Thursday March 29, 2007

I just watched a Google TechTalk by Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick, titled How To Protect Your Open Source Project from Poisonous People. It's almost an hour long, but well worth watching for people involved in open source communities, or really any communities at all, technical or not. Their "four stages of protection" against poisonous people (comprehension, fortification, identification, and disinfection) are relevant for dealing with misbehavior in any group.

Their abstract:

Every open source project runs into people who are selfish, uncooperative, and disrespectful. These people can silently poison the atmosphere of a happy developer community. Come learn how to identify these people and peacefully de-fuse them before they derail your project. Told through a series of (often amusing) real-life anecdotes and experiences.

focuses on poisonous people in particular, but their talk also shares some more general wisdom about running effective open source projects. Many of their examples come from their experiences with the Subversion project. And, yes, some of the anecdotes are very amusing.

The video is here.

Thanks to Monty for the pointer.