Community on Stormy Peters

Is AI Killing Open Source Software?

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:06:52 -0700

I love giving talks that explore big questions — the kind that are facing all of us right now and that nobody has fully figured out yet. “Is AI Killing Open Source Software?” is exactly that kind of question. It actually reminds me of a talk I gave really early in my career where I was worried that paying maintainers to work on open source would kill open source. (Spoiler: it didn’t.) I like doing research, having lots of conversations, and then bringing it all to an audience to start a bigger conversation.

Why People Don't Contribute to Your Open Source Project

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 15:28:43 -0700

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 between a contributor and a maintainer is. Mike does a great job of explaining it around minute 4:00. Contributors are people who write code or docs or do triage for your project but who need help from others to get their work included. Maintainers are people that review and merge contributions.
You should users as your source for contributors. The type of contributor that is not a user is not likely someone you want.
Once maintainers are not users, they are not likely to continue contributing. So if you stop using your project, you need to start recruiting someone else to maintain it because it’s unlikely that you’ll continue to maintain it.
Most maintainers are talked into it. Nobody thinks they are qualified at first.

I did wonder what Mike would think about open source software projects where most of the contributors are people paid by a company to work on it. There are projects that are unlikely to be used by individuals, that are primarily supported by paid contributors. Do the same rules apply?

Can your community get too big?

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:51:36 -0700

Open source software communities, like companies and cities, can come in all sizes. They don’t get too big but they can grow faster than their infrastructure and processes.

Take for comparison, the size of companies and cities. Companies come in sizes from one person LLCs to 100,000 employee megaliths. Cities come in sizes from a single person farm toÂ enormous cities with 10’s of millions. Are some big companies too big for some people? Absolutely. Are big companies good at getting certain types of tasks done? Yes. Some people prefer some companies and small towns (maybe not the same set of people) and some people prefer big cities and large companies (again, maybe not the same set of people.)

10 Ways Community Managers Make Sure Projects are Healthy

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 13:50:21 -0700

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.

[caption id=“attachment_2211” align=“aligncenter” width=“705”] Photo from the Library of Congress.[/caption]

While community managers and project leadersÂ often don’t explicitly talk about what’s not working well, you will often find themÂ doing a wide variety of things. They are doing whatever is needed – filling in the gaps – to make their project work well so that new people can join.

3 ways open source software communities could learn from Crossfit

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 15:27:41 -0700

[caption id=“attachment_2207” align=“alignleft” width=“300”] Photo by Anthony Topper.[/caption]

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 gyms around the world, and no matter where I go, everyone in the class comes up to say hi to me and introduce themselves. How awesome is it that I can go to a gym in Frankfurt and have 10 total strangers walk up and introduce themselves and say how happy they are that I’ve joined them? For open source: When you see a new person on your mailing list or IRC channel, stop and say hi. Introduce yourself and tell them they are welcome. You can do it publicly or privately. (If you do it publicly, you might set a good example for others!)
Celebrate daily accomplishments. When we finish a workout at my Crossfit gym, we all post our scores in an app. It gets ordered from best to worst but no matter where you are in the line up, everyone will Â give you a virtual fist bump and most of them will notice when you’ve had a spectacular work out based on your skill level and they’ll congratulate you for it. For open source: Have a place where people can note what they’ve done, maybe point out what they are proud of or what was hard for them, and get kudos from others. Sometimes this happens on source code control systems. Sometimes on IRC. I think most open source software projects could do better at this.
Allow for off topic interactions. To really build community, you have to know each other. Sometimes that’s hard to do if you just focus on the work all the time. There has to be a place to chat, to share goals, ideas and maybe every once in a while, a non-project focused thing. In my Crossfit box, we do this in a Facebook group. Usually, it’s fitness related but sometimes it’s just chatting about life in general. The group gets noisy and I turned off notifications, but I still visit at least once a day to congratulate, commiserate and just visit. It’s a place new members can ask questions, learn more about the community and get to know each other. In open source communities: Find a channel where people can chat. A place where they can ask all their questions, express frustration over a piece of code or complain about the weather. Sometimes it’ll get noisy but usually it will bring people together and, more importantly for the new people, help them “see” the community they are joining. Most open source software projects do this on irc or Slack.

How do you think open source software communities can Encourage New Contributors? What have you learned from the other communities in your life?

Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary

Wed, 14 Sep 2016 08:31:47 -0700

While I don’t agree with everything Sebastian Junger writes in Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, I love the way he manages to articulate some things that I’ve noticed but never been able to describe.

Just last weekend I was camping, and we had this torrential rain storm. People rushing to get their boats off the water were hurrying so much that they lost their boats off the trailers. Rain came down so hard and quick, it broke tent poles and tents literally floated away. People had to dig trenches to get water out of their campsites. And it was fun. Granted, my sleeping spot was completely dry, so I speak from a position of privilege. But everybody getting together to help make sure people were ok, finding ways to keep important things dry, finding dry places for people to sleep and ways to feed everyone, that was fun. There was a real feel of community. Of adventure. Of responsibility.