four-opens/doc/source/opencommunity.rst

Open Community

One of our core goals is to maintain a healthy, vibrant developer and user community. Most decisions are made using a lazy consensus model. All processes are documented, open and transparent.

The technical governance of the project is provided by the community itself, with contributors electing team leads and members of the Technical Committee.

All project meetings are held in public IRC channels and recorded. Additional technical communication is through public mailing lists and is archived.

"Open Community" is the critical piece of the Four Opens puzzle. It embodies the key difference with single-vendor controlled open source projects. It is about ensuring that the community is a cohesive, inclusive, level playing ground where all the voices are heard and anyone can rise to leadership positions.

To build a truly open community, you need to balance the three forces: developers, users and ecosystem. It's easy to think simply in terms of upstream and downstream, but communities are complex organisms, and the reality is much more dynamic. It's important to establish common goals and build strong connections between the forces, because operating in silos will dilute the power of the community. Each force affects the others and they have to be working in harmony to achieve anything.

Open Community defines how to best align these forces through:

• Common mission & goals. - Effective governance & leadership. - Diversity & Inclusiveness. - Contributor recognition & motivation. - Communication. -Branding & positioning (example of collaboration across forces, product definition). - Education & On-boarding. - Marketing & events. - Ambassadors & meet-ups. - Cross-community collaboration (NIH).

Common Mission & Goals

A strong mission statement is one of the most critical elements to achieve a healthy open source community. It's imperative to outline a long term vision that is focused, but not overly constrained. A strong mission statement helps define the community values and provides a guide to make decisions and prioritize activities. It also helps new contributors and adjacent communities quickly understand the goals of the project.

Getting the current stake-holders input and buy-in is key to the success. Typically a mission statement is developed in the early days of the project when there are fewer contributors, which makes it critical€”and as a bonus, a bit easier--to have an open discussion and process. Similarly, changing the mission statement should not be taken lightly, and can be a challenging process as the community grows and there are a broader range of perspectives. A good example of this process came from the Zuul project. Project leaders first drafted example mission statements in an etherpad, which was circulated to the public mailing list for feedback and new ideas [link to archive]. The list of ideas from the etherpad was then put to a Condorcet vote [link to archive] for the same group of contributors, and the result was:

Effective Governance & Leadership

Any group needs some form of governance. Governance is the set of rules that the group follows in order to address issues and make decisions. Open source projects are just another group, so they need governance in order to avoid decision apathy. There needs to be a place where the buck stops, with a clear strategy in place to how to solve problems before they arise.

It is tempting, especially amongst tech people, to start with no rule, to to make them up as you go along. This is anarchy as a form of governance, and a community formed under the absence of rule will naturally resist later organization, as something they did not sign up for and resent.

It is also tempting to crown the project's initial creator as the "benevolent dictator for life". That can work well, until the dictator becomes less interested in the project or sadly disappears, at which point the project enters governance limbo (as evidenced by the Gentoo and Python examples) with no clear way forward. Or worse, engages in unchecked toxic and abusive behavior that drives away contributors who aren't "tough enough" to handle the it.

A base framework for an Open Community governance would balance 4 basic rules:

Contributor-driven bodies It is critical that the people contributing code, documentation, usage experience, mentoring time or any other form of contribution to the project are aligned with the leadership of the project. Without contributor-driven bodies, leadership and contributors gradually drift apart, to the point where the contributors no longer feel like their leadership represents them, making the disruptive decision to fork the project under a new, contributor-aligned governance, generally leaving the old governance body with a trademark and an empty shell to govern.

Allowing for replacement Nobody should be appointed for life, as life will change people. Contributors should regularly be consulted, and the governance should generally encourage turnover.

Distinct groups call for distinct governance bodies If a community is made of disjoint groups with little to no overlap in membership, and those groups all need decisions to be made, then they probably need to each have their own governance body at that level.

Avoid vanity governance bodies There is no point in having a governance body where there is nothing to govern and no decision needed. Not every group of people in a community needs a governance body.

There is no one-size-fits-all implementation of those basic rules that would work for any project. The size of the project is a critical difference. Sometimes a multiple-level structure to properly balance autonomy and consistency.

