3 ms·

Why does an open source project, apparently developed by a handful of core developers, have a "board", a "membership committee", "elections" etc? And why do the

by bakugo 7mo ago

Why does an open source project, apparently developed by a handful of core developers, have a "board", a "membership committee", "elections" etc? And why do these include people who do not contribute directly to development at all? Let me guess, these same people also pushed to introduce a "code of conduct" to the project?

tclancy 7mo ago
Because to accomplish anything at scale you need organization. And organizing humans in anything other than forced labor involves respecting them, thus things like codes of conduct. These stories could be about anything and you gamergate veterans will show up grinding one of those axes. Care to throw in wild speculation about whether they use “master” as their main branch name, “slave” as backup database terminology or “allowlist”. You know, any of those things that are keeping America from being great and winning the war.
- jaapz 7mo ago
  There are many open source projects out there that accomplished many things on an insane scale that are driven by single developers Or do you mean scale of organization?
- steve1977 7mo ago
  > Because to accomplish anything at scale you need organization. I guess the question is does the size of the organization match the scale of what they want to accomplish?
- replooda 7mo ago
  OpenBSD, a rather more complex project, seems to be doing fine without a code of conduct — in the sense bakugo employed "code of conduct," not in the generalized sensed you conflated it with in your non sequitur.
  - toyg 7mo ago
    I mean, I like openbsd the product, but the community culture is notoriously terrible and unwelcoming to newbies.
    - replooda 7mo ago
      I find it just the opposite. I can think of few communities nearly as patient or welcoming to anyone who's earnest and willing to put in the work to learn; true, there's no coddling or hand-holding, and, indeed, it tends to be very direct in calling out foolishness or laziness, and can reach epic proportions when it comes to dishonesty or entitlement, but nothing which can't be processed by emotional maturity, nor the gratuitous pedanticism-fueled browbeating often seen in some I-use-foo-btw open-source communities despite their shiny CoCs.
      - nobodyandproud 7mo ago
        > I find it just the opposite. I can think of few communities nearly as patient or welcoming to anyone who's earnest and willing to put in the work to learn; true, there's no coddling or hand-holding, and, indeed, it tends to be very direct in calling out foolishness or laziness, That’s nearly the exact opposite of welcoming newbies. To be perfectly honest, that’s fine: OpenBSD demands a steep learning curve and that you know what you’re doing.
        replooda 7mo ago
        What is? No coddling? Little tolerance toward laziness? Zero toward entitlement? That's closer to the opposite of being patronizing, I would say. They point to documentation in response to the kind of request I've seen closed with RTFMs elsewhere. They'll expect one to read it, and try one's hand at whatever one is trying to accomplish — and they'll feel slighted by a refusal, given how much work they put into it. And yet, they go to great, unexpected (given the fame) lengths to help someone actually making the effort; they don't try to put anyone down in order to feel bigger than they are, but they don't sugar coat things to appear more likable either. In short, no, knowing what one is doing isn't a prerequisite; it's more about not foisting onto others the responsibility for the effort required to move from where one is to where one wants to be — whether in knowledge, maturity or tools.
- psychoslave 7mo ago
  Organisation can take many form. Hierarchy and bureaucracy are two possible applicable categories in that domain.
- bakugo 7mo ago
  TIL open source projects simply didn't work before a certain (often big tech associated) crowd of non-contributors started forcing bureaucracy and codes of conduct down everyone's throats less than a decade ago.
- rmunn 7mo ago
  > Because to accomplish anything at scale you need organization. And organizing humans in anything other than forced labor involves respecting them, thus things like codes of conduct. This part of your comment was worthwhile. You should have stopped there, before starting to grind an unrelated political axe. Let's at least try to follow the "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity." guideline, eh?
mikkupikku 7mo ago
From the article: "These days some at TDF seem to emphasize equality instead." I'm not sure exactly what is meant by that. My guess, having some experience with board-sitter parasites, is they're just appealing to empty principles to create the illusion of being important to the organization, because they're unable or unwilling to make more tangible and substantial contributions. When somebody can't justify their role with the quality of their work, they look for other justifications instead. Ideological justifications work best because they aren't provable and anybody who questions the value of the supposed ideological contributions can simply be dismissed as being ideologically opposed (see: the sibling comment accusing you of ideological alignment with gamergate, even though libreoffice has nothing to do with gaming.) For instance, suppose I am a useless parasite who decides to embed myself into the local school board; I have nothing of real value to contribute to such an organization, but maybe I want the role for the clout. Instead of doing something real, I could instead say that my role on the board is to advance the cause of equality. Anybody who says I'm useless can be construed as opposing equality. Anybody who tried to measure the actual equality in the org before and after my arrival can be dismissed because measuring equality is hard to do objectively. (I learned most of this from a few relatives of mine, who are such board-seeking parasites. By the way, parasite board sitters can use opposition to "woke" in the way they use championing the cause of equality; both cynical empty words used to distract people from the lack of real, substantial and demonstrable contributions. Anybody who complains can be accused of being woke. It works exactly the same regardless of what flavor of disguise the parasite chooses.)
- steve1977 7mo ago
  These parasitic patterns are also visible in lower management levels, not only boards (not disputing your point, just adding to it).
  - mikkupikku 7mo ago
    Yes absolutely.
- busterarm 7mo ago
  That line stuck out to me at first but it's clear from the context thus far: Up until the 2024 board election, the organization ran on meritocracy in the sense that those who contributed the most had the most say. Equality means here that the organization shifted to everyone present having an equal voice. It was no longer proportional to the work contributed.
greenavocado 7mo ago
tl;dr Germans and coordination while mitigating takeover risk (ironically) StarOffice was a German office suite bought by Sun Microsystems in 1999. Sun open-sourced it in 2000 as OpenOffice.org, which became the major free alternative to Microsoft Office through the 2000s. Sun kept significant control. They owned the trademark, required copyright assignment for contributions, and steered the project's direction. Many community contributors were uneasy with this arrangement but tolerated it because Sun was broadly seen as a good-faith actor. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010. Oracle had a reputation for being far more aggressive about monetizing and controlling its acquisitions (the Java/Google lawsuit being another example). The OpenOffice.org community had already been frustrated by years of slow decision-making and corporate gatekeeping, and Oracle's arrival made the situation feel untenable. A group of prominent community members and corporate contributors (including people from Red Hat, Novell/SUSE, Canonical, and Google) announced The Document Foundation in Sep 2010 and forked the codebase as LibreOffice. Oracle eventually donated the OpenOffice.org code to Apache but LibreOffice quickly became the version that mattered. The reason they had to fork was that a single entity (first Sun, then Oracle) had unchecked power over the project. The Document Foundation was explicitly designed to prevent that. If there's no formal structure, whoever controls the servers, the domain name, the trademark, or the build infrastructure effectively controls the project. A foundation with bylaws, elected leadership, and distributed authority makes it much harder for any single company or individual to take the project hostage. LibreOffice receives donations, employs some staff, holds trademarks, pays for infrastructure, and sponsors events. Under German law (TDF is registered in Berlin), you need a proper legal entity with accountable governance to do this. You can't just have "some developers" holding a bank account and a trademark informally. The foundation was officially incorporated on February 17, 2012.

