We would like to invite developers for a round table to discuss the specificity of the organization of decentralized software, and to address organizational issues that are crucial for the survival of the projects we love.
F/LOSS development is often mostly organized along a the sequence of its commits, while the idea that a great software starts with one person,is a quite common narrative in F/LOSS (think about linux or git). Even community-led projects often tell their history centering it on one hero (see for example the history of open street map: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/HistoryofOpenStreetMap). So what about decentralized software? From a feminist standpoint we are not satisfied with the "hero narrative", as we feel it doesn't fully represent the complexity and the values of decentralized software projects. Furthermore, this narrative can be detrimental for the long term sustainability of decentralized projects because it can overshadow the importance of thinking about organizational problems and community health. Instead, we would like to invite developers for a round table to discuss the specificity of the organization of decentralized software, and to address organizational issues that are crucial for the survival of the projects we love. How to build and sustain projects which are not only decentralized from a technical perspective, but also from an organizational one? How to share responsibilities so that code and infrastructure work but people do not burn out -making entire projects at risk to disappear? And how to tell if a project is anyway destined to disappear or if there is an organizational bug which can be fixed? During this roundtable we wish to invite developers from Fosdem's decentralized room to discuss those issues but we are still in the phase of contacting them.
Speakers: Natacha Roussel zeyev