developing open source leadership

1 © 2014 Samsung Electronics Co.Open Source Group – Samsung Research America (Silicon Valley) 1 © 2014 Samsung Electronics Co.Open Source Group – Samsung Research America (Silicon Valley)

Guy MartinSenior Strategist, Open Source Group

Samsung Research [email protected]

Developing Open Source Leadership

2 © 2014 Samsung Electronics Co.Open Source Group – Samsung Research America (Silicon Valley)

About Your Instructor• 21 years in

software/technology• 12 years in open source• Leading strategy for Samsung

Open Source Group• Built open source

consulting/communities for several organizations


About This Course• You’ll get out of it what you put into it• Training is just the beginning• Open source is > 50% collaboration –

so is this course• Please ask questions :)


Course Content

• Open Source Development Model• Best Practices• Communication & Community

Skills

5 © 2014 Samsung Electronics Co.Open Source Group – Samsung Research America (Silicon Valley) 5Open Source Group – Samsung Research America (Silicon Valley) © 2014 Samsung Electronics Co.

Open Source LeadershipWhy and How?


Product Dependency on Open Source Technologies


New Open Source Skillsets


Open Source Strategy

Con-sumer

Partici-pant

Contrib-utor

Leader

Involvement with

Open Source

Start here!

Decide on the desired position based on company’s OSS strategy


Contributor Scenario - Recommendations

• Actively participate

• Follow community development processes

• Contribute to development, documentation and testing efforts

• Hire open source developers

• Build up internal open source leaders

• Host open source activities, meetings, events, etc.


Leader Scenario

• Leadership roles in open source communities are earned by establishing trust with the project members, and by maintaining a high level of continuous contribution to the project

• Requires significant investment in targeted open source communities and consortia to establish leadership agenda

• Requires incremental investment primarily in engineering, product management and legal organizations


Leader Scenario – IBM Example 2001


Leader Scenario – Recommendations

• Achieve a higher level of contributions• Empower employees to seek contributor and

maintainer status• Sponsor events, provide financial support for the

projects• Establish open source office • Establish an open source architect role(s) to pro-actively

guide the use of and contributions to open source software

• Open source proprietary technologies • Lead architectural and requirements initiatives within

these communities and consortia to achieve commercial objectives


Open Source Development Model


Closed Source Process

Software Client

Software Vendor

RequirementsRequirements

DesignDesign

ImplementationImplementation

Test / IntegrationTest / Integration

DeploymentDeployment

MaintenanceMaintenance


Open Source ModelUser

Community

DeveloperCommunity

Project or Feature Ideas

Architecture and Design Discussion

Implementation(coding)

Continuous Testing and Integration

Deployment(release)

Maintenance

Patches(submitted by developers

and users)

Feature Requests(submitted by developers

and users)

Test Projects to Automate Testing and Validation


Open Source Model Characteristics

1.Distributed development

2. Development community

3. Community organization

4. Scalable development

5. Decision process6.“Release early,

release often”

7. Submitting code 8.Taking

responsibility 9. Giving credit to

others10.Peer review11.Continuous testing12.Gaining

influence13.Modular designs


Distributed Development

• Characteristics– Worldwide teams working in their own local time zone– Communication channels that reduce the impact of

language barriers – Responsibility for development allocated to the

individual or team with best capacity to deliver– Strict quality standards when changing code– Multiple levels of review before entering final release

• From an organizational perspective, it’s not that different from traditional large scale software development


Development Community

• Accessible to newcomers– Open development generally strives for

inclusiveness

• Focused on visibility– Strong emphasis on open decision making

processes and communication

• Self-organizing– Most projects take guidance from internal

sources (i.e., the people doing the work)


Community Organization

• Tight vertical hierarchy• Loose horizontal

structure• Small incremental

changes flow upward Main-tainer

Subsys-tem

main-tainer

Subsys-tem

main-tainer

Subsys-tem

main-tainer

Sub-sub-system main-tainer





Devel-

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Devel-

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Devel-

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Devel-

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Devel-

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Devel-

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Devel-

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Meritocracy drives advancement and acceptanceNot influenced by marketing


Small project Large project

A Scalable Development Model

#include <file1.h>#include <file2.h>#include <file3.h>

...

