Open Source Governance for Software Engineers
A presentation at Open Source Summit in in Vienna, Austria by Tobie Langel
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Legal system Trademark Law BDFL GOVERNANCE.md Core Team CONTRIBUTING.md CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md Contributors
Legal system Legislation Foundation Bylaws Bylaws Board Executive Director Charter Project leadership GOVERNANCE.md OWNERS.YML GOVERNANCE.md WG Charter CoC Team Charter Maintainers Code owners Reviewers Working groups CoC Team CONTRIBUTING.md CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md Contributors
Foundation Foundation Project Charter Foundation Project (e.g. CNCF!) Foundation Project Board TOC Charter Technical Oversight Committee Project Charters CoC Team Charter Project TSCs CoC Team Projects General Manager
← Others telling you what to do Willingness to collaborate → Others minding their own business
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main();
policy charter process
policy charter process
policy process
policy process
policies Guidelines processes
The goal of this presentation is twofold:
Firstly, we want to demystify open source project governance. Do you freeze when you hear the term governance? Do you blindly copy and paste the governance of other projects hoping it works for your project too? Do you struggle to keep governance up to date or aligned with what’s actually going on in the project?
You’re not alone.
Secondly, we want to provide a simple, practical, and proven approach to writing governance that’s directly inspired from coding best practices. The very same concepts that are used when writing code (e.g. Don’t Repeat Yourself, Keep It Simple, or Separation of Concerns) have direct application when authoring governance documents and create the same kind of positive outcomes: governance that is simple to understand, flexible, and and easy to maintain. You’ll never come back from thinking about governance as code.
By the time you leave this presentation, you’ll have an entirely new perspective on governance and will feel empowered by your ability to leverage your existing software engineering skills in this new domain.
