This week I’ve been in Vienna for Open Source Summit EU. I’ve been attending this event for many years, and it’s always valuable in many ways.

A lot of that value comes from conversations at my employer’s booth. However, early this week I discovered that one of the side effects of my recent surgery is that I physically cannot tolerate the noise level in the expo hall, and I certainly can’t have meaningful conversations in that environment. That was very, frustrating, and probably means that I will, in the future, only attend events where I’m speaking or have other official duties … which is probably a good policy anyways.

What I was able to do, however, was attend a lot of great talks. And some other talks, too! And have a lot of very valuable personal conversations with brilliant people. Some highlights follow, in no order, and with no attempt at an actual narrative.

Make it easy to quit – Actively celebrate people who step back from maintainer positions. Celebrate what they accomplished and what they are moving on to. Don’t punish or otherwise shame quitting. This also incentivizes other people to step up, knowing that they don’t necessarily have to do it forever.

Not everyone should be a mentor. This doesn’t mean they are bad people, or that they’re bad at their job. Encourage them to do something else.

Outreachy actively evaluates how a project commuicates in public before allowing an internship there. Some projects stink at this, and that would be a terrible experience for the intern.

Actual comment from the stage in a keynote, from a multi-billion dollar company. “You probably can’t read this from where you’re sitting but it’s a really big deal!”

Talk idea for future event – tentative title “Story time with Uncle Rich – the early years of open source and what we (should) have learned.” I am constantly astonished by what we should have learned over the last 30 years and haven’t. Stuff like
* The myth of the all-wise founder
* Flame wars and bike sheds
* Inside jokes and how they shape toxic culture
* Corporate capture is not a new thing, like we constantly seem to think it is!
* Booth babes and llamas, and why everyone here looks like me (White men with beards)
* Being kind is an investment in your legacy
* … and so on

The CHAOSS Practitioner Guides suggest questions you may want to ask about your open source project, and what metrics migth help you find the answers. Current perspectives include: Responsiveness; Contributor sustainability; Organizational participation; Security.

Single-vendor projects are always a risk, even when you are the single vendor, and think that you can control the risk by being the one that drives the bus.

Presentation/Pedagogy isn’t about entertaining the class/audience, it’s about understanding what you want the outcomes to be, and focusing every single word and activity on those outcomes.

Sharing your work with the world is (can be) a selfish act. Sharing selfishly is about understanding that you get more out of sharing than you lose and much more than you put into it.

New (to me) phrase: “Legitimate Peripheral Participation” is the act of learning to be part of a group you’re not part of (Peripheral) by doing useful work (Legitimate) in that group (Participation), rather than just learning about it.

Each generation of a project (ie open source but not only open source) is responsible for mentoring the next generation. When you mentor someone, spend time emphasizing that it’s their job to mentor the next person, otherwise they will assume that it’s your job. A failure to communicate this will result in the eventual attrition and death of the community.