WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:07.000 Yeah, no, it's fair, I guess. 00:07.000 --> 00:12.000 Well, when you provide your speaker biosphere, then that is the speaker biosphere. 00:12.000 --> 00:13.000 All right, yeah. 00:13.000 --> 00:14.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:14.000 --> 00:15.000 I fucked up. 00:15.000 --> 00:16.000 I threw up. 00:16.000 --> 00:20.000 And with that, can we give our formal welcome to Tony? 00:20.000 --> 00:29.000 All right. 00:29.000 --> 00:34.000 Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me. 00:34.000 --> 00:39.000 So today, what I want to talk about is not this year, eh, let's put tomorrow. 00:39.000 --> 00:43.000 Today, what I want to talk about is governance for software engineers. 00:43.000 --> 00:50.000 What I mean by this is a lot of us at some point a project grows to a certain size. 00:50.000 --> 00:53.000 And then we have to stop thinking about governance. 00:53.000 --> 00:56.000 How to organize the work of that project? 00:56.000 --> 01:01.000 And I have ended up doing a lot of this. 01:01.000 --> 01:08.000 And it's sometimes quite a stretch for folks who are developers and engineers at first 01:08.000 --> 01:15.000 to get into that world of governance and figure out how to do it. 01:15.000 --> 01:20.000 And the way that's intuitive and like close to the practices that we already have. 01:20.000 --> 01:25.000 And so the idea of this talk is to show that like it's not a different world where you just 01:25.000 --> 01:29.000 have to blindly sort of like copy paste what others are doing. 01:29.000 --> 01:32.000 But it's actually quite close to coding. 01:32.000 --> 01:37.000 And there's lots of like good practices that are really, really normal for us to 01:37.000 --> 01:41.000 do when we code that really apply to governance too. 01:41.000 --> 01:46.000 And essentially what I'm trying to do here is to get people to write better and more 01:46.000 --> 01:52.000 maintainable governance just like we try to write better and more maintainable code. 01:52.000 --> 01:55.000 So that's kind of the background. 01:55.000 --> 02:00.000 And so we're going to do two things, split up in two parts. 02:00.000 --> 02:05.000 First part is we're really going to talk about what is governance because like so many people 02:05.000 --> 02:09.000 when they talk about governance mean completely different things. 02:09.000 --> 02:13.000 And don't realize that they're talking about completely different things until like halfway through 02:13.000 --> 02:16.000 like the conversation is finished. 02:16.000 --> 02:19.000 And so we're going to talk about what it means for open source projects. 02:19.000 --> 02:23.000 And so what it really means is governance for open source projects. 02:23.000 --> 02:28.000 And then in the second point when actually like give you some really basic, 02:28.000 --> 02:31.000 a basic framework that I think works really well. 02:31.000 --> 02:37.000 And that encourage projects to use rather than a whole bunch of like much larger things. 02:37.000 --> 02:40.000 So yeah, you've heard about who I'm already. 02:40.000 --> 02:46.000 So I ended up as I was saying doing a lot of like governance see things in around open source. 02:46.000 --> 02:48.000 But yeah, anyway. 02:48.000 --> 02:51.000 So what is governance? 02:51.000 --> 02:53.000 So here are three things. 02:53.000 --> 02:58.000 First we're going to look, we're going to build a working definition of open source governance. 02:59.000 --> 03:02.000 And then we want to talk about delegation of authority as a concept. 03:02.000 --> 03:04.000 I think it's something that we don't talk about enough. 03:04.000 --> 03:06.000 And it's like if you actually understand this, 03:06.000 --> 03:10.000 it's a super great tool to understand not only how open source works in software works, 03:10.000 --> 03:13.000 but like more broadly than I think the world. 03:13.000 --> 03:17.000 And then when I want to talk about third point as governance is bounded, 03:17.000 --> 03:19.000 then we'll get into what I mean by this. 03:19.000 --> 03:23.000 So here's a working definition of what governance is. 03:23.000 --> 03:25.000 Again, for open source projects. 03:25.000 --> 03:28.000 And then we want to talk about what governance is, 03:28.000 --> 03:33.000 the formalization of implicit norms and culture in order to scale and collaboration. 03:33.000 --> 03:40.000 And there's a lot in this and so we're going to unpack it. 03:40.000 --> 03:44.000 You know, the first point is about scaling collaboration. 03:44.000 --> 03:49.000 It's the first thing that I find really important about governance. 03:49.000 --> 03:54.000 And at some point because you only start to need governance after a certain sites. 03:54.000 --> 03:57.000 The mistake a lot of projects do is to, you know, 03:57.000 --> 04:00.000 want to formalize a bunch of things way too early. 