Mukund’s adventures

Free software projects are ideal candidates to be run as co-operative societies. In fact, many free software projects are already run using such principles. While projects gear up with project management tools like bug trackers, source code repositories, etc. to tackle the development process, we are very poor in managing people. From personal experience, members of projects which have a large number of people involved need to be managed as people don’t always see eye-to-eye. So there’s the chance of conflict and if these are not resolved properly, and people carry grudges, it may hurt the project in the long term. Some projects however spend a LOT of time in “politics” and eventually lose focus and followers.

Usually people agree to democratic systems. If they’re aware that not one person made a particular decision, but a majority of the team believes that such a decision is best, then they’re likely to accept it and not carry grudges. Now that projects have directories of member users (typically for CVS/Subversion access and posting news articles on websites, etc.), it’s not an unusual request for members to be asked to check a “portal” atleast once a week. A quick-vote section can be created on the portal, where any member (committer?) can ask for an issue to be voted on. It should be painless and quick. Voting should not take more than a few seconds of time. Think Enemy Territory.
You login, you see that there’s an outstanding vote (or you’re mailed that there’s an outstanding vote). You vote by submitting a simple form. That’s it. All members can see the results of the vote and it expires in a few days time.. so if you didn’t vote, you lost an opportunity there.

Here are some examples of things which can be voted on:

• Do we replace the Karate parser with the Kung-fu parser, if Kung-fu breaks compatibility with Karate scripts in this version?
• Which new splash screen do we pick for this version of SeventeenOranges?
• Should we add the WoundingBrush feature (now that a patch is available) before version 2.4 stable of TacoSauce or should we wait for 2.6?
• Should GIMP be renamed to PIMP or not?
• Sholb shouldn’t hold control of finances of this project. I don’t like him! Do you agree (with the first statement)?

Once the issues have been answered quickly, we can carry on with real work and not have complaining about them anymore. If someone disagrees, point a finger to the vote—not to a person. This can even be a panel applet.