Sometimes people start to behave weird when they are in control or able to influence others. They act rude, or for example are mean to their users or project members… So, take a second and reflect if you are doing similar things and hurting your project and reputation.

Disclaimer: It’s sad, but there are many examples of bad leadership in the open source sphere. I normally don’t want to do name calling, but I think that  learning by example is a good approach in this case. If you feel insulted by one of the examples, feel free to drop me a line and I’ll rewrite or delete the example.

Are you a ruler or a leader?

You have started a project and it’s your baby. You have a few people helping in the project and they trust your decisions. As the project progresses, conflicting interests appear. Maybe it’s because of the main direction of the project or just features someone wanted to implement that don’t fit in your agenda. This happens a lot. When this has happened before and their ideas have not been appreciated, then often the people step back and don’t do the stuff they’d like to accomplish.

This may be the result of a general pattern that has established in your project. People don’t step up to their opinions because they’re used that they can’t get through with it anyway. At least they think that this happen. This is a dangerous state for a project. People will be drawn away from the project in the long run or maybe a revolt will form and the project is forked by the disappointed members.
So what can you do to to prevent your project from going down that road? It’s as simple as it’s important: treat your project members as equals! Of course a project needs someone who makes sure that the project has a clear vision, but try to keep a balance between the vision and the reality. Maybe the vision just needs to be updated to reflect the vision of the whole team. The difference between a ruler and a leader is that the leader is open to eliminate or postpone some of his wishes in favor of wishes of the team or team members. This creates a more open environment which enables the project to grow and prosper.
Long story short: Try to keep an open mind for input from your team and your users. Periodically reflect if you are really listening to them to make sure that a bad atmosphere not slowly sneaks into your project.

Your behavior influences the reputation of your projects

Even if you are nice and understanding to your team members (or you don’t have any yet), be aware that your behavior in forums, mailing lists etc. is visible to others. It’s sad, but there are many people out there who don’t think about the effects that their behavior has on their online reputation. Some people even don’t care and misbehave in publicly visible places.

There are many prominent people with – let’s put it that way – questionable social skills. Starting with more or less rude behavior of well known “open source gurus” like Linux Torvalds, whose rants are widely known. But there are also people like the author of one of the best cd/dvd burning programs for linux/solaris/… who is known for his rude behavior. Linus has earned enough reputation that his behavior has no bad effect on his projects like git or the linux kernel and his projects have many people who join them or want to join them. On the other hand, our good friend with the cd/dvd burning application is more known for his rudeness and you won’t find many people that really want to work with him.
In short: Be nice or your project and your “karma” may/will suffer!

Conclusion

There are many things you can do wrong when you’re communicating with your project members or in public channels. Keep in mind it’s a good approach to treat others like you want to be treated yourself. This often helps to keep your communication straight and honest. I like the concept of karma that Tobias Schlitt mentioned in his blog post. And you don’t want to mess with karma, so be nice! ;-)

References

• http://greg.chiaraquartet.net/archives/171-10-golden-rules-for-running-an-open-source-project.html
• http://schlitt.info/opensource/blog/0541_10_golden_rules_for_starting_with_open_source.html

communication · early-phase · introduction · social-skills · talk

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