04:00.000 --> 04:02.000 And that's usually not a good idea at all. 04:02.000 --> 04:07.000 You want to wait until you actually feel the pain of not enough governance 04:07.000 --> 04:09.000 to start adding governance. 04:09.000 --> 04:13.000 And really the purpose of governance is to, 04:13.000 --> 04:18.000 yeah, say this in a second was the right slide. 04:18.000 --> 04:20.000 That's the purpose of governance. 04:20.000 --> 04:25.000 The purpose of governance is to scale collaboration by really 04:25.000 --> 04:28.000 formalizing the implicit norms and cultures. 04:28.000 --> 04:31.000 And what I mean by implicit norms and cultures is, 04:31.000 --> 04:36.000 every project, whether it has written down governance or not, 04:36.000 --> 04:38.000 has governance, right? 04:38.000 --> 04:39.000 But it's implicit. 04:39.000 --> 04:40.000 It's in the culture. 04:40.000 --> 04:41.000 It's how you do things, right? 04:41.000 --> 04:44.000 Maybe it's like, you know, this person who, like, 04:44.000 --> 04:46.000 reviews poor cost, right? 04:46.000 --> 04:47.000 That's governance. 04:47.000 --> 04:49.000 It's not written down, right? 04:49.000 --> 04:52.000 But if it's, you know, there's an unwritten way of doing something 04:52.000 --> 04:54.000 that is governance, right? 04:54.000 --> 04:57.000 And as you scale, as a project becomes bigger, 04:57.000 --> 05:01.000 what you want is to encode those, so that you can, 05:01.000 --> 05:04.000 so that they no longer are just implicit, 05:04.000 --> 05:06.000 but that they are explicit. 05:06.000 --> 05:09.000 That's also important because when you have explicit norms, 05:09.000 --> 05:12.000 they're the same for everyone, right? 05:12.000 --> 05:15.000 Whereas if they're implicit, like they're only those that know, 05:15.000 --> 05:17.000 and then the other ones are kind of lost, right? 05:17.000 --> 05:21.000 And it creates like some really unbalanced structure. 05:21.000 --> 05:28.000 Yeah, and then, you know, that's the last bit, right? 05:28.000 --> 05:32.000 Is that you want to formalize it, right? 05:32.000 --> 05:36.000 You want to write it down in a way that is easy for everyone 05:36.000 --> 05:39.000 to understand and agree about what it means, right? 05:39.000 --> 05:43.000 And so, you know, those really are the, for me, 05:43.000 --> 05:47.000 the key things about governance, which is, again, 05:47.000 --> 05:49.000 happens when you do need a scale. 05:49.000 --> 05:53.000 It is essentially encoding the existing practices, 05:53.000 --> 05:55.000 so that they're the same for everyone, 05:55.000 --> 05:57.000 and everyone agrees about them. 05:57.000 --> 06:01.000 But, on, I think, that's super important. 06:01.000 --> 06:05.000 All of this, like, happens in a system of authority 06:05.000 --> 06:08.000 delegation, and I'm going to explain what I mean by this. 06:08.000 --> 06:12.000 Now, so, when we write software, 06:12.000 --> 06:15.000 we tend not to think about all these things, 06:15.000 --> 06:20.000 but there is a concept of delegation of authority that happens, 06:20.000 --> 06:24.000 kind of a regardless, and of what, you know, 06:24.000 --> 06:27.000 as a fact that we don't like to think about it, 06:27.000 --> 06:34.000 and usually there is someone thinking about it, right? 06:34.000 --> 06:40.000 And I'm of the opinion that it is better when everyone actually thinks about these things, 06:40.000 --> 06:43.000 because then you don't have bad surprises down the road, 06:43.000 --> 06:45.000 where someone was, you know, 06:45.000 --> 06:49.000 cunningly thinking about this while the rest of the community wasn't, right? 06:49.000 --> 06:52.000 So, thinking about, like, who owns what, 06:52.000 --> 06:54.000 and what authority gives them, 06:54.000 --> 06:57.000 and how they're delegating that authority to the community, 06:57.000 --> 06:59.000 is really important. 06:59.000 --> 07:02.000 And, you have, you know, 07:02.000 --> 07:08.000 so, the thing is that we all live in countries that have legal frameworks, 07:09.000 --> 07:12.000 and an open source, 07:12.000 --> 07:16.000 this really materializes itself around copyright and licenses, 07:16.000 --> 07:19.000 trademarks, right, and to some degree, hopefully, 07:19.000 --> 07:22.000 very little degree pathets, right? 07:22.000 --> 07:25.000 But those are important, and actually who owns those, 07:25.000 --> 07:29.000 and, like, how, you know, that group of personal company or nonprofit 07:29.000 --> 07:33.000 is allowing others to use or reuse these things, 07:33.000 --> 07:35.000 matter quite a bit, 07:35.000 --> 07:39.000 and there's implicit delegation of authority that happens through this, 07:39.000 --> 07:41.000 right, consider a project, 07:41.000 --> 07:44.000 you know, let's say the FUBAR project, right, 07:44.000 --> 07:46.000 that I create, right, 07:46.000 --> 07:48.000 and you'll contribute to it. 07:48.000 --> 07:50.000 Well, I own the FUBAR trademark, right, 07:50.000 --> 07:52.000 so you can't just go run around and say, 07:52.000 --> 07:54.000 and I own it by virtue of it. 07:54.000 --> 07:57.000 I don't have to do anything specific, really, right? 