piece of software that's open source versus a "true project", which is larger-scale, more contributors involved, might be part of mission-critical systems, etc, where the social dynamics DO need to careful thought and management.
But even that seems to be more a question of specific types of OSS business models which is related but not the same as the licenses and overall social dynamics around OSS projects.
You've drawn a neat dialectic between the hobbyist technophile and the community builder. If you want the help that you seem to eschew as rare, you could: share control through the delineation of roles, earn collective buy-in (consensus is built through some collective deliberation process, e.g democracy); otherwise, you're within your rights as individual.
Those who expect that "those who work will work for me" (the enslaver mentality) ... they also need boning up on social contract theory -- which as a leader you could nudge those individuals back towards good citizenship and maybe even gain useful support, but that's just your opportunity and not an imperative.
The thing to keep in mind is that widely successful open source projects are bigger than the single person who started the project. These simply can't be forked without broad consensus around which fork to follow.
The author (who also responded) isn't referring to small libraries or utilities that are written by a single person and don't have much public contribution.
Completely agreed. There has always been bits of entitlement to open source projects by users, but I feel like increase in package managers and ecosystems (which I think is generally a good thing) has lead to a _huge_ increase in people being entitled assholes to maintainers.
Just look like the GitHub issues of a fairly large package with a single maintainer. The demanding attitude from someone who wants a feature that doesn't even make sense for the package to an individual who has a separate full time job and a family who does this for the love of the game is very upsetting.
I think this criticism doesn't go far enough. As https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45980503 says, the criticism appears to be more about governance than succession. But then, the next sentence after your quote is:
> Or, if reading is too woke, just behave like grown-ups rather than squabbling tweenagers.
To me, this makes it abundantly clear that the goal is to associate leadership the author doesn't like with politics the author doesn't like. It's in a "behold, Goofus and Gallant" style of diatribe that I've seen a few times before and it always rubs me the wrong way.
Yes, a lot of FOSS projects have seen friction between the official leadership[1] and major players in the community. But it seems to come in three major forms: the kind where the conflict is expected and part of how those people have gotten along historically for years[2]; the kind where the players are trying to stage a coup because they don't like the leadership's { real-world politics, social status, opinion of pineapple on pizza, ... } expressed entirely outside of development spaces; and the kind where the project is already forked but at least one party can't leave the other alone (sometimes because the project is really more about infrastructure/platform than software; sometimes because leadership kicked someone out, in an inverse of the previous situation).
But swipes like the above instantly throw out all nuance and good will, and effectively round everything off to "all these bad things happen because some people just can't behave themselves, which conveniently correlates with a caricature of my own political adversaries".
1. There are plenty of cases showing that moving away from the BDFL model doesn't actually fix the problem.
2. Believe it or not, many people actually enjoy operating that way. I hold that people who don't have no business telling people who do to cut it out.
> If they dislike it, they can fork my project and go away.
I definitely agree with you here. Forking, almost by definition, means the "D" in BDFL is a joke. The author pretending that "D" is deadly serious is an incredibly counterproductive and passive-aggressive way to express their concern.
Still, the question remains-- if your project has more than a single developer, have you communicated to your project members who you think has the best knowledge and ability to take over after you're gone? If the only developer is you then the question is moot. Otherwise, it's false modesty to pretend that's none of your business.
In fact, you only have consent. People who don't want to work with you don't have to; everyone who does want to work with you only does so because of mutual consent. Act badly and they will walk away.
I'm with you on this... The whole article just seems like insidious, communist take over of what other people create.
It usually starts with a Code of Conduct decree.. it ends with people who don't actually write software acting as authoritarian dictators in a software banana republic.
I've read this sentiment often on this forum, and I suppose it shouldn't surprise me given that most people here share the entrepreneurial mindset. But it still rubs me the wrong way, and I'll write about it again.
What I don't like about this idea that the role of open source authors ends with throwing some code over the fence, relinquishing any responsibility for it beyond what their chosen license dictates, is that it completely ignores the community aspect that forms around software, and in large part, contributes to the success of OSS.