Single body of code

Releases available “when they are ready”

Single maintainer




Releases available “when they are ready”

Single maintainer




#include <file1.h>#include <file2.h>...

Code divided into subsystems


Single maintainer




Release criteria become more stringent


Code divided into subsystems





Delegated maintainership


Decision Process• Decisions are decentralized

by appointing trusted delegates– In Linux, called “subsystem

maintainers”– Trust built by past record

of good participation and wise decisions on smaller issues

• Not all decisions need pass through delegates– Trivial fixes may go directly

to any maintainer

• Decentralized nature requires extra focus on transparency– Discussions must

happen in the open: Mailing lists, IRC

• Often the discussion itself is the documented record of the outcome


Influence Within Open Source Communities

• Influence in a project is based on reputation in that project/community– Reputation is gained through code contributions and participation– Reputation in one community doesn't necessarily carry to others– Reputation in own company doesn't carry to open source community– Must prove oneself on each project to gain influence

• The writer of the best code has the most influence– It doesn’t matter who you are, who you work for, how it was

done before, or how smart you are

• Behavior is important– Willingness to take and provide feedback (politely)– Ability to explain motivations behind decisions


Submitting Code to an Open Source Project

• Well-defined, highly structured– Retrieve current source code from project

repository– Write new code, generate patch using

diff– Submit code as an email to appropriate

subsystem maintainer, via project mailing list

– Subsystem maintainer decides whether patch should be accepted or rejected

– If accepted, maintainer will apply patch to their own tree

– In complex projects, patch proceeds through several layers of maintainers, and appears in a main project release

• Comprehensive list of guidelines can be found in:

– Linux kernel sources (under Documentation/SubmittingPatches), and

– http://linux.yyz.us/patch-format.html

Development ongoing, with discussions on mailing lists or

IRC

Code functional, tests clean, ready for first integration

Patch submitted to maintainer / mailing list

Patch reviewed

Patch integrated, tested, ac-cepted by maintainer

Patch integrated through maintainers’ trees

Code integrated into mainline release

Pat

ch r

ejec

ted

to

be

rew

ork

ed


Taking Responsibility for Source Code

• OSS development methods favor extra scrutiny on code origins– Less direct oversight on any individual developer– Low barriers to entry in distributed development

• Anonymous contributions are almost universally unwelcome– Who wrote this?– Who do we go to if there’s a problem?– What if it wasn’t submitted by the owner of the code?

• Requiring submitters to claim ownership of their code using real names results in higher quality code and better maintenance– Credit can be given where due– If there are questions on the code, anyone can easily see who to ask– Each developer is personally guaranteeing the quality and the origin of

the code


Working with Up-stream


What is Upstream?

upstream (noun)– The originating open source software project upon

which a derivative is built– This term comes from the idea that water and the

goods it carries float downstream and benefit those who are there to receive it.

to upstream (verb)– A short-hand way of saying "push changes to the

upstream project“, i.e. contribute the changes you made to the source code program back to the original project dedicated for that program.


When is it Time to Start Contributing Upstream?

• When the costs of keeping your code in sync with the mainline project exceed the convenience of working alone

• When you want your code to be used by others (including customers)

• When you want to drive your implementation to become a defacto standard, or drive adoption of the mainline project

• If you anticipate relying on a certain codebase repeatedly in upcoming products that complements the mainline project


Motivations for Contributing Upstream

• Private code is never considered in public development– Integrating changes upstream means others are aware of them,

and can plan for and around them– Reduces the risk of accidental breakage

• Integrating changes into the mainline project reduces the amount of effort to build a finished product

• Contributed code is reviewed and may attract external developers

• Contributions strengthen and influence direction of project


What Should Go Upstream?• The decision of what source code to push to upstream is

guided by your open source strategy

• Generally, you should drive to upstream:– Technology enablers contributions – (non-strategic) code that

will make your differentiating offering run better/faster/etc.– Source code that is of usefulness to all platform users – that

they don’t want to maintain themselves – Source code that will help them influence the direction of the project– Source code that will help them push a given implementation to

become defacto standard – Source code that will help them undercut the competition – Etc.

