FOSDEM 2018 Community DevRoom Recap: Simon Phipps & Rich Sands
It’s been a few weeks now since FOSDEM and if you didn’t have a chance to attend or watch the livestream of the FOSDEM 2018 Community DevRoom, Leslie my co-chair, and I are doing a round up summary on posts on each of the talks to bring you the video and the highlights of each presentation. You can read the preview post of Rich Sands and Simon Phipps pre FOSDEM blog post here.
You’ve Got Some Explaining to Do! So Use An FAQ!
I found this talk to be very informative kicking off with a brief history lesson – It was truly amazing hearing the history of Java Opensource release from Simon Phipps and Rich Sands. Releasing Java under the GPL would not have been possible without @richsands writing an FAQ, which did have some ramification such as “Chief Open Source Officers hated us”!
It’s really worth finding the time to watch the video of the talk however some highlights from the talk stood out to us as:
- Write FAQs for developers. If you make them happy you will cover everyone’s needs. Transparency comes from the no spin developers want to see.
- Write FAQs to learn answers yourself, test and refine your strategy, negotiate consensus and see how you craft your message and strategy.
- Truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth is what devs want. “Yes its hard. That’s why it works.”
@richsands - When making code
#opensource corp may want legal to drive strategy. Radical transparency is legally risky but engenders trust. If you want to build dev community its needed. - Leadership needs to make legal minimise risk but a trusted partner in successful launch
- Use change tracking in your FAQ. Publish all comments, both good and bad to build trust.
You can follow Simon and Rich on twitter and follow up with them on the topic!
You can read the follow up posts Leslie has written on Brian Proffitt and Jermery Garcia and her first post from Deb Nicholson & Mike McQuaid.
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