Democratically organised open-source organisation | Hacker News Reader

Democratically organised open-source organisation

3 pointsglitr7 comments

i want to create an open source project blog... i am hoping someone can give me any advice on what i'm trying to achieve... are there any examples out there i am able to study? i would like advice on the direction i can take my side-project to align my projects goals to what potential end-users want?

i am a software developer and i do not understand much about businesses and organisations. this seems to make it very difficult for me to find out more information about what i am trying to achieve. i have tried searching "open source business model", but all i could find out was things about was advice on running companies from the perspective of some kind of CEO-type figure.

i was optimistic enough to think i could finish it by myself, but it seems that to create the project that i am trying to, is too much for one person... or at least too much for me to do by myself.

as a result of personal effort, i have made several functioning components for the project and i remain passionate about my side project. i am wondering what my options would be to be able to continue my project as open source.

while open source will allow for other developer to be able to work on the project with me, i am not interested in any particular help from the software development perspective (the main purpose of the project was to challenge me as a developer)... my main difficulty with this project is the organisational aspect. i have no idea what i am doing when it comes to business, legal etc (basically "things-that-aren't-software-development").

i thought maybe i can create some kind of blog that i kept up-to-date as the project progresses. i can add some commenting feature so i can get public feedback on the direction that i am working towards.

i have made a start at: https://glitr.io ... but this is a new method of working for me and i do not know anything about working this way.

i could use any advice/ideas anyone is able to give. thanks.

I think you're putting the cart before the horse. These types of things often develop out of need or emerge organically within a group.

The main problem with doing too much from the start is that the process of defining the governance model of the organization is part of creating the organization. If you want to find people who want to be involved in something like this, it's likely that they want to be involved in the definition of the organization itself, not just part of the building of the outcome of the defined organization.

When building a community, which is effectively what you are doing here, a sense of ownership drives motivation and passion. Try to find others who would share your sense of passions around this and define the structure with them.

thanks for you reply. i think our philosophies are aligned in expectation and this is part of the issue i am trying to resolve.

to be more clear about what is happening; i already am building a project which i plan to continue work on independent of support i manage to gain. my expectation is that any support will accelerate progress of my project and i do not not foresee a particular requirement to keep my project secret... therefore making this an open project will at least allow for external feedback on the decisions i intend to make.

i think my problem is that my current skill-set is strongly aligned to being a software developer. therefore i think there is a high risk to me making bad "business decisions". a few examples: - marketing stuff - legal stuff - financing stuff - how do gain customers - what do my customers want - "things that are done without a computer" - etc

i particularly agree with your last two paragraphs... i would like to summarize them to the following expectation:

"an individual would be personally invested if they are actively contributing to decisions and do not feel that the decisions made by the community are unfair in cases where the individuals decision differs from the community consensus"

i have created a loomio account as per feedback from this posts thread: https://www.loomio.org/g/NUlbf4Y0/glitr-io

i also have the blog i previously created and is mentioned in the post body.

any advice on external tools for this is appreciated, but i would prefer to to consolidate the number of tools (to a minimum to make it easier for me to maintain). im hoping the blog (https://glitr.io) will be sufficient. i have integrated Discus (https://disqus.com) for comments. i dont see any particular reason i would be unable to integrate any other tools.

Personally I slightly more believe in benevolent dicatorships, than democracy, when it comes to open source :- )

A way to crowdsource ideas, upvote ideas so the core maintainers know what's popular. A way to disqus the ideas. And then the maintainer(s) / core developers, listens to the discussions, and they make decisions, based on that.

However making democratic decisions, where everyone has one vote (?), sounds like long term disaster to me :- ) because a few people, the core developers who build 99% of the software, will (I think) have 100 x more insight, than members in general. ? then, equal voting power = could drive away the core contributors? if the community makes weird decisoins?

> consolidate the number of tools

Then possibly a project I'm doing could be of interest to you. It's called Talkyard and let's you do both blog comments (like Disqus) and question-answers and crowdsourcing ideas (like Loomio), and simple chat channels, in one tool. https://www.talkyard.io

You have a link to your project? Aha it's https://glitr.io about memes

"However making democratic decisions, where everyone has one vote (?)"

you are right this could be a disaster... what are the options to to moderate this?

many cloud providers provide services that could be relevant here... to specify a few: - https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/ - https://cloud.google.com/vision/ - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/services/cognitive-service... - companies that provide "moderation-as-a-service"

im doing this project as a hobby. no particular lofty goals for this project than "to work". my plan is to learn as i go along... but im expecting difficulty in the project (given i should only be spending hobby-time on it).

the success of this project would be great... but ultimately, this is not my goal. i do not plan for big deep investment in this project... purely for fun and education... im hoping there are others out there that could learn from this project too.

i will try to incorporate your feedback into this project. i think i need to document the project further before i can identify anywhere i should improve.

Until you have a big enough community, just assume the BDFL role. Once the project is big enough, you can resign your position to be democratically elected as chair of the round table.

Check out Loomio https://www.loomio.org/ and similar products

thanks for the reply. see: https://www.loomio.org/g/NUlbf4Y0/glitr-io

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