Staking Your Claim In Open Source

Staking Your Claim in OSS

How To Succeed at Open Source Development

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Evan Phoenix

Rubinius

Engine Yard


4 Laws/Guidelines


1Contributors are a privilege


2“No” is an acceptable answer


3Responsibility is power


4Communicate.A lot.


Be nice.


They’re doing you a favor.


Keep your cool


Case Study 1:The unwanted feature


“I added the ability to avoid flushing the

toilet!”

Contributor:



“What an idiot.”

What you might think:


Deep Breath.Chillax.

Apply the laws.


“Great! But we’re not ready to integrate

that.”

What you say:


•Why they want it.

•Why you don’t.

Talk about:


Forking for all theright reasons


Fork for love,not for hate


“The other devs are assholes.”

Bad Reason:


“I want to experiment with something new.”

Good Reason:


Fork in public


Be the forks friend


Process


Too much process=

contributor pain


Too little process=

project pain


Avoid complicatedsetup/workflow


Premature process is the root of

all frustration


Case Study 2:Controlling the Chaos


“Here are 10 new patches!”

Contributor:



“These patches overlap with stuff we

already wrote,”

Committer:


“And they introduce 5 new

dependencies...”

Committer:


“And they’re in a completely different

style.”

Committer:



Remember the laws.


Use this as a teachable moment


“Thanks for all the hard work, we need to discuss this first.”

Committer:


Discuss

•How to keep patches up to date

• Architecture integration

• Adhering to style guide


Revise Process

•How and when to submit patches

• Document architecture and style guide


Worst Case


“I’m not willing to change for you.”

Contributor:


“Sorry to hear that, have a good life.”

Committer:


Best Case


Common Case


“No problem, I’ll get right on that.”

Contributor:


Enthusiasmis

Transformative


Easy Wins


“How can I help?”


Simple goals,easy tasks


Run this command,fix what is broken.


Rubinius&

RubySpec


90%+ committers


Dirkjan Bussink



commit 5386d9299360b5f1ede14392b97da6dc7163ed00Author: Dirkjan Bussink <[email protected]>Date: Tue Jan 8 20:29:01 2008 +0100

Added Process::POSIX safety checks

kernel/core/process.rb | 87 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------------ 1 files changed, 65 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)


mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

446 commits


Easy wins are agateway drug.


No Core Team


Trust is transformative


Rubinius


One Patch==

Commit Privileges


Responsibility>

Privilege


“There will be chaos.”

Skeptic:


> 10 reverts


Why?


Responsibility.


But...


Conflicts with “No”


Communicate about features


Advocate forks/branches for new

features


As a contributor...


Remember these laws.


Don’t take it personally.


OSS is asocial contract


Contributors wantto succeed


Contributors wantto respect


Give respect,get respect.


We all just wantto be loved.


Technology

Staking Your Claim In Open Source