• A good guide is to determine what parts of your product are sources of strategic advantage, and what supports those parts

– The supporting parts are generally good candidates for upstream


Typical Upstreaming Process

Identify in-house modifications

Are there dependencies on private code?

Does it meet coding and security standards?

Obtain company approval to participate by following your company’s technical and compliance policies

Plan the submission strategy

Prepare the code for submission (code style, generate patch, verify it applies properly, etc.)

Follow the project’s submission process

Maintain the code, update it based on feedback and contributions from others

Rework the code Yes

No

Not accepted –Take feedback


Best Practices: Requirements


Propose New Features & Signal Intent

• Public discussion is a prerequisite– Ensures maintainers are aware of the need and the

problems you are working to solve– Recruit others to help do the work– Gather feedback on the usefulness and design

considerations before doing a lot of work (and being rejected)

– Some projects have active mailing lists, multiple tries may be needed

• Over-communicate– Assume you have one chance to convince others


Propose New Features & Signal Intent

• Accept incoming feedback and work with it– Incorporating feedback increases the likelihood a

contribution will be accepted– Feedback is generally legitimate, as others will

only take time to respond if what you’re doing is important to them

• How it happens in Linux:– When a feature request is controversial, it

generally requires public discussion on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (lkml) before code is considered


Getting Buy-in for a Feature Request

• Contributed features should be:– Useful to others and not just to your specific usage

models• Features that benefit only a few users will tend to be rejected if

there is no benefit to the majority

– Implemented in small parts, and delivered in a way that provides immediate benefit

– Strong on security• Open Source developers tend to be more security conscientious

than closed source developers

– Backed by resources ready to implement and maintain• Don’t ‘dump code and run’


Typical Feature Request Process

• What happens in this phase:– Requester’s opportunity to

make the case for why the project should plan for their feature

– In most cases, the requester already has enough resources to implement the feature

• Typical actions:– Requester/developer sends

email to a project mailing list • The need for the feature• The problem it solves• How it fits into the project• Possible implementations

Feature request sent to mailing list

Discussion on mailing list and IRC

Feature request is accepted

Feature is tracked

Feature is prioritized

Feature aligned with future re-lease

Development / QA



• What happens in this phase:– Interested parties are given an

opportunity to comment– Major or intrusive feature

requests will typically be discussed in great detail

– Other Opportunity to recruit other development resources to help implement

• Typical actions:– Initial email stimulates discussion

on the mailing list– Maintainer may comment on

when the project would be ready to accept feature

– Comments range from brief approval, to detailed implementation considerations


Feature request sent to mail-ing list


Feature is tracked



Development / QA



• What happens in this phase:– Maintainer and other

interested parties agree• Feature is strategic to project• Belongs on roadmap• Implementation is ok

• Typical actions:– General consensus that

feature will be beneficial to project

– Acknowledgement that feature will not impact

• Stability• Security• Functionality of project

– Maintainer gives approval




Feature is tracked



Development / QA



• What happens in this phase:– Most projects or

subsystems within a project have a process for tracking features in upcoming releases

– This is often considered the authoritative record of what was proposed and accepted

• Typical actions:– Developer adds detailed

feature information into tracking tool

Feature is tracked






Development / QA



• What happens in this phase:– Maintainers prioritize features

• What is core to the project• What is needed, and when

– Maintainers generally have a global view of dependencies and future deliverables, and may prioritize to align features.

– Minor features and enhancements may be requested as soon as they are ready.

• Typical actions:– Maintainer may determine the

priority of the request relative to other queued features





Feature is tracked


Development / QA



• What happens in this phase:– Project maintainer

communicates when they will be ready to integrate the feature.