by bakugo 7mo ago

tclancy 7mo ago

Because to accomplish anything at scale you need organization. And organizing humans in anything other than forced labor involves respecting them, thus things like codes of conduct. These stories could be about anything and you gamergate veterans will show up grinding one of those axes. Care to throw in wild speculation about whether they use “master” as their main branch name, “slave” as backup database terminology or “allowlist”. You know, any of those things that are keeping America from being great and winning the war.

jaapz 7mo ago
There are many open source projects out there that accomplished many things on an insane scale that are driven by single developers Or do you mean scale of organization?
steve1977 7mo ago
> Because to accomplish anything at scale you need organization. I guess the question is does the size of the organization match the scale of what they want to accomplish?
replooda 7mo ago
OpenBSD, a rather more complex project, seems to be doing fine without a code of conduct — in the sense bakugo employed "code of conduct," not in the generalized sensed you conflated it with in your non sequitur.
- toyg 7mo ago
  I mean, I like openbsd the product, but the community culture is notoriously terrible and unwelcoming to newbies.
  - replooda 7mo ago
    I find it just the opposite. I can think of few communities nearly as patient or welcoming to anyone who's earnest and willing to put in the work to learn; true, there's no coddling or hand-holding, and, indeed, it tends to be very direct in calling out foolishness or laziness, and can reach epic proportions when it comes to dishonesty or entitlement, but nothing which can't be processed by emotional maturity, nor the gratuitous pedanticism-fueled browbeating often seen in some I-use-foo-btw open-source communities despite their shiny CoCs.
    - nobodyandproud 7mo ago
      > I find it just the opposite. I can think of few communities nearly as patient or welcoming to anyone who's earnest and willing to put in the work to learn; true, there's no coddling or hand-holding, and, indeed, it tends to be very direct in calling out foolishness or laziness, That’s nearly the exact opposite of welcoming newbies. To be perfectly honest, that’s fine: OpenBSD demands a steep learning curve and that you know what you’re doing.
      - replooda 7mo ago
        What is? No coddling? Little tolerance toward laziness? Zero toward entitlement? That's closer to the opposite of being patronizing, I would say. They point to documentation in response to the kind of request I've seen closed with RTFMs elsewhere. They'll expect one to read it, and try one's hand at whatever one is trying to accomplish — and they'll feel slighted by a refusal, given how much work they put into it. And yet, they go to great, unexpected (given the fame) lengths to help someone actually making the effort; they don't try to put anyone down in order to feel bigger than they are, but they don't sugar coat things to appear more likable either. In short, no, knowing what one is doing isn't a prerequisite; it's more about not foisting onto others the responsibility for the effort required to move from where one is to where one wants to be — whether in knowledge, maturity or tools.
psychoslave 7mo ago
Organisation can take many form. Hierarchy and bureaucracy are two possible applicable categories in that domain.
bakugo 7mo ago
TIL open source projects simply didn't work before a certain (often big tech associated) crowd of non-contributors started forcing bureaucracy and codes of conduct down everyone's throats less than a decade ago.
rmunn 7mo ago
> Because to accomplish anything at scale you need organization. And organizing humans in anything other than forced labor involves respecting them, thus things like codes of conduct. This part of your comment was worthwhile. You should have stopped there, before starting to grind an unrelated political axe. Let's at least try to follow the "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity." guideline, eh?

