Several happenings over the weekend are case studies in how open source software communities work. The Dev Behind a Hugely Popular GNOME Extension Just Quit While the news is about a developer quitting because it’s not “fun”. I think the message – or messages – are deeper than that. Isn’t it awesome that are free […]
How Open Source Communities Work Read More »
I just listened to Mike McQuaid‘s FOSDEM talk, Why People Don’t Contribute to Your Open Source Project. Â If you are interested in communities and how they grow, I highly recommend you take a half hour and watch it. Some of the things I got from the talk: I get asked a lot what the difference
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I was watching Guardians of the Galaxy, Part 2 and I realized that while baby Groot was making me laugh, it was Rocket that I understood. Rocket is an interpreter. He might even be a community manager. In Guardians of the Galaxy, there’ a character called Groot. And the only thing he ever says is
How “I am Groot” defines a community manager’s role Read More »
Community managers must make sure their projects are healthy. Before they can help foster and grow a community, they have to make sure it’s a well functioning, welcoming place. While community managers and project leaders often don’t explicitly talk about what’s not working well, you will often find them doing a wide variety of things. They are
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This week I am participating in the opensource.com community blogging challenge: Encouraging New Contributors! Crossfit gyms are great at creating community and welcoming new members. Here are 3 things that Crossfit boxes do that open source software communities could also do to encourage new contributors: Say hi to the new person. I drop in at
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A decade ago, I researched and gave a talk called Would you do it again for free? If you worked on an open source software project for free, and a company started paying you to work on it, if they stopped paying you, would you stop working on it? At the time it was a
8 ways companies have influenced open source software Read More »
Our digital infrastructure is all open source. It’s built and maintained by a relatively small community of open source software developers. Right now the open source software work is funded by a variety of methods: volunteer time, nonprofit corporations and donations of time and money by a few corporations. Is that sustainable? Or should we
Our World Depends on Unseen Labor: Open Source Software Read More »
Developer relations is the combination of activities, programs and tactics to get developers using or developing for your organization’s product or ecosystem. The goal of a good developer relations team is often to make your organization’s product or ecosystem the first choice for developers. (You may be doing this just to sell more of your
What’s in a good developer relations plan? Read More »
I was writing a post about why you must work in the open to get more volunteers and I ended up writing this post about why I don’t work in the open. The Good So I think there are some very valid reasons for not working in the open: Personal. Not all projects are open
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of why I don’t always work in the open Read More »
Traditionally, open source software has relied primarily on asynchronous communication. While there are probably quite a few synchronous conversations on irc, most project discussions and decisions will happen on asynchronous channels like mailing lists, bug tracking tools and blogs. I think there’s another reason for this. Synchronous communication is difficult for an open source project. For