– This helps them plan for a manageable number of features per release.

• Typical actions:– Maintainer may assign

feature to a specific release.





Feature is tracked


Development / QA



• What happens in this phase:– Developer and any

other resources recruited in former steps begin implementing the feature, targeting the release set by the maintainer.

• Typical actions:– Development team

begins work.

Development / QA




Feature is tracked




Best Practices: Design


Design In the Open

• Communicate early and often on mailing lists

• Provide examples and possibly reference implementations

• Anticipate feedback– Acknowledge good feedback and re-work your contribution

• Respond promptly to questions, particularly from potential contributors– Signal willingness to adapt your design if someone else will do

the work

• Plan for modularity, even if the first designs are not


Recruit Others

• Scratch your own itch, nobody else will scratch it for you… unless they have the same itch

• If you are wanting to decrease your development burden, write code that will attract others for the same reason– Make sure your contribution is scoped broadly enough to attract

other contributors– Be responsive and proactive if someone indicates interest in your

email to the mailing list

• Don’t be surprised if it’s a competitor– Often the companies with the most to gain from a feature in an

open source project are in the same line of business– There is a rich history of collaboration between

competitors


Design for Acceptance

• Design your contribution to be written and integrated in the smallest parts possible– Smaller patches are easier for maintainers to integrate– Many open source projects favor a modular approach, because it

promotes extensibility

• Scope the design, and subdivide your plans if necessary– Larger changes are more likely to be adopted if a series of smaller

changes with concrete milestones– Communicate the overall plan to provide context, but don’t expect

universal buy-in

• Be as non-intrusive as possible to other subsystems– If you believe you need to change a core system component,

communicate far in advance and solicit input from their maintainers before getting started


Best Practices: Implementation


Be Agile

• The line between design and implementation is very blurry in open source development– Multiple iterations are expected and encouraged

• Don’t expect perfection the first time– Code stabilization is part of the community

process– Allow the developer community to help guide

and shape the code


Start From a Fresh Pull From the Right Tree

• It is not uncommon to have many versions of the same project– Each maintainer may have their own tree– Some projects maintain stable and development trees

• In almost all cases, you should base your work on the tree that builds the official release– In Linux, this is Linus’ tree on kernel.org

• Ultimately the project maintainer is final arbiter on what gets accepted– If your patch does not apply cleanly to their tree, it will be rejected

• Never assume code as a dependency that isn’t already part of mainline, unless you’re submitting it yourself– It’s impossible to test without replicating your custom setup, and

maintainers usually don’t have the resources to do this


Implement Functionality in Smallest Reasonable Chunks

• Will result in more constructive feedback– Easier to understand small patches

• Simplified testing– A small change is less like to have unintended

consequences– Very important because of lack of traditional test

phase

• You will be expected to submit in small parts


Reuse Existing, Accepted Code Wherever Possible

• It makes your contribution smaller

• It reduces the code you must personally debug and maintain

• It increases your chance of acceptance– Maintainer already familiar with accepted code– Most maintainers are very averse to duplicating existing

functionality

• If existing code has most of the functionality you need, submit a patch to extend it– Always try this before building your own– If this is for a key dependency, get your patch accepted before

beginning work in earnest on the main feature


Typical Patch Submission Process

Development ongoing, with discussions on mailing lists or IRC

Code functional, tests clean, ready for first integration

Patch submitted to maintainer / mailing list

Patch reviewed

Patch integrated, tested, accepted by maintainer

Patch integrated through maintainers’ trees

Code integrated into mainline release

Patc

h r

eje

cted t

o b

e r

ew

ork

ed


Creating a Patch

• The patch should be created against the most recent version of the mainline source code

