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And the way this kind of leadership evolves in that setting is that people build up the respect and the technical capital from other people that they know this area and that they are somebody to be listened to. One of the most obvious ways this plays out at Node is when you think about Crypto; it’s a really hard area f... |
So that plays out really interestingly when you've got a complex enough project, but it also plays out in smaller projects when you’ve got simply somebody who has got obvious depth of technical knowledge and understanding about a project; they are generally recognized and they get to play that leadership role, as well. |
**Mikeal Rogers:** \[01:06:08.21\] I think that there’s a really interesting distinction here between entitlement and respect. The BDFL model is about entitlement, like you are entitled to run this project indefinitely, and to some extent when you have a small group that’s closed off too, like "I'm entitled to be the a... |
**Rod Vagg:** Right, that’s exactly right, and also that dynamic also impacts on people's willingness to be involved. If you have a process that says, "You have to respect this individual and their opinions", simply because they are that person, they are their BDFL, you're actually less likely to get people to engage, ... |
If you’ve ever done any work with personality typing, you find that there are people that will accept authority simply because it exists or because it’s being granted or because somebody just says so. You have a monarch, and they've always been that way and they should be respected - that's great - and then you have ot... |
In software engineering and engineering in general, we're much more heavily weighted towards those kinds of personalities where you need to earn the respect, you need to earn your place in authority, otherwise you just not going to get it automatically. People are not gonna come down and automatically accept what you s... |
And that happens all the time in open source and if you have a BDFL that says this individual is the person that decides what goes and what's good enough, and they haven’t earned that respect or they aren't continually earning that respect, then you're gonna have a huge breakdown in people’s willingness to be involved.... |
**Mikeal Rogers:** The continual part there is the big distinction, I think, and this is also what I think a lot of people's problem with meritocracy is. It's that Meritocracy isn’t about continued investment and respect for that continued investment, it’s really just about setting a bar and then saying, "Everyone who ... |
**Rod Vagg:** To be honest, that's something we're still struggling with, and you know this Mikeal. We have this process of onboarding people to these projects, but we don’t have a good process for off-boarding, and that’s still something we need to explore. We need to have a way to say "Okay, your time has passed. You... |
\[01:10:01.17\] This is a real challenge, because we have even now situations where people are making decisions in Node -- Node is the obvious place because it's been around for a long time and it has these people that have earned their position, but have sorta moved on. But even now, you will have people showing up an... |
And so if you have people that you haven't effectively off boarded, but are still effectively hanging around asserting themselves - and that may be the original person, the original BDFL... Even in some of my own projects I've struggled with this, because I have these ideas internalized about the project and I haven’t ... |
**Nadia Eghbal:** In that vein, I’d like to hear a little bit on about what you might think some potential -- not necessarily downsides, but challenges of liberal contributions might be, that are new or specific to liberal contributions? |
**Rod Vagg:** Well, one thing I've touched upon earlier on is this discussion-heavy culture. This is something I think about regularly, because I personally enjoy it. I like to engage in vigorous discussion, I like discussion to be almost argumentative; argument for argument's sake is a bad thing, but a discussion that... |
That's a great thing, but it makes this process really discussion-heavy, and that, unfortunately, is a barrier to a lot of people, because a lot of people don't appreciate that, and for good reason. Sometimes it’s just a personality thing; they don't want to have to engage in too much discussion, but often it’s simply ... |
\[01:13:45.26\] One of the challenges I think we have is in making sure we do this in a way that is welcoming even to those people. That's a challenge, because it’s not something that’s easily codified into rules, and it’s certainly not something that emerges out of the process, because what emerges naturally out of th... |
That’s a really interesting challenge that I don't have great answers for, but I think we will be seeing a lot more thought put into as time goes on, because it's a real one and we don't want to marginalize people that don't fit into this natural mode that this thing is really well-suited for. |
**Mikeal Rogers:** I think there's also just a time commitment aspect to that. You are valuing people's input that can assert themselves continually for quite a long time, whereas people that are more casual or just don't want to put in all the work to read this giant thread, they no longer can participate because of h... |
**Rod Vagg:** Right, and I often say that these models are the best way so far in connecting project governance with the users that value it the most. With open source, we don’t have the ability to go out and survey all our users, because we don't know who they are. It's not like a product from a company where you migh... |
We can't involve our users that way directly with our open source projects, but what we can do is say, "If you're showing up and you have a change to me, could be a bug fix or an enhancement, then this thing is obviously important to you", so in my opinion it’s the best way we have so far to connect a project with the ... |