We generally recommend using regular elections using a ranking vote mechanism (Condorcet, STV...). Condorcet is known to favor consensual candidates over faction candidates. Staggered elections (replacing half the seats at each election) ensures some leadership continuity. Limits in the number of seats potentially held by employees from a single organization are usually a good way to sidestep governance gaming.

Governance bodies should ideally only make consensual decisions, but when that proves impossible and a decision needs to be made, a formal vote should be held. It's useful that the body has an odd number of members to avoid having to give anyone a tie-breaking specific power.

Some of the things that indicate a healthy community are:

Diversity & inclusiveness Nowhere are the three forces (developers, users, ecosystem) more important than when dealing with diversity and inclusiveness. Providing an inclusive and safe experience for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, nationality or religion is not only critical to the health of the entire open source community, it's something that must be considered at the beginning of a project.

Code of Conduct A code of conduct may not seem necessary as your community is getting its start. However, creating a path for conflict identification and resolution at the start can head off issues before they balloon out of control and alienate valuable contributors and community members. Make the code of conduct carefully crafted, but also prominent, part of larger strategy to be inclusive and diverse. The OpenStack Foundation initially adopted the Ubuntu Code of Conduct when establishing its own.

The first lesson learned is the enforcement policy is equally as important as the code of conduct. We did not put enough thought into how it was applied or enforced across our various community events and activities. Delaying the resolution process while your leadership consults legal experts and attempts to come to a solution can be more damaging than the violation itself. Having a clear path to enforcement and resolution sends a strong message to the community that you have thought through the process and are looking out for their best interest.

Representation? A few years into the project, we worked with the community, including the Diversity Working Group, to publicly document an enforcement policy. Again, we looked to another successful open source community, Python and PyCon, as a basis for our policy. This policy gives anyone who wants to report an issue a clear call to action and sets expectations for how it will be handled and gives the Foundation staff a clear process to follow and removes the emotion from the process.

Check the health of your community as you go. Do you have something similar to the following?

Groups that advocate for minorities: A working group to help ensure projects and teams within the community are following the code of conduct and properly representing diverse voices.

Visible documentation of policies and enforcement

Regular surveys and check-ins with your community

The strength of the community can be enhanced through education, culture, pro-active recruitment, in addition to the processes mentioned above.

Consider that the needs for diversity and inclusiveness extend beyond the normal development community and must be shared with your users and the ecosystem at large. Don't assume that you know all of the barriers that your community members may face. Take the extra steps to pro-actively ask them to identify the challenges they face in trying to contribute and then break down barriers to participation — whether those barriers are time zones, culture, gender, age, education, etc€¦ Supporting a diverse set of leaders, both geographical and by organization, can help reinforce this participation and will ultimately make for a stronger community.

Contributor Recognition & Motivation

Communication

Is there anything more emblematic of the modern work-force than attempting to solve the problem of day-to-day communication? Open source communities face standard issues of isolation due to remote work, time zone variations, travel, and so on. There is typically no home office for teams to meet face-to-face in. Conversely, remote tribes of team members can work together on a project, but in the same physical office space, creating friction amongst other team members.

Highly transparent communication is imperative to help bridge these barriers to a healthy community. Open communication channels (mailing list, IRC or slack, web-site) not only help to document decisions, but enable new contributors to catch up and get involved with the community. Providing a set of open source, and internationally available, tools will aid collaboration and help build community. OpenStack initially started collaborating with Google Docs, but ultimately realized that we excluded a large portion of the world where Google products were inaccessible/unavailable.

Host meetings in way that can be archived and searched so that the conversations are accessible to all time-zones and participants who do not speak English as their first language. Internationalization (translation, tool choices like google docs, time-zones), in general, helps foster a more diverse group of contributors.

Board meetings in particular should be open so that anyone can dial in. Notes/re-cap should be sent out to the community at large via mailing lists within 48 hours of the meeting. At the OpenStack Foundation, the transparency policy for the board developed within the first year.

In person communication is as important as online. Identify the most accessible way to leverage the community and their channels to share your messaging. This can include local user groups, regional meet-ups, international/national summits, developer mid-cycles. All can be used to further educate and engage your open source community.