Software is written for people. Open source software explicitly invites collaboration, and sharing of knowledge. When someone sees people asking for help, and making feature and improvement suggestions, as "demands" from "entitled" users, they're completely missing this point of community. When they additionally require or suggest that no work will be done unless these entitled users pay up, it's no different from source available, proprietary or commercial software at that point. Of course your work should be compensated, and you shouldn't be expected to work for free. You are free to choose any number of viable business models to ensure that happens. But demanding this from your users is essentially putting the software behind a paywall. It also signals to users that the direction of the project is dictated not by a community of passionate users, but by whoever pays the most, which is a twisted incentive for any software.
My point is: there is more to OSS than the code and the license. Despite what some may claim, there is an unwritten social contract which is created when software is published in the open, whether the author decides to ignore this or not. Some authors do acknowledge this explicitly[1], which is a large factor in making their projects more successful than those from authors who decide to alienate their user base.
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.
Building consensus around which fork to use is going to be a high-friction process; it's going to require much more work than pushing the "fork" button and changing the name in all the assets.
> Unlike with a government, you can easily walk away
Part of me hopes for a Snow Crash future where if you don't like the services provided by The American Mafia (a bit of on-the-nose prophecy from Neal Stephenson), you can switch to Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong instead. Sadly, human rights would likely be a casualty in that overall scenario.
> 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.
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.
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.
There has been open source before Linux and there will be open source after Linux. Yes Linux is a flagship project but the whole culture of open source is much broader than it.
Disagree, Linux is too big to fail. Too many people depend on it. It may get chaotic, but worst-case distributions will start collecting patches, as they already do for many unmaintained projects. Eventually one or two of them will emerge as the new upstream.
Linus should take a lesson from history and appoint the successor in advance, and publicly groom that person for the role, so nobody would have any doubts.
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.
I authored a project. Basically a framework and API, that gestated for over a decade. During that time, I managed it pretty much alone.
It was difficult.
I could have easily considered it "mine, all mine!". When I first started handing it over to the team that now runs it, I considered being a BDFL, but found out that I couldn't let go, while still in the mix.
So I walked away from it. I still chip in a peanut gallery comment on Slack, every now and then, but otherwise, I'm history.
Best decision I ever made. The new team took it to the next level.
That's great, but it doesn't always turn out that way.
Twice now I've started open source projects, got them to varying levels of success, handed over to another maintainer, and watched it turn to shit. Luck of the draw, I think :-(
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
OSS projects are not governments, they are communities. You can't just come to a village and declare "I don't like how you live here, you therefore must have a plan of how to accommodate my wishes!" Nope, they don't. And the fact that you read entire two books on "consent of the governed" is irrelevant, because they are not trying to govern you. You are free to hit the road and go to another village anytime.
When you become part of the community, contribute to it, gain share in building the common thing then you might gain some claim to participation in the governance. Or maybe not. And the beauty of OSS is that if you don't like that, you are free to fork it and establish your own community literally at any time. Yes, you'd be facing an uphill struggle to convince people your community is better and they should move over. That's exactly how it should be. If it's indeed better, they will come. If it's just your ego and delusion speaking, they will not.
I don't have enough interest in Mastodon project to have an opinion about what happened there, but presenting it like every project founder owes to turn it over to the Committee of Concerned Citizens is nonsense. And, also, the description of "There are no VCs bringing in their MBA-brained lackeys to extract maximum value while leaving a rotting husk." may yet prove very false, as the project grows. Github was once a young, scrappy and full of inconvential management ideas, now it's literally Microsoft. Let Mastodon be governed by committee for 10 years and we'll see.
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.
Or we could shame companies into action by refusing to use and pay to companies who use FOSS (all of them) but don't contribute back (most of them). Lastly, don't contribute to their FOSS projects, regardless of how nice they might look, if they're not contributing to the ecosystem overall.
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.
> The author clearly wants those other leaders to step down
I think you are putting words in their mouth. They could easily have explicitly called to those leaders to step down.
> He stepped down because he wanted to step down, not for some selfless reason like succession planning.
The praise of Rochko isn't for stepping down. The praise is for the way he setup sucession and governance as he did so.
>> Simply, we are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets) to a new non-profit organization, affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.
[+] [-] purple_turtle|3 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] edent|3 months ago|reply
I'm specifically talking about the community of people who do contribute. If you look at the recent shenanigans of WordPress and Ruby, they are causing discontent within the existing organisation of contributors.
Those contributors are, of course, free to fork off if they want. But if you're trying to build a long-term viable project, then you need a way to ensure that the people working with you are treated fairly.
