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Handling disagreements

Mitchell Baker has recently been posting an interesting series of articles on a variety of topics related to governance of open source projects; there are almost too many to list, but see in particular her thoughts on the "community" and decision-making, and leadership vs. coordination. Chris Messina followed up with some thoughts and questions about the future of open leadership, and in particular made the point that

Without strong leadership, you're liable to end up with a neverending succession of teapot tempests without accomplishing anything productive.

That particular comment struck a chord with me, and prompted me to retrieve from my files and prepare for publication some past thoughts of mine on the particular topic of handling disagreements in open collaborative projects.

2006-06-23

Comments

John wrote at 2006-06-23 11:51:

Jesus, you sound like almost as bad as an MBA. Ever since it became a corporation Mozilla has been focussing on irrelevancies (guidelines for using some tiny icon?! WTF). Instead of fostering community you are destroying it. Think about the goodwill at the time of the NYT ad, and see how lame the Firefox Flicks campaign has been in comparison.
It is time for the coders and users to take control again. Instead of long-winded pointless diatribes about HOW to resolve disputes, how about just getting on with it? It is possible in a meritocracy - look at the kernel.
Mozilla, Ditch the corporation and return to open source.

Frank Hecker wrote at 2006-06-23 12:31:

John, we do intend to get on with it, as will become apparent in the coming weeks as we try to revive and revise the various mechanisms we've traditionally had in the Mozilla project to provide meritocracy-based governance. (As I noted in my post, this article was written a while ago and I took advantage of this opportunity to publish it. So it's not like stuff's been held up on my writing it.)
However the problem is that it's not just a matter of the "coders and users [taking] control". We've got organizations like the Corporation and Foundation established and operating, and they have legal and other obligations they're concerned with (e.g., protecting the various Mozilla-related trademarks). The simple fact is that the Mozilla project as it exists now and will exists in the future -- and really as it's existed for quite a while -- has to take into account the fact that there are lots of key project contributors who are not coders, and lots of issues to deal with that go beyond the code itself.
(The analogy with the Linux kernel is IMO misleading, since the Linux kernel is not an end user product--it's just a infrastructure component that gets integrated with lots of components to form a complete Linux-based distro that then gets marketed by companies like Red Hat. In that sense we have to worry about some of the same issues that a Red Hat worries about, many of which have nothing to do with coding per se.)

Chris Messina wrote at 2006-06-23 14:31:

I think that the point of the matter is that when open source crosses the chasm into the non-developer-centric world, it stumbles, shows its arrogance and aloofness and becomes alienated and alienating -- minimizing the adoption of the good works it offers.
Open source has a number of commercial successes and in general is a tremendous means to an end (developing excellent products and robust communities). However, the way that we talk about ourselves as "open" to others, the way that we show off our work, the way we include others and engage them in our communities -- from the interfaces to the websites to outreach efforts to the tools we create -- says something about who we are and demonstrates how we think of ourselves with relation to other folks.
To simply say that "coders and users" should be in control ignores a great fallacy: that open source is not a panacea, it's not as inclusive as it thinks it is and it's predominantly made up of privileged Euro-centric white males (of which I am one).
Until the day when "users and coders" implicitly includes folks *unlike* us -- especially other genders, races and abilities -- your argument against the need for the corporate parent, John, is specious. The community has been historically narrow in its cross-culture appeal owing to this kind of abrasive attitude (among other things).
In any case, this is the kind of issue that the Mozilla community needs leadership on -- and not just dictation, but example. That Mitchell Baker -- a woman -- sits atop the Foundation is a very good beginning. That other ethnicities and genders are represented within Mozilla is also an excellent example. And frankly, in order for the Corporation to survive, it will need to engage in broadening the appeal and accessibility of projects like Thunderbird and Firefox to those underserved and underrepresented communities. Which, by the way, is a good thing, and well worth whatever the perceived cost this kind of corporate structure entails.