Behind every FOSS governance problem is seemingly a tech dude who holds the keys but just doesn't care
Perhaps the most frustrating part of this all is that if the situation continues for long enough, lateral violence often starts happening - nobody can hold the dude at the top accountable, therefore people start trying to hold *each other* accountable, even if nobody involved in those conflicts actually has the power to do anything about it
I would encourage you to identify who the tech dude is in *your* FOSS community with a governance problem, and start drawing more attention to their role in the issue
@joepie91 yea very curious of the actual numbers of FOSS governance issues ultimately come down to some dude thinking "racism/sexism/queerphobia/etc doesn't affect me and I don't see it, therefore it doesn't exist"
@balrogboogie That is definitely often a factor, though I've seen the same thing happen without the bigotry component too. My working theory is that the most privileged among us are accustomed to the system Working For Them (ie. things "just magically work") and therefore do not recognize that they have a role to play themselves in making things happen
@balrogboogie As usual, the most dangerous form of privilege might well be the *unrecognized* privilege
totally agree and wonder if a multi repo development model coupd help here.
git as such doesnt know a main repo.
by making it easy for people to fork and community to move and users to transition effortlessly.
I dont think the type of white dudes you mention will ever change, but we can work towards a model where there nobody can gate keep the way they do now 🙂
i dont see it as a technical solution at all.
is an airplane or a bus or train or car or horse a solution? ...it depends on what people want.
is a telephone or zoom a solution?
is a digital signature a solution?
if people want to do something and it involves telepathy or flying, ...it woyld be great, but if thats not technically available, you walk and meet the person to tell.
some governance models dont work because of that
...like imagine democracy without books, paper, pens? it just doesnt work.
nation states with their democracies are powered by ballots and in times before that existed, it was technically not feasible.
So my take on making it easy to fork and make it visible to peers/friends/followers what client they use and a button click away to switch and even invite peers and give your reason/opinion for why you would switch, it makes a specific way of coordinating less hard
@balrogboogie @joepie91
... or in other words.
without pen and paper and ballots, you can theoretically organize democracy, but it is such a high effort to coordinate and make voting happen, that it all collapses and drowns in too much work and effort..and it is just easier to roll with a single king instead.
tech can make governance models which formerly required too much effort to be feasible ...the path of least resistance to the degree that you drop the old ways sometimes.
e.g. no fax
in summary:
yes, all problems are social, but tech can enable new solutions in governance that were formerly more theoretic.
folow orders of a king is much easier than to coordinate many million people to vote on ballots. ...ballots are still so expensive that we only use them once every 4 years.
if ballots were as easy as sending a toot on mastoson, we could do it casually on a daipy basis to express our opinion as a sovdrein(the people) & guide politics via feedback
but pen and paper are too high effort for it.
tech is not a solution. it is always people who have to use a pen and make a cross on a ballot
just without balllot and pen, people cant make a cross even if that is theoretically a cool governance idea 🙂
@serapath @balrogboogie I have strong doubts about that approach, to be honest - ultimately the gatekeeping rarely happens on the actual technical level, so I don't think that's really the right problem to be solving.
Even with a nominally distributed development model, the vast majority of users are going to have some notion of an 'official' or 'canonical' branch, and it's going to be the one with the best marketing (which is where privileged folks have an advantage).
Even excluding that, you will run into interoperability problems; just look at how much Mastodon is imposing its constraints on the rest of fedi, despite the protocol nominally being open, purely by its relative size and fame in the ecosystem. Same deal with Element and Matrix.
So no, I don't think that "avoiding governance" (which is what decentralized repos boil down to) is a sustainable solution. We're going to have to actually engage with the deeper governance problems and find ways to avoid these problems specifically, while still doing governance.
yes, thennotion of official has to go away.
maybe it should show what your friends are using
i do think fork and merge is a governance model as well.
you talk, you resolve, but last resort you fork and maybe merge again in the future... or not.
you keep clients compatible or not....
make that easy and by indicating what your peers or friends use and have it a button click away to switch your software client, it becomes a lot less attractive to gatekeep, because gatekeepers know, if they insist and play hardball, ppl might actually fork.
if they have to fear a fork less, because its high effort and not standardized, not part of the governance, not an easy option, neither for devs, but even less so for users, than trying to capture, hijack or insist on gatekeeping has much higher rewards and basically thus incentivizes the behavior because of those
Like, I've seen and been involved with tons of governance issues in FOSS communities over the years, and I've lost count of how often it's just a situation of "everyone in the community is working really hard to make this work, and solving all the difficult problems, and then the entire effort grinds to a halt because of one singular white tech dude at the top being uncooperative or 'not seeing the problem' or being unwilling to delegate responsibility"