[+] [-] corry|3 months ago|reply
Don't like what the main developer is doing with it? You're free to fork and continue on your way if they don't see it your way. If you lack the skills or time to do that, that's your problem - you're not entitled to the maintainers' labor.
The freedom cuts both ways, and by adding in elements of social contracts and other overlays onto the otherwise relatively pure freedom represented by OSS, you end up with the worst of both worlds.
THAT ALL SAID - there's an important distinction between a given piece of software that's open source versus a "true project", which is larger-scale, more contributors involved, might be part of mission-critical systems, etc, where the social dynamics DO need to careful thought and management.
But even that seems to be more a question of specific types of OSS business models which is related but not the same as the licenses and overall social dynamics around OSS projects.
[+] [-] grokgrok|3 months ago|reply
Those who expect that "those who work will work for me" (the enslaver mentality) ... they also need boning up on social contract theory -- which as a leader you could nudge those individuals back towards good citizenship and maybe even gain useful support, but that's just your opportunity and not an imperative.
[+] [-] gwbas1c|3 months ago|reply
The author (who also responded) isn't referring to small libraries or utilities that are written by a single person and don't have much public contribution.
[+] [-] jjice|3 months ago|reply
Just look like the GitHub issues of a fairly large package with a single maintainer. The demanding attitude from someone who wants a feature that doesn't even make sense for the package to an individual who has a separate full time job and a family who does this for the love of the game is very upsetting.
[+] [-] zahlman|3 months ago|reply
> Or, if reading is too woke, just behave like grown-ups rather than squabbling tweenagers.
To me, this makes it abundantly clear that the goal is to associate leadership the author doesn't like with politics the author doesn't like. It's in a "behold, Goofus and Gallant" style of diatribe that I've seen a few times before and it always rubs me the wrong way.
Yes, a lot of FOSS projects have seen friction between the official leadership[1] and major players in the community. But it seems to come in three major forms: the kind where the conflict is expected and part of how those people have gotten along historically for years[2]; the kind where the players are trying to stage a coup because they don't like the leadership's { real-world politics, social status, opinion of pineapple on pizza, ... } expressed entirely outside of development spaces; and the kind where the project is already forked but at least one party can't leave the other alone (sometimes because the project is really more about infrastructure/platform than software; sometimes because leadership kicked someone out, in an inverse of the previous situation).
But swipes like the above instantly throw out all nuance and good will, and effectively round everything off to "all these bad things happen because some people just can't behave themselves, which conveniently correlates with a caricature of my own political adversaries".
1. There are plenty of cases showing that moving away from the BDFL model doesn't actually fix the problem.
2. Believe it or not, many people actually enjoy operating that way. I hold that people who don't have no business telling people who do to cut it out.
[+] [-] jancsika|3 months ago|reply
I definitely agree with you here. Forking, almost by definition, means the "D" in BDFL is a joke. The author pretending that "D" is deadly serious is an incredibly counterproductive and passive-aggressive way to express their concern.
Still, the question remains-- if your project has more than a single developer, have you communicated to your project members who you think has the best knowledge and ability to take over after you're gone? If the only developer is you then the question is moot. Otherwise, it's false modesty to pretend that's none of your business.
[+] [-] dsr_|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tracker1|3 months ago|reply
It usually starts with a Code of Conduct decree.. it ends with people who don't actually write software acting as authoritarian dictators in a software banana republic.
[+] [-] imiric|3 months ago|reply
What I don't like about this idea that the role of open source authors ends with throwing some code over the fence, relinquishing any responsibility for it beyond what their chosen license dictates, is that it completely ignores the community aspect that forms around software, and in large part, contributes to the success of OSS.
Software is written for people. Open source software explicitly invites collaboration, and sharing of knowledge. When someone sees people asking for help, and making feature and improvement suggestions, as "demands" from "entitled" users, they're completely missing this point of community. When they additionally require or suggest that no work will be done unless these entitled users pay up, it's no different from source available, proprietary or commercial software at that point. Of course your work should be compensated, and you shouldn't be expected to work for free. You are free to choose any number of viable business models to ensure that happens. But demanding this from your users is essentially putting the software behind a paywall. It also signals to users that the direction of the project is dictated not by a community of passionate users, but by whoever pays the most, which is a twisted incentive for any software.
