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Föderation EN Do 01.05.2025 22:48:05 Many larger FOSS projects publish team profiles with titles and roles, presidents and heads, and leads of this and that. Does a FOSS community need that to thrive and deliver? We work a lot in public: Git repositories, PR flows, conference talks and sessions, support forum discussions, blogs and fediverse posts. There are also many private invite-only contributor group chats, invisible to attackers, where people typically have met in person and know each other. |
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Föderation · Do 01.05.2025 23:12:43 @delta |
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Föderation EN Fr 02.05.2025 00:27:17 @wowaname The idea of "total transparency" may sound good on paper but a FOSS community is not a state. We do not command police, and we cant access private data from people. Anyone is free to not use our software, or take our public offerings and fork them without our permission. In turn, there is no need to open up all of our diverse and distributed discussions to the public. What counts is that diverse contributors and supporters feel welcome, gain insights and agency over time, factually. |
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Föderation · Fr 02.05.2025 00:46:35 @delta whoa back up i'm speaking as a developer myself and wasn't suggesting any comparisons to police states. many free-software and nonprofit projects have fallen to mismanagement in the past though. it's fair for you (all people contributing to DC) to assume you won't do anything wrong, but it's a matter of fact that any private side-channel reduces trust from your community and increases opportunities for sudden unexplained changes in how the org is managed. this happened with audacity, with freenode, with many examples i can't care to list out here, but at this point you should get the idea of what i mean. i'm not trying to fearmonger. |
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Föderation · Fr 02.05.2025 00:47:15 @delta on top of that, your reply did not actually tell me why my suggestion was a bad one. |
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Föderation · Fr 02.05.2025 00:53:02 @delta you using language like "attackers" to describe "onlookers" illustrates that much more why i think you're avoiding accountability, rather than have a strong counterargument to my suggestion. personally, i like to hold my discussions in public with other project members, so those onlookers can comment (in better-suited places) if they want to point out something we may have missed, that affects our community's ability to stay with us, use our project or services, and be able to recommend it to others. you're cutting yourselves off by doing the opposite. |
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Föderation EN Fr 02.05.2025 01:14:01 As to attacks:, there is legal prosecution and repression for some in our community, also towards several user groups we communicate with. We will not make this public even though it influences our designs. A lot of our FOSS work is public. Many contributors engage also in the forum, and discuss current considerations. Lastly, whether people feel welcome and can understand and influence the project, participate in its various directions, is best determined by those involved. |
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Föderation EN Fr 02.05.2025 08:51:38 @delta I think this varies from project to project. For some discussions, it's better to be done in private. Also I contribute to some FOSS projects such as Minetest CTF which have most development discussions in public. |
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Föderation EN Fr 02.05.2025 10:19:24 @farooqkz there is large variety yes! Nadia Eghbal wrote "working in public" covering a large variety of how Foss projects evolve btw. |