mikkupikku 7mo ago

From the article: "These days some at TDF seem to emphasize equality instead." I'm not sure exactly what is meant by that. My guess, having some experience with board-sitter parasites, is they're just appealing to empty principles to create the illusion of being important to the organization, because they're unable or unwilling to make more tangible and substantial contributions. When somebody can't justify their role with the quality of their work, they look for other justifications instead. Ideological justifications work best because they aren't provable and anybody who questions the value of the supposed ideological contributions can simply be dismissed as being ideologically opposed (see: the sibling comment accusing you of ideological alignment with gamergate, even though libreoffice has nothing to do with gaming.) For instance, suppose I am a useless parasite who decides to embed myself into the local school board; I have nothing of real value to contribute to such an organization, but maybe I want the role for the clout. Instead of doing something real, I could instead say that my role on the board is to advance the cause of equality. Anybody who says I'm useless can be construed as opposing equality. Anybody who tried to measure the actual equality in the org before and after my arrival can be dismissed because measuring equality is hard to do objectively. (I learned most of this from a few relatives of mine, who are such board-seeking parasites. By the way, parasite board sitters can use opposition to "woke" in the way they use championing the cause of equality; both cynical empty words used to distract people from the lack of real, substantial and demonstrable contributions. Anybody who complains can be accused of being woke. It works exactly the same regardless of what flavor of disguise the parasite chooses.)

steve1977 7mo ago
These parasitic patterns are also visible in lower management levels, not only boards (not disputing your point, just adding to it).
- mikkupikku 7mo ago
  Yes absolutely.
busterarm 7mo ago
That line stuck out to me at first but it's clear from the context thus far: Up until the 2024 board election, the organization ran on meritocracy in the sense that those who contributed the most had the most say. Equality means here that the organization shifted to everyone present having an equal voice. It was no longer proportional to the work contributed.

greenavocado 7mo ago

tl;dr Germans and coordination while mitigating takeover risk (ironically) StarOffice was a German office suite bought by Sun Microsystems in 1999. Sun open-sourced it in 2000 as OpenOffice.org, which became the major free alternative to Microsoft Office through the 2000s. Sun kept significant control. They owned the trademark, required copyright assignment for contributions, and steered the project's direction. Many community contributors were uneasy with this arrangement but tolerated it because Sun was broadly seen as a good-faith actor. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010. Oracle had a reputation for being far more aggressive about monetizing and controlling its acquisitions (the Java/Google lawsuit being another example). The OpenOffice.org community had already been frustrated by years of slow decision-making and corporate gatekeeping, and Oracle's arrival made the situation feel untenable. A group of prominent community members and corporate contributors (including people from Red Hat, Novell/SUSE, Canonical, and Google) announced The Document Foundation in Sep 2010 and forked the codebase as LibreOffice. Oracle eventually donated the OpenOffice.org code to Apache but LibreOffice quickly became the version that mattered. The reason they had to fork was that a single entity (first Sun, then Oracle) had unchecked power over the project. The Document Foundation was explicitly designed to prevent that. If there's no formal structure, whoever controls the servers, the domain name, the trademark, or the build infrastructure effectively controls the project. A foundation with bylaws, elected leadership, and distributed authority makes it much harder for any single company or individual to take the project hostage. LibreOffice receives donations, employs some staff, holds trademarks, pays for infrastructure, and sponsors events. Under German law (TDF is registered in Berlin), you need a proper legal entity with accountable governance to do this. You can't just have "some developers" holding a bank account and a trademark informally. The foundation was officially incorporated on February 17, 2012.