Emerging Models for Open Source Contributions

@nayafia for GitHub CodeConf

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1980s-late 1990s: BDFLLate 1990s-mid 2010s: Meritocracy

Mid 2010s-today: Liberal contribution

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Different models solve for different “market” needs

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Market = users + contributors

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1980s-late 1990s: BDFL(Linux)

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Fewer users, fewer contributors

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The BDFL has benefits:

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Centralized leadership and governance

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Centralized roadmap and direction

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But BDFLs are also by definition less democratic.

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And BDFLs made companies nervous.

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Open source needed company buy-in to

succeed.

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Late 1990s-mid 2010s: Meritocracy(Apache)

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Apache flattened the BDFL model, enabling multiple actors

to participate.

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Anyone (with merit) can contribute

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Anyone (with merit) can vote on decisions

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This did wonders for company buy-in

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(And is partially why open source thrives today)

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But there was still friction in the form of one little

clause:

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*with merit

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“When the group felt that the person had "earned" the merit to be part of the development community, they granted direct access to the code repository….

We call this basic principle "meritocracy": literally, government by merit….

The group was happy to have new people coming in and help, they were only filtering the people that they believed committed enough for the task and matched the human attitudes required to work well with others, especially in disagreement.”

Apache Software Foundation

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If you wanted to be part of a meritocracy, you needed

to prove yourself.

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And you prove yourself by spending time on a project.

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This makes sense in theory (only people who’ve

“earned it” get a voice)

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But in practice, it favored those who could “pay [with

time, money] to play”

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Mid 2010s-now: Liberal contribution(Node.js)

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More users, more tech talent than ever before

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Git + GitHub made it easier for anyone to jump in on projects

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49% of ppl on top GitHub projects only contributed once

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More noise from casual contributors

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Under a meritocracy, this was a bad thing

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Casual contributors hadn’t “earned” their voice

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Make them go away!

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But some people looked at casual contributors and saw

an opportunity.

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Instead of tuning out the noise, Node.js decided to harness and

redirect it

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Dropped their CLA requirement

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“...while I believe these constructs to be well-intended...Even at their very best, CLAs...seem like asking people to go to the dentist before their pull request can be considered.”

Bryan Cantrill, Joyent

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Adopted a liberal contribution policy

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“Getting people to contribute is hard,When you distribute ownership people contribute more,

And if anyone does something wrong,Git is good at removing things.”

Mikeal Rogers, Node.js

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And some fun things started to happen:

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Way more contributions*

* oh yeah there was a fork

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Free marketing: contributors

became WOM ambassadors

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Attracted new perspectives, skills, backgrounds

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“People need to be enabled to do good work.When you make it clear and obvious what they can do,

More people will do,And they won’t be people just like you.”

Mikeal Rogers, Node.js

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Awesome!

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Another example of liberal contribution

model: Rust

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Rust went from BDFL (2010) -> core team (2013) -> federated

structure (2015)

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Rust has 1200+ contributors, many of whom make regular contributions

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“To the extent practical, we should include a diverse range of perspectives in both design and decision-making, and

especially include people who are most directly affected by decisions: users.”

Aaron Turon, Rust

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Some patterns for liberal contribution models:

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1/ Floodgates, not bottlenecks

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2/ “Consensus seeking” (discuss major

concerns) rather than “consensus” (pure vote)

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3/ Meet contributors where they are

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4/ Default to yes

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Putting it all together

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Do BDFLs still matter?

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Yes!

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Some centralization is important, especially in early stage

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BFDLs can help incubate a project, set vision, and reduce

noise early on

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As project matures, liberal contribution models can help

with growth

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Project trajectory might look like this:

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Rust, Django, Node started with a BDFL, then transitioned out when

community got big enough

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“Kings, presidents, and BDFLs have their place, and there are models of community that are

aided by having them. But the longer I observe the Django community, the more I realize that

our community doesn’t need them.”

Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Django

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Do BDFLs work as a long-term strategy?

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Clojure uses a BDFL model

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Most Clojure contributions made by a few people

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Clojure is sustainably supported by Cognitect

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BDFL for the long term still requires “getting lucky”

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In the absence of a benefactor, the liberal contribution model is a

pretty good hack to reduce maintainer burden.

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Will it work for everyone?

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Still too early to tell

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Not every project will fit into this model

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Highly dependent upon community and culture

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But liberal contribution models give us a framework for what sustainability could look like

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Questions?

Special thanks to @mikeal for making this talk suck less , as well as @steveklabnik and @puredanger for their valuable perspectives on Rust and Clojure