Open Source Governance for Software Engineers
summary
Defines governance as the formalization of implicit norms to scale willing collaboration and argues for treating governance like code so human readers can interpret it. Recommends concrete practices from software engineering — DRY, low coupling, separation of concerns — and a five‑document framework: charters policies processes guidelines documentation with clear ownership rules (delegating authority owns charters/policies, implementers own processes). Gives examples (moderation policy → GitHub moderation group, bug triage policy → implementer process, IP guidelines), warns against copy‑paste, over‑specification, and urges conveying intent and handling conflicts one‑on‑one.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Open source governance intro
- 3:15What is governance
- 18:30Writing governance code
- 23:21Simple governance docs
- 36:18Additional tips and final advice
- 37:21Summary
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