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Comment by ktallett | Hacker News Reader

But if it is someone's project, why should they have to leave if governance doesn't go the way they wish? The point of open source is sharing your work so others can use it and edit it. They have done their part and they maintain it as they choose whether that suits who uses it or not. I create open source projects myself, because they are applications I need or want. They are open source licensed so feel free to use them as such but my original code will develop and evolve as I choose.

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> But if it is someone's project, why should they have to leave if governance doesn't go the way they wish?

Many projects start as someone's project, but become bigger than the one person.

If they keep it as one person's project, that's clear.

If there are other contributors, that's less clear.

If the project has a formal organization with governance, it's not the person's project. They might be grandparented in, like a vestige of a past monarchy, but the governance will evolve, to elections. The royalty will be kept for the tourism dollars.

> If the project has a formal organization with governance, it's not the person's project

A great reason for NOT having a formal organization with governance

It depends how the other contributors are gained. If they choose to help voluntarily, then they have no claim on the development of the project. They can help to mould it as they choose but that is it. If it doesn't go the way they want they have no right to oust the creator.

> If they choose to help voluntarily, then they have no claim on the development of the project.

Not true at all. They have copyright to any code/docs they contribute. Things like CLAs distory this legal reality by forcing you to relinquish your rights and enabling BDFLs to act as if they personally wrote all outside code.

To say nothing of norms of social reciprocity...

I think this is all under the assumption that your goal is to make the project as successful as possible. If that's true, then if people think you should step down, you should. BUT can that happen? If you're trying to maximise project success, how can you also be so bad that people want you to step down? If you're not contributing but good-hearted, then you should select someone to run it day to day, but retain ultimate power in case that person turns out worse than you.

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