[beyond-licensing] My shortlist of issues

[Carol Willing]

Hi Danese,

These are excellent points especially 1, 2a, 2b, and 4. Thanks for 
sharing them.

Carol


On 20 Apr 2016, at 10:56, Danese Cooper wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Since I'll be in London working on InnerSource on the 21st, I thought 
> I'd spent a few minutes listing the beyond licensing issues that worry 
> me and that prompted me to organize the meeting. I'm also sending my 
> team member Duane O'Brien <duobrien at paypal.com>, who attended the 
> Summit last month (please send him meeting details)
>
> 1. Transparency isn't negotiable. That means board meetings must have 
> a public component. Board minutes must be published. Decisions (both 
> technical and political) must be publicly documented, and preferably 
> backed by consensus. Although it takes time, public discussion must 
> precede or be a component of major decisions. Donors must be 
> disclosed. What's more, discussions must be publicly archived so 
> decisions can be understood years after they are taken.
>
> 2. Corporations aren't people. I started saying "Open Source is 
> People" a few years ago, as a meme to remind folks that reputation 
> (and merit for good works) should only be achieveable by individual 
> people in FOSS. Good corporate involvement boils down to being a good 
> place for FOSS people to work (because of enlightened policies). Use 
> of corporate commit-bits that hide individual contributors isn't open 
> source.
>
> 2. Open Source people aren't fungibile. For years I've been watching 
> corporations assign and later un-assign large numbers of resources to 
> specific FOSS projects like pieces on a chessboard, and I've yet to 
> see this practice make a project stronger. FOSS is best when it's 
> about passion. Assigned resources are often more preoccupied about 
> serving their corporate masters than about the project at hand. And 
> even if they do manage to form project attachments, the fact that they 
> may be pulled from the project at any time means their involvement is 
> always conditional.
>
> 3. Patronage is key. When I work for a company, they gain my 
> reputation. The cost of that is supporting my pro bono work (I'm 
> currently serving on 3 boards). Many open source people volunteer on 
> boards or in other capacities as they work their way into the 
> meritocracy. Companies need to support this; it's fundamental to open 
> source.
>
> 4. Pay-to-Play can be dangerous, and a commitment to mitigate those 
> dangers is necessary. 100% Pay-to-play boards (or projects who reject 
> worthy code contributions from non-paying entities) are not good for 
> open source. The reason boards must include community elected voting 
> members is that corporate representation isn't invested in the project 
> in the same way. Rejection of contributions for any reason other than 
> technical merit isn't open source. Another version of this is when a 
> company prioritizes their contributions over community ones, even at 
> the code review point. All work deserves the same prompt review, and 
> the queue and review process should be visible.
>
> 5. Technology must come first. In my experience, open source 
> strategies promoted by corporations are rarely about the best 
> technology winning, and that is often evident in the interface to the 
> community. Projects that focus on technology before strategy are 
> generally appealing to more contributors (and the playing field is 
> generally more level in those projects).
>
> There are probably more, but this is a pretty good start of what's 
> bothering me today :-).
>
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Carol Willing
Research Software Engineer, Project Jupyter @ Cal Poly
Director, Python Software Foundation