Unfortunately, a lot of those people that do value the project, don’t have the time, as you said, to go through the process itself. It may be extremely valuable to them and there may be something about it that needs fixing, they may have a bug or a way that they are using the project that is unique enough that no one e... |
I'd like us to find a way to make sure that we recognize that input from outsiders that don’t have the ability to engage in that same way, but it’s very difficult to find a way that. I guess you wanna make sure that the project is still run by those that value it the most; you don’t want to open up avenues for it to be... |
**Nadia Eghbal:** That's a good stopping point for us. Thanks, Rod, for talking to us about liberal contributions. |
**Rod Vagg:** Thank you very much. |
• Discussing open source metrics and interpreting data around dependencies and usage |
• Limitations of current open source ecosystem measurements |
• Individual project metrics and measuring success |
• Relevance of GitHub stars in determining a project's actual usage |
• Using package management data to connect the dots between projects and understand actual usage |
• BigQuery and analyzing file content for more detailed insights into how projects are used |
• The importance of being able to measure how much people are using open-source software |
• Challenges in collecting usage data for certain languages and package managers, such as C and npm |
• The release of BigQuery dataset that makes it possible to query and analyze open-source software usage |
• The potential applications of the dataset for researchers, policy makers, and maintainers of open-source projects |
• Concerns around user privacy and the need for responsible data sharing |
• Examples of how the dataset can be used to answer common support questions and provide insights into software usage. |
• Discussion on the limitations of GitHub data and metrics |
• Exposure of download data and other consumption metrics on GitHub |
• Potential risks of exposing referrer data and user privacy concerns |
• Importance of qualifying metrics, such as differentiating between popularity and quality |
• Challenges in comparing metrics across different package managers and ecosystems |
• Comparison between Go package manager and npm/PIP |
• Standardization of package managers across languages |
• Limitations of module systems in supporting small packages |
• Impact of Node's resolution semantics on package management |
• Evolution and changes in module systems over time |
• Challenges of building a new package manager without learning from previous ones |
• Balancing trendy vs established projects in software development |
• Importance of project health over popularity when choosing tools or libraries |
• Difficulty in finding reliable information on project stability and maintenance |
• Long-term implications of bit-rot on software and need for forward-thinking |
• Challenges in handing off open source projects to new maintainers |
• Shift towards peer production model in open source, where users filter and choose what works best for them |
• Metrics of success and health in open source projects |
• Defining project health through human observation vs. codified metrics |
• Importance of community contribution and participation in open source projects |
• Distinction between project activity and collaborativeness/participativeness |
• Use of data from package managers, issue trackers, and contributor activity to assess project health |
• Need for business users of open source to have a clear understanding of project maintenance and risk |
• Potential solutions from organizations like the Linux Foundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative |
• Metrics for project health |
• Badging program for secure projects |
• Importance of measuring usage data in open-source libraries |
• Role and contribution of maintainers and contributors |
• Automated tools for identifying active contributors and suggesting them for commit rights |
• Gamification techniques to encourage contributions (e.g. leaderboards) |
• Discussing recognition and rewards for various types of contributions to open-source projects |
• The evolution of contributor roles as projects grow, shifting from code commits to user support |
• Trends in open-source data, including increasing package numbers and growth areas |
• Challenges in filtering and measuring health of open-source projects due to information overload |
• Potential solutions, such as Homebrew's added metrics and the Software Heritage project |
• Future expectations for product changes and improvements to address common issues |
**Nadia Eghbal:** I'm Nadia Eghbal... |
**Mikeal Rogers:** And I'm Mikeal Rogers. |
**Nadia Eghbal:** On today's show, Mikeal and I talked with Andrew Nesbitt, creator of Libraries.io, and Arfon Smith, who heads up open source data at GitHub. Andrew's project, Libraries.io helps people discover and track open source libraries, which was informed by his work on GitHub Explore. Arfon works to make GitHu... |
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