Branding & positioning (example of collaboration across forces, product definition) including tools and processes Develop with stake-holders, open to community Some degree of collaboration is useful and necessary, but only to an extent. This is especially true in regards to visual identity since it can be subjective and contentious. Design rationale should be provided to the community to build consensus, but there should be key decision makers to prevent the ideation process from continuing to infinity. Lessons learned with project mascots In an attempt to provide consistency we discovered removed individuality with some projects Slippery slope - Once the projects got them, every small group also wanted their own mascot Upside - These are actually picked up and used regularly by the press and in group events. Critical to develop brand guidelines, to give community guidelines to extend brand beyond internal resources Development of consistent UX to be applied to web-sites, documentation, etc.... This can be tough b/c the needs of the design team don't always mesh with the needs/methods of developers managing properties like documentation. Design must be available as an easy plug in (HTML or javascript snippet) for headers and footers of sites.

Marketing & Strategy Once the initial branding and positioning has been finalized, share with all key stake-holders. The challenge is often identifying the correct channel to ensure everyone is apprised of updates and changes. This may take time, but trying different options and even a combination of a few often helps reinforce the messaging and branding for the maximum impact. Ahead of the start of the year, identify the largest areas of opportunity to increase brand visibility and favorability to create a strategy. After identifying programs, events and projects that can support the strategy, communicate this back to the community, reaching out to the marketing teams at the ecosystem companies directly to participate and provide feedback. This is your biggest opportunity for a ripple effect. Stay apprised of market share and user adoption metrics. Share these metrics openly and broadly, particularly with the ecosystem companies and elected officials who represent the three forces. This can be done in joint leadership meetings, both remote and in person, as well as mailing list newsletters. If the information could be perceived negatively, come prepared with a solution or action plan to increase confidence of key stake-holders. It's important to pro-actively share the negative information when possible to prevent reactionary fear, uncertainty and doubt. Identify key dates and milestones that celebrate the successes of the community. Whether it's specific to a force, like a software release or new case study or specific to the software or community itself, like results in a market report or participation in a supported event. This helps create momentum and rewards the positive community efforts that are impacting another force or even the broader industry. Leverage collaborative opportunities when possible. If the broader market perceptions indicate a confusion around facts that affect one of the three forces, collect the people most affected to identify a way to pro-actively address the problem. An example would be that OpenStack is seen as only a private cloud solution. A Public Cloud Working Group that collaborates to create programs and most recently messaging that will help alleviate the confusion is a response that helps leverage the affected parties to address the overarching issue.

Events Support upstream developers with dedicated space and events to collaborate and get work done. This includes collaboration within a project and cross-project collaboration. Create a productive event that combines upstream developers with operators so that production challenges and successes can be combined with software road-maps and bug tracking. Create an opportunity for ecosystem companies to interact with operators and developers to educate around available products, gain insights from the market and participate in road-map discussions. Identify gaps in both the community and the overall market and use events as an opportunity to gather content, subject matter experts and adjacent communities to share knowledge and solve problems. OpenStack Days Industry events

Education & On-boarding Goal to make the barrier to entry as low as possible. Clear, discoverable and digestible documentation Recorded and real time on-boarding sessions - webinars, f2f sessions at events Suggest training the trainer - creating a toolbox and guidelines to provide to regional community members so they can lead their own on-boarding sessions Documented ways to communicate with seasoned experts / join meetings to accelerate on-boarding. Mentorship programs

Ambassadors & Meet-ups Supporting global communities through user groups, ambassador program, Providing resources & content for events and meet-ups, and setting precedents for those events (branding, content, etc.), while still giving them creative freedom building the relationships first; find leaders outside of the Foundation to foster new user groups leaders; collab sessions at Summits using tools available to all regions community of 90,000; team of 23 (XX ambassadors, 100+ user groups) Collaborating with local leaders to better understand regional differences in the technology choices, use cases and community involvement. Create a way to co-own user group contacts to ease the transfer of ownership if people leave the community or if there are any bad actors.

Cross-community collaboration (NIH) From the very beginning invite other communities and projects to collaborate and participate. In turn actively reach out to engage and participate in other communities to enhance integration efforts. Need examples here