My point is: there is more to OSS than the code and the license. Despite what some may claim, there is an unwritten social contract which is created when software is published in the open, whether the author decides to ignore this or not. Some authors do acknowledge this explicitly[1], which is a large factor in making their projects more successful than those from authors who decide to alienate their user base.
[1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/1997/msg00017.html
[+] [-] hiddencost|3 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] alphazard|3 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] purple_turtle|3 months ago|reply
Countries captured by evil people in the worst cases that result in millions of dead people.
Entirely different risks are acceptable.
[+] [-] gwbas1c|3 months ago|reply
Building consensus around which fork to use is going to be a high-friction process; it's going to require much more work than pushing the "fork" button and changing the name in all the assets.
[+] [-] antonvs|3 months ago|reply
Part of me hopes for a Snow Crash future where if you don't like the services provided by The American Mafia (a bit of on-the-nose prophecy from Neal Stephenson), you can switch to Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong instead. Sadly, human rights would likely be a casualty in that overall scenario.
[+] [-] bArray|3 months ago|reply
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
[+] [-] bodhi_mind|3 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hobs|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] YouAreWRONGtoo|3 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] theoldgreybeard|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Jolter|3 months ago|reply
If you are running a one-man show, obviously you’re in the right to do whatever you want. Why would you pick a successor?
[+] [-] 1970-01-01|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ema|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Matumio|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] smsm42|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] szszrk|3 months ago|reply
https://itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/torvalds-say...
[+] [-] zamadatix|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] officeplant|3 months ago|reply
See ya'll in BSD land.
[+] [-] JimDabell|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Joel_Mckay|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|3 months ago|reply
It was difficult.
I could have easily considered it "mine, all mine!". When I first started handing it over to the team that now runs it, I considered being a BDFL, but found out that I couldn't let go, while still in the mix.
So I walked away from it. I still chip in a peanut gallery comment on Slack, every now and then, but otherwise, I'm history.
Best decision I ever made. The new team took it to the next level.
[+] [-] the_biot|3 months ago|reply
Twice now I've started open source projects, got them to varying levels of success, handed over to another maintainer, and watched it turn to shit. Luck of the draw, I think :-(
[+] [-] gassi|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] graemep|3 months ago|reply
That is only meaningful if the project is a legal entity that can sue, otherwise it means "no one owns it" - which is fine if that is what you want.
[+] [-] asim|3 months ago|reply
If anyone is interested https://go-micro.dev
[+] [-] ziml77|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] edent|3 months ago|reply
Click one of the theme buttons at the top to restore normality.
[+] [-] ferguess_k|3 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] andremat|3 months ago|reply
Or gets convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife.
[+] [-] szszrk|3 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] riazrizvi|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] shkkmo|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Nevermark|3 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] m463|3 months ago|reply
that is an interesting point I didn't realize.
[+] [-] smsm42|3 months ago|reply
When you become part of the community, contribute to it, gain share in building the common thing then you might gain some claim to participation in the governance. Or maybe not. And the beauty of OSS is that if you don't like that, you are free to fork it and establish your own community literally at any time. Yes, you'd be facing an uphill struggle to convince people your community is better and they should move over. That's exactly how it should be. If it's indeed better, they will come. If it's just your ego and delusion speaking, they will not.
I don't have enough interest in Mastodon project to have an opinion about what happened there, but presenting it like every project founder owes to turn it over to the Committee of Concerned Citizens is nonsense. And, also, the description of "There are no VCs bringing in their MBA-brained lackeys to extract maximum value while leaving a rotting husk." may yet prove very false, as the project grows. Github was once a young, scrappy and full of inconvential management ideas, now it's literally Microsoft. Let Mastodon be governed by committee for 10 years and we'll see.
[+] [-] smashah|3 months ago|reply
Might sound a bit evil at first but it is the way to bolster the whole xkcd issue.
[+] [-] embedding-shape|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] lapcat|3 months ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] shkkmo|3 months ago|reply
I think you are putting words in their mouth. They could easily have explicitly called to those leaders to step down.
> He stepped down because he wanted to step down, not for some selfless reason like succession planning.
The praise of Rochko isn't for stepping down. The praise is for the way he setup sucession and governance as he did so.
>> Simply, we are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components (including name and copyrights, among other assets) to a new non-profit organization, affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.