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How exactly are the groups of people working on various parts of the official ecosystem supposed to coordinate their efforts? The only alternative I've seen is

How exactly are the groups of people working on various parts of the official ecosystem supposed to coordinate their efforts? The only alternative I've seen is a benevolent dictator, which seems significantly worse for a number of reasons. Edit: it looks like you've removed the part about Teams/Committees.

throwawaygh 5y ago
yea, sorry, I tend to over-use the "edit" button and treat "submit" as "save draft". > How exactly are the groups of people working on various parts of the official ecosystem supposed to coordinate their efforts? The only alternative I've seen is a benevolent dictator, which seems significantly worse for a number of reasons. Yeah, I guess I'm just getting old. The idea of an open source project with enough people to form an entire committee of moderators also feels weird, but is apparently fairly normal these days.
- couchand 5y ago
  It's our industry that's getting old. You used to be able to start a big project like a compiler or a browser and have some hope of producing a functional result "organically" (for lack of a better word). But we've reached the point where we're no longer just scrabbling together hovels with scrap wood, we're trying to build the Pyramids or the Hoover Dam now. A few anonymous internet denizens are not going to be able to accomplish that.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    Sure. And I dislike corporate BS but happily work in corporations as long as I can mostly get away with nothing but the most surface-level acknowledgment that the shit does indeed smell like roses. (And like 90+% of what HR enforces is mostly good anyways; pretending it's not a facade is often a small price to pay for the level of nonsense I'm shielded from) Again, I'm not even necessarily saying things should be different or proposing a better alternative. Just expressing a feeling. If could change one thing in the corporate world, it wouldn't be to change how corporations work. Simply disabusing people of fantasies about how corporations work would be far better than any incremental improvement. I guess I feel the same way about OSS codes of conduct. They're facade. To the extent that they're enforced, it's because the wizard behind the CoC curtain allows this to the case. Should anything be changed? IDK, but everyone understanding this would probably be preferable to any incremental change to project governance. If that makes sense.
    - klabb3 5y ago
      Late to the party, but I strongly agree with your comments in this thread, based on similar experience in a corporate environment. The weird paradox in this governance model is why we see so much fluff around the actual autocracy that - at the end of the day - is what matters. Why pay for HR, townhall events etc, etc, if in the end it doesn't matter? I think the obvious reason is - ironically - making accountability optional, through selective enforcement. If you have an arbitrary and emotionally based strict set of rules, you can freely accuse practically anyone for breaking it, since the owners have last say anyway. As such, you can say "sorry, we had to let Tim go, because he violated policy" - and abracadabra, nobody is personally accountable. It's the woke equivalent of a firing squad. In fact, if a process is not universal, but selective, it is just a power tool. And what's more attractive than a power tool? Simply throw process on people you dislike, and let the people you like through. That's not to say there's some calculated malicious intent behind this. There are tons of people who genuinely think these systems are good and serve them, or people less privileged than them.
DoneWithAllThat 5y ago
As a matter of fact no, benevolent dictator is not significantly worse. In fact historical evidence when it comes to OSS projects points to the benevolent dictator model being the most effective. It may not satisfy social justice activists pretending to be competent programmers demanding a seat at a table that they never earned, but most successful projects are not ruled by committee until they reach a significant level of maturation, and it’s arguable their development slows down quite a bit at that point.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > benevolent dictator is not significantly worse I think your normative justification for project dictatorship misses the more important point: there's probably a dictatorship either way. In these cases, the main advantage of the overt dictatorship model over the layer of indirection dictatorship model is that you at least know who's really in charge. In some odd sense, the mod team that just resigned is in agreement: their resignation lays vare exactly who's in charge.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    The benevolent dictator might have too much sway in some project, although in most cases it literary is his project. Problem with enforcing compliance of behavior is that this becomes the raison d'être. This will always fail in any configuration at some point. We are talking about people and if their rulings don't find acceptance, they will interpret it as a personal attack. I am not above that, you are not above that and nobody really is. I have no info about this case, but it fits the profile. I only take active part in smaller OSS projects and corporate rules in general do suck the fun out of it. Maybe Rust is beyond that, but I would vastly prefer the eccentric dictator to corporate HR, because the latter is nothing else. The dictator or developer has other ambitions aside from behavior enforcement, so it is easier to cooperate. And if you do not like the dictator, you might be able to fork the project and make it conform to your personal views to the same (overbearing) degree. Win-win.
- couchand 5y ago
  Far too many promising open source projects have disappeared because the benevolent dictator lost interest and disappeared without leaving an empowered community. Far too many promising open source projects withered and died because the not-actually-benevolent dictator turned off every would-be contributor. In the scope of things, these are much more common that the few examples of projects that succeeded in spite of low bus factor and toxicity.

