When most people hear the word “governance” they think of formal documents like bylaws and big questions like “who calls the shots?” While those elements can be important, governance is actually much more common than that. It’s part of any project’s everyday work - but, like many unacknowledged dependencies, many people only notice when there’s a critical bug. This talk will introduce a basic framework for thinking about governance as well as a few common governance models in open source. Then, we’ll talk about a few of those ‘critical bugs’ that projects face and how a governance lens can help us fix them. We’ll discuss: - maintainer burnout - growing new community leaders - roadmapping and other kinds of technical decision-making - formalizing and transitioning governance structures Audience members will walk away with a new appreciation for governance and a suite of tools, ideas, and resources that they can use to help their open source projects flourish.
Speakers: Shauna Gordon-McKeon