• The patch should be offset from the root of the tree

• The patch must apply cleanly• A freshly-patched version of the code

should build without errors• A patch should do one thing, and do it

well http://lwn.net/Articles/139918/


Writing a Patch Email

1. Find and follow project guidelines on how to format patch emails– Some projects use scripts to extract patch

information from emails

2.Send one patch per email– Particularly true when sending large numbers of

related patches

3. Include [PATCH] in the subject line– Mailing lists usually have a lot of traffic


Writing a Patch Email

4. Maintain threading when replying– When sending an update, reply to your original

message

5. Numbers don’t lie– Include benchmarks or quantitative

justification for your approach

6.Avoid attachments and MIME– Both can cause errors for scripts that

automatically import accepted patches


Deconstructing a Linux Patch Email

To: [email protected]: [email protected]

Subject: [PATCH {version} {x/y}] {Subsystem}: {Single-line description}

Body:

{Detailed description of changes to go into git log}

Signed-off-by: Developer Name <[email protected]>Acked-by: Another Person <[email protected]>

---

{properly formatted patch as plaintext}

Sent to subsys-tem maintainer

CC to the project mailing

list

Version of project

If patch is part of

series (e.g., 1/5)

Area of the project patch

applies

Meaningful description

Detailed explana-tion

Patch contentRequired authorship line

Optional acknowledge-

ment

Required delim-iter

http://linux.yyz.us/patch-format.html


Be Patient and Persistent

• Send patches and responses in public, never in private

• Accept criticism, and rework the code

• Make incremental changes that are well communicated

• Resubmit the patch• Be persistent and polite


What if My Patch is Rejected?

• Code may be rejected for any reason– Poor quality, inconsistent formatting– Too much function in one submission– Inconsistent with broader subsystem strategy

• This doesn’t make you a bad coder– Revise and try again

• When replying, filter unnecessary feedback and focus just on the technical aspects


Escalation

• Sometimes patches slip through the cracks

• If you haven’t received an acknowledgement after a reasonable amount of time, resend it– Typically one week– Add this line to the top of the email:

• “Patch escalation: no response for 7 days”


Checklist Before Submitting

Patch follows all coding style guidelines– Run scripts/checkpatch.pl to scan your patch

for coding standard violationsPatch applies cleanly against main project

treeProject builds cleanly after patch is appliedPatch is tested to do what it claimsHeader of file is documented properly, is in

English, and follows kernel style guidelines


Checklist Before Submitting

Patch email has:– A detailed subject line– Signed-off-by line– Detailed description of what the code does and why it is being

submitted– Notification of any dependencies being sent as additional

patches– Only one patch

Patch email is properly formatted– Follows code submission guidelines– Has no attachments– Is not in HTML or “rich text” format

Email is being sent to the right person, and CCs the proper mailing list


Reporting Bugs

• Not uncommon to uncover bugs in other peoples’ code during development

• If the project uses Bugzilla– Search for duplicate bugs first– Report the bug in relevant components– File separate bugs for separate issues

• If the bug is in the Linux kernel– Email the maintainer of the code, and cc [email protected]– Read the files REPORTING-BUGS and MAINTAINERS in kernel sources– If the bug include an ‘OOPS’ message, see Documentation/oops-

tracing.txt– If you can, try to create a shell script that replicates the problem, and send

it with your bug report– Running scripts/ver_linux in the kernel source will provide useful

information for the bug report

mailto:[email protected]


Best Practices: Testing


Testing is Continuous

• Source code change management processes favor continuous testing– Every developer works on a complete branch of the tree

• Community processes require basic QA from the start– A patch must compile and meet basic standards before it will be

considered at any level

• Tools like git are built with continuous testing and integration in mind– Patches that cause problems can be found and reverted

• Automated build suites help detect problems quickly– Detect major problems within 24 hours– May automatically file bugs in bugzillas

• Some projects create and maintain test suites specific to their codebase– Community QA engineers may simultaneously develop the test suite and analyze

the builds


Best Practices: Maintenance


Maintaining Your Code

• Don’t “dump and run”– Abandoned code will be worked around and

eventually removed

• Disclose problems quickly, and provide workarounds and fixes– Pretending nothing is wrong will only buy you

trouble

• If you can’t maintain it, pass responsibility along to a successor, or arrange to have it removed– If your code is important, someone else will step up