throwawaygh 5y ago

yea, sorry, I tend to over-use the "edit" button and treat "submit" as "save draft". > How exactly are the groups of people working on various parts of the official ecosystem supposed to coordinate their efforts? The only alternative I've seen is a benevolent dictator, which seems significantly worse for a number of reasons. Yeah, I guess I'm just getting old. The idea of an open source project with enough people to form an entire committee of moderators also feels weird, but is apparently fairly normal these days.

couchand 5y ago
It's our industry that's getting old. You used to be able to start a big project like a compiler or a browser and have some hope of producing a functional result "organically" (for lack of a better word). But we've reached the point where we're no longer just scrabbling together hovels with scrap wood, we're trying to build the Pyramids or the Hoover Dam now. A few anonymous internet denizens are not going to be able to accomplish that.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Sure. And I dislike corporate BS but happily work in corporations as long as I can mostly get away with nothing but the most surface-level acknowledgment that the shit does indeed smell like roses. (And like 90+% of what HR enforces is mostly good anyways; pretending it's not a facade is often a small price to pay for the level of nonsense I'm shielded from) Again, I'm not even necessarily saying things should be different or proposing a better alternative. Just expressing a feeling. If could change one thing in the corporate world, it wouldn't be to change how corporations work. Simply disabusing people of fantasies about how corporations work would be far better than any incremental improvement. I guess I feel the same way about OSS codes of conduct. They're facade. To the extent that they're enforced, it's because the wizard behind the CoC curtain allows this to the case. Should anything be changed? IDK, but everyone understanding this would probably be preferable to any incremental change to project governance. If that makes sense.
  - klabb3 5y ago
    Late to the party, but I strongly agree with your comments in this thread, based on similar experience in a corporate environment. The weird paradox in this governance model is why we see so much fluff around the actual autocracy that - at the end of the day - is what matters. Why pay for HR, townhall events etc, etc, if in the end it doesn't matter? I think the obvious reason is - ironically - making accountability optional, through selective enforcement. If you have an arbitrary and emotionally based strict set of rules, you can freely accuse practically anyone for breaking it, since the owners have last say anyway. As such, you can say "sorry, we had to let Tim go, because he violated policy" - and abracadabra, nobody is personally accountable. It's the woke equivalent of a firing squad. In fact, if a process is not universal, but selective, it is just a power tool. And what's more attractive than a power tool? Simply throw process on people you dislike, and let the people you like through. That's not to say there's some calculated malicious intent behind this. There are tons of people who genuinely think these systems are good and serve them, or people less privileged than them.

DoneWithAllThat 5y ago

As a matter of fact no, benevolent dictator is not significantly worse. In fact historical evidence when it comes to OSS projects points to the benevolent dictator model being the most effective. It may not satisfy social justice activists pretending to be competent programmers demanding a seat at a table that they never earned, but most successful projects are not ruled by committee until they reach a significant level of maturation, and it’s arguable their development slows down quite a bit at that point.

throwawaygh 5y ago
> benevolent dictator is not significantly worse I think your normative justification for project dictatorship misses the more important point: there's probably a dictatorship either way. In these cases, the main advantage of the overt dictatorship model over the layer of indirection dictatorship model is that you at least know who's really in charge. In some odd sense, the mod team that just resigned is in agreement: their resignation lays vare exactly who's in charge.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  The benevolent dictator might have too much sway in some project, although in most cases it literary is his project. Problem with enforcing compliance of behavior is that this becomes the raison d'être. This will always fail in any configuration at some point. We are talking about people and if their rulings don't find acceptance, they will interpret it as a personal attack. I am not above that, you are not above that and nobody really is. I have no info about this case, but it fits the profile. I only take active part in smaller OSS projects and corporate rules in general do suck the fun out of it. Maybe Rust is beyond that, but I would vastly prefer the eccentric dictator to corporate HR, because the latter is nothing else. The dictator or developer has other ambitions aside from behavior enforcement, so it is easier to cooperate. And if you do not like the dictator, you might be able to fork the project and make it conform to your personal views to the same (overbearing) degree. Win-win.
couchand 5y ago
Far too many promising open source projects have disappeared because the benevolent dictator lost interest and disappeared without leaving an empowered community. Far too many promising open source projects withered and died because the not-actually-benevolent dictator turned off every would-be contributor. In the scope of things, these are much more common that the few examples of projects that succeeded in spite of low bus factor and toxicity.