This year I helped organize the first inaugural Wontfix_Cabal. The conference was organized by open source software maintainers for open source software maintainers. Our initial concept was an unconference where attendees could discuss topics candidly with their peers from other open source communities.
The idea for the event stemmed from the response to a blog post I published about closing pull requests. The response was overwhelming, with many maintainers commiserating and sharing lessons they had learned. It seemed like we could all learn a lot from our peers in other projects -- if we had the space to do so -- and it was clear that people needed a place to vent.
Major thanks to Katrina Owen and Brandon Keepers from GitHub who jumped right in and provided the venue we needed to make this happen. Without their support this would’ve never become a reality!
It was an excellent first event and the topics discussed were wide ranging, including:
- How to deal with unmaintained projects
- Collecting metrics to judge project health
- Helping newcomers
- Dealing with backlogs
- Coping with, and minimizing, toxic behavior in our communities
Never have I seen so many open source maintainers in one place. Thanks @wontfix_, this is amazing pic.twitter.com/GdYXUjZds3— Gregor (@gr2m) February 15, 2017
The discussion around helping newcomers focused on creating communities with welcoming and productive cultures right from the start. I was fascinated to learn that some projects pre-fill issues before going public so as to set the tone for the future of the project. Another good practice is clearly defining how one becomes a maintainer or gets commit access. There should be clear rules in place so people know what they have to do to succeed.
Another discussion I really liked focused on “saying no.” Close fast and close early was a key takeaway. There’s no sense in letting a contribution sit waiting when you know it will never be accepted. Multiple projects found that having a bot give the hard news was always better than having the maintainer do it. This way it is not personal, just a regular part of the process.
One theme seen in multiple sessions: “Being kind is not the same as being nice.” The distinction here is that being nice comes from a place of fear and leads people to bend over backwards just to please. Being kind comes from a place of strength, from doing the right thing.
Summaries of many of the discussions have been added to the GitHub repo if you would like to read more.
After the event concluded many maintainers got right to work, putting what they had learned into practice. For instance, Rust got help from the Google open source fuzzing team.
Flurry of internal emails following up on ideas from @wontfix_: all sent! Now it's time to start on some PRs.— Rainer Sigwald (@Tashkant) February 22, 2017
Our goal was to put together a community of maintainers that could support and learn from each other. When I saw Linux kernel maintainers talking to people who work on Node and JavaScript, I knew we had achieved that goal. Laura Abbott, one of those kernel developers, wrote a blog post about the experience.
Not only was the event useful, it was also a lot of fun. Meeting maintainers, people who care a great deal about open source software, from such a diverse group of projects was great. Overall, I think our initial run was a success! Follow us on Twitter to find out about future events.
By Jess Frazelle, Software Engineer