Responding to Bugs

• Many projects use Bugzilla– Register an account, and contact the bugzilla

maintainer to add your project and name to the list of components

– You should be the default assignee– Respond promptly, and close or transfer bugs

as appropriate

• The Linux kernel uses email instead of bugzilla– Respond to bug emails promptly, and CC the kernel

mailing list


Accepting Patches to Your Code

• If your code is useful, others may want to enhance it– Be open to the community process– Be available to the maintainer if asked for

your input on a patch– Consider the technical comments

people make on the code, and justify any disagreements that you have with them


Open Source Community/Communication Skills


What are Communities?


Rule #1

No two communities are exactly the same!


Rule #2

Communities don’t work for individual companies


Internal versus External• As leaders, you have to ‘manage’ internal vs.

external expectations about open source projects you are involved in

• You serve as a ‘consultant’ to other internal co-workers and managers who may not be as familiar with Open Source as you will be

• Be honest with both groups– If you cannot comment to external community about

something, tell them why (‘internal product decision’, etc.)

– If the community wants something your company doesn’t, try to find common ground with both parties


Preparing to Engage with Community


Determine your Strengths

There are many skills required in open source projects, and many roles to fill:• Software Developers• Testers/Quality Assurance• Documentation Writers• User Experience/GUI Designers• Evangelists/Communications Experts

You can have more than one role if you have the time and necessary skills.


Determine your Time Commitment

• Commit to what you can realistically deliver

• Communities respect completed work more than hollow offers of help

• Your commitment reflects not only on you, but on your company


Get to Know the Community


Understand How the Community Communicates

• Learn which methods are accepted & preferred:– Email lists– IRC– Web forums– Bug trackers

• Observe and learn how questions are asked/answered– http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html


Understand How the Community Communicates

• Before asking a question of the community– Search any message archives/logs for the answer– Read any user documentation– Search the web for the answer– Read any Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) documents– Read the source code!– Experiment and document your experiments

• Find the correct forum– Don’t post technical questions to a user list, for example– Show how you’ve tried to find the answer on your own


Understand How the Community is Governed

• Some communities (such as Linux Kernel) are hierarchies with clear chains of command

• Some communities (such as the Debian project) are flat democracies

• Understanding community governance helps you address your questions to the right audience


Get to Know the People

• Relationships (even virtual ones) matter in communities

• Understanding how people work helps get your ideas accepted in the community

• Participate in conferences/meetups as much as possible to help build ‘human networks’


Engage with the Community


Communicate What You’re Working On

• Don’t work on something for the community ‘in private’– Someone else will probably have duplicated your effort– Other changes in the project may obsolete/conflict with your

work

• Project maintainers can help plan for future releases if they know what’s coming

• Community participants don’t like last minute feature ‘surprises’


Acknowledge Resources You Use

• Give credit where it is due for libraries/resources you use– Helps others find these resources– Provides positive feedback for the creators,

encouraging them to keep maintaining these and creating new ones


Give Back to the Community

• Code contributions

• Answer questions from other members

• Facilitate hardware gifts if possible

• Help arrange conferences/meetups

• Offer to speak at conferences/events

• Your contributions reflect on you and your company!


Plan an Exit Strategy

• Train your potential successor

• Introduce your successor to the community

• Insure that your code contributions will be maintained by someone from your company

• Inform the community as soon as possible so that they have time to plan for the transition


Communication Tools Etiquette


Mailing List Etiquette• All communication is generally in English

• Keep on topic– Try to stick to one topic per email, and make the subjects descriptive– Keep subject lines intact, as archives and mail clients use them for threading– If the topic changes, start a new thread

• Don't use attachments– If you want to email code or documents, copy/paste in the email message or

provide a link to a web site (such as pastebin)

• Don't use HTML email– It may confuse some mail clients, and cause formatting problems

• Reply and forward messages “inline”– Some mail clients forward as attached text files; disable this


Mailing List Etiquette

• Reply at the bottom of messages – Also called “bottom posting”– Put your response after the text to which you are responding

• Posts with CAPITAL LETTERS will be ignored

• The way you communicate matters– You will never lose points for professionalism– Many participants are international, so be as clear and straightforward

as possible– Avoid sarcasm, don’t take things personally– Not everyone will be professional - “Don’t feed the trolls”

• Your conduct reflects on you and your company!


