Maintaining Darcs

Maintaining Darcs

How?

• version control
• mailing lists
• IRC

Automation

Google

Summer

of Code

Hackathons

Document

Obsessively

Conspicous

Use of Archives

Avoid Pointless

Discussions...

Keep Discussions Public

Provide

Narrative

Think

Multi-purpose

Systematic

Review

'Treat Every User as a Potential Volunteer" - Karl Fogel

Delegate

Responsibilities

Problems

Pay attention

Questions?

Why?

Who?

When?

What?

solves my problem...

the RIGHT way

work time

enthusiasts

learning

fun

free time

software

(eg 20%)

feeling useful

Disagreements

Time

Distraction

Finding Volunteers

People

Can't do everything

Neutral summaries

• Goals?
• Attitudes?

The Day Job Problem

Opportunity Cost

Making progress after a disagreement happens

Infrastructure

Never trust a man to do a machine's job

Think long-term

Software Freedom

Conservancy

You're not alone!

Money

Buying Time

Anchoring

The more you ask for,

the more people give

(within reason)

easier said than done

Lead by example

Communication

The Invisible

"Politics is simply what happens when people disagree, and successful projects are those that evolve political mechanisms for managing disagreement constructively."

Pathological Behaviour

Virtuous Cycles

Stay Frank

[O]ne of the worst things a project can do is attract users before the software is ready for them. A reputation for instability or bugginess is very hard to shake, once acquired.

- Karl Fogel, Producing Open Source Software

Pay attention to what people are interested in

It never hurts to ask...

but be sure to follow up!

Enable People

Habits

Users

Make mistakes

"You don't need to be the ace, just need to know how to help those who are aces achieve" - Ernest Koe

Volunteers

"I'm doing this for fun"

"As a rule, it's not a good idea to praise people for doing what they usually do, or for actions that are a normal and expected part of participating in the group."

If you were to do that, it would be hard to know when to stop: should you praise everyone for doing the usual things? After all, if you leave some people out, they'll wonder why. It's much better to express praise and gratitude sparingly, in response to unusual or unexpected efforts, with the intention of encouraging more such efforts. When a participant seems to have moved permanently into a state of higher productivity, adjust your praise threshold for that person accordingly. Repeated praise for normal behavior gradually becomes meaningless anyway. Instead, that person should sense that her high level of productivity is now considered normal and natural, and only work that goes beyond that should be specially noticed.