Governance in FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) is not some unsolvable mystery, BTW.

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

Governance in FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) is not some unsolvable mystery, BTW. My late friend Pieter Hintjens actually wrote a book on how to get it right. It centers on the Community Code Construction Contract (C4) approach that removes ego from the process, if implemented right, and welcomes new contributors (even if just fly-by) through optimistic merging. ZeroMQ is quite happy and thriving with that approach. Chapter 4 of Social Architecture https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/social-architecture/content/chapter4.html 1/5

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

Some lessons he has learned over the years:

- Successful FOSS projects WILL attract ego driven men (always men) that try to become the project leader.
- FOSS developers WILL initially welcome these types as they seem to solve all problems wrt public presentation and other social things the developers struggle with.
- You CAN recognise the evil traits of these folks early

2/5

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

- You CAN have rules to simply kick them out. No need to go into their preferred mode of pigeon chess [1] or bike shedding [2].
- You MUST have these rules and be prepared to enforce them.

Read his book. I have been saying this for many years. It's never too late to start. 3/5

[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pigeon%20chess
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

(To anyone that will try to smear Pieter for some of the controversies he has caused I say: He died. He was not a perfect person. No one is. People fail. But his books do share a lot of food for thought. Work with his ideas and concepts by criticising them based on facts. That is totally fine with me. But decouple his ideas and concepts from your personal dislike of him as a person and discuss the ideas and concepts on the merits instead of simply dismissing them, deal?) 4/5

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

Lessons I have learned over the years (and I wish my younger self would have known earlier):

- Ideas are bigger than people
- Set your ideas free to find new friends by keeping your ego out and the ideas become projects and reality
- People fail. All of them. No one is perfect. Doesn't make their best ideas A Bad Thing
- Take ideas and concepts as input. Not as personal attack or a reason to focus on whatever else a person might have done wrong

And finally: be patient. It's a superpower. 5/5

Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

I have now created https://c4process.wildeboer.net to share and open the discussion on the #C4process. Links to the repositories are in the footer of that page. I hope to add new contributors ASAP, as this should be a community of practice and not me preaching to the choir I am not relevant. Ideas and solutions are