Responding to Feedback

• Feedback is likely to come in short, small bursts. – Read, revise, and retransmit the code– If you get someone that is reading and commenting on the code each

time, that's great! Keep sending the code.

• Feedback from developers may be brief or strongly worded– Do not take it personally– Maintainers process a lot of code, and must triage quickly– Their goal is to improve code quality through intensive review

• Work with the community– Take the good suggestions you get and incorporate them into

your code– If there are solid technical reasons why bad suggestions are bad,

explain those reasons clearly


Etiquette When Replying to a Patch

• Use "reply-all" by default, except in special circumstances

• Never make a privileged conversation public without the consent of the other party

• Keep the subject line intact, so you don’t break threading

• Ensure HTML formatting is disabled


Etiquette When Replying to a Patch

• Avoid mail clients that convert the original message to an attachment when replying

• Always comment inline

• Do not delete the body of a message when replying


Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Etiquette

• ‘Lurking’ is acceptable behaviour on an IRC channel– Just listening in on a channel helps you understand how the

project developers interact

• Don’t ‘ask to ask’ (or say ‘Is anyone here?’)– If there is another conversation going on, wait until it

completes– If there is no other conversation, just ask your question– Keep the question concise and to the point– You never lose points by being professional

• Don't paste large code segments into an IRC channel– Provide a link to a web site (such as pastebin)


Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Etiquette

• Be aware of time zones– In large geographically-distributed projects, not all

developers are online at the same time– Be patient and wait at least 24 hours for a response

• Ask your question multiple times– Give updates on what you’ve tried to fix a problem– Provide a summary later of any solution– Consider posting a summary of any solution to the project

mailing list for archival purposes



Bug Tracking (Bugzilla) Etiquette

• Keep bug reports concise but thorough– Add all important details, but leave out unnecessary

information– Provide specific details on how to recreate the bug– Provide access to error messages– Provide log file snippets, or, if the data is large, links

to pastebin or another website

• No pointless comments in bugs– Don’t put ‘me too’ messages in comments– In general, don’t comment unless adding something

new or important for the bug assignee to know



• There is no community obligation to fix bugs– Do not demand bug fixes by a certain

date/release point– If the bug is critical to you, offer to fix it

yourself or help the bug assignee fix it

• Criticize code, not people– Be constructive in your criticism, do not

attack people



• Don’t change fields of bugs you don’t own– Do not change priority, target milestones, etc.– If you need to request a change, put a comment in the

bug itself

• Don’t complain about decisions– If a maintainer has marked a bug as INVALID or

WONTFIX, don’t file a duplicate bug– If you believe the decision was invalid, provide

supporting evidence in a comment



Top 5 Things to Remember


#5 – Understand Community Governance

• Each community is different• Contributions need to ‘fit’ with other code/patches


#4 – Understand Community Motivators

• Successful communities are powered by motivated people• Motivation can be: status, money, peer recognition


#3 – Be Careful of ‘Custom’ Licenses

• Communities do not work well with ‘custom licenses’• Gaining contributors/momentum requires low barriers to

entry

http://opensource.org/licenses/index.html


#2 – Communities Need Nurturing

• Posting code to public sites is not collaboration• Community participation is a cycle – expect change


#1 - Be Humble, But Bold

• Community leadership is earned, not granted– Accept community feedback and rework code

• Bring technical expertise to the table– Contributions need to be ongoing to maintain leadership status

Humble Bold

Leadership != Control


Thank you.

developing open source leadership

Technology

samsung open source

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