and slaps an open source license on it, hoping it’ll be useful to someone else. • Clearly better than keeping it closed source... • Often abandoned due to lack of interest, burnout, or change of focus. • Motivations are unclear.
• Major decisions are voted for on GitHub. • Interviews with journalists are live-streamed. • All formal discussions with other groups are publicly documented and shared.
can get involved by following a documented process. • Low risk. High bus-factor. • See also: Python, Django, Firefox, jQuery... (projects that aim to change the world)
packages. • Downloaded over 3,300,000 times. • Comprised of contributions by 100+ developers. • Considered by many to be an example of great open source.
• Few people involved allows for quick, precise iteration. • Those opinions could be diluted if more people were involved with the decision making process. • Tragedy of the commons.
as respectful as possible. • They have likely donated a signi cant amount of time and energy into their project. • They don’t owe you a moment of their time.
being immensely thankful to all contributors. • They are the lifeblood of your project. • Ignore non-constructive feedback. • Some people just take things too seriously.
chose. Contributors sometimes take what you say very personally. • Take the opportunity to educate the user. • This could be their rst ever interaction with an open source project. • A little bit of kindness goes a long way.
the trifecta of purpose, mastery and autonomy. By recognizing the power of these factors, we can keep ourselves motivated and continue to increase our impact.
request comes into the repo, these guys usually triage it. • This saves an immense amount of time. • I can focus my time on larger issues, while they help contributors make the best of their time and e orts.
cult. • People ask for crazy features. They send seemingly practical pull requests. They are trying to help. • If you say yes often, your project will be ruined. Tragedy of the Commons.