07:57.000 --> 08:00.000 I own it by virtue of, like, having started the project, 08:00.000 --> 08:04.000 and the project name is kind of, like, I made it, right? 08:04.000 --> 08:07.000 So these things have an impact then down the road, 08:07.000 --> 08:09.000 if I decide that, well, you know, 08:09.000 --> 08:11.000 I don't want your contributions anymore. 08:11.000 --> 08:15.000 You can work the code through the lessons, right? 08:15.000 --> 08:18.000 But you can't use the name, that's an example, right? 08:18.000 --> 08:21.000 So these frameworks exist, 08:21.000 --> 08:24.000 whether they're, you know, explicit or implicit. 08:24.000 --> 08:29.000 And, yeah, you know, sometimes they're quite explicit, 08:29.000 --> 08:31.000 like you have a foundation that owns a bunch of things, 08:31.000 --> 08:33.000 and it has a, you know, a structure, 08:33.000 --> 08:35.000 and you see, oh, you know, there's a board, 08:35.000 --> 08:37.000 and all of these things, that's quite clear. 08:37.000 --> 08:41.000 But even, you know, in the case where it's implicit, 08:41.000 --> 08:43.000 this still matters, right? 08:43.000 --> 08:45.000 And sometimes those, you know, 08:45.000 --> 08:48.000 the legal framework around it can be very, very simple, 08:48.000 --> 08:51.000 and sometimes it can be very, very complex. 08:51.000 --> 08:54.000 The example I was using when I made the top of the first time 08:54.000 --> 08:57.000 was opening an icus, that was, like, fresh at the moment. 08:57.000 --> 08:59.000 And they had, like, this whole, really, like, 08:59.000 --> 09:02.000 wild structure of, like, a for-profit, a foundation, 09:02.000 --> 09:04.000 and a whole bunch of things. 09:04.000 --> 09:07.000 And, you know, at the end of the day, what really mattered 09:07.000 --> 09:11.000 was, like, who actually, and I'll get to this in a second, 09:11.000 --> 09:15.000 but who actually, the power was not the same 09:15.000 --> 09:20.000 on paper as it was in reality, right? 09:20.000 --> 09:22.000 So a few examples, right? 09:22.000 --> 09:26.000 You know, sort of, like, a very basic structure. 09:26.000 --> 09:29.000 You have the legal system, trademark law. 09:29.000 --> 09:33.000 You know, your BDFL, who owns the trademark, 09:33.000 --> 09:36.000 whether, you know, they know it or not, right? 09:36.000 --> 09:38.000 That's how it works. 09:38.000 --> 09:41.000 And then, you know, delegates authority through, like, a governance 09:41.000 --> 09:43.000 that MDF all and whatever it is, to a core team, 09:43.000 --> 09:46.000 that then, like, you know, continues to delegate 09:46.000 --> 09:49.000 that authority to the broader community through a country 09:49.000 --> 09:52.000 contributing that MD and a code of conduct, right? 09:52.000 --> 09:55.000 I mean, this is literally what's happening. 09:55.000 --> 09:58.000 We don't think of it that way, right? 09:58.000 --> 10:02.000 But this is really how the world actually organizes 10:02.000 --> 10:05.000 the way we build software. 10:05.000 --> 10:14.000 So, funny story, as I'm like, I'm going to have to say this out. 10:14.000 --> 10:17.000 And then, I was just like, wait, what does this stand for already? 10:17.000 --> 10:20.000 And so, I'm going to, oh, maybe this is going to work out 10:20.000 --> 10:22.000 and then what's going to ask? 10:22.000 --> 10:24.000 And so, I don't remember, I know what it means, 10:24.000 --> 10:27.000 but if someone can spell it out for me, that would be great. 10:27.000 --> 10:29.000 Thank you. 10:29.000 --> 10:31.000 Benevolent dictator for life. 10:31.000 --> 10:33.000 Thank you for asking the question. 10:33.000 --> 10:34.000 And yes. 10:34.000 --> 10:36.000 I saw it, that was just like, a mile panic. 10:36.000 --> 10:39.000 Maybe it's going to go ahead, it's going to work. 10:39.000 --> 10:41.000 Thank you. 10:41.000 --> 10:46.000 So, yes, if there's other acronyms, I'm sorry. 10:46.000 --> 10:48.000 Please do ask. 10:48.000 --> 10:51.000 And for those who know, please help me out. 10:51.000 --> 10:52.000 All right. 10:52.000 --> 10:56.000 So, this is a much bigger sort of structure, like a legal system legislation 10:56.000 --> 11:01.000 that creates a family that allows you to have a foundation structure. 11:01.000 --> 11:04.000 That foundation has bylaws and executive director board. 11:04.000 --> 11:07.000 Through a charter, it has like project leadership. 11:07.000 --> 11:10.000 And then, like, through those, you know, all of these different files, 11:10.000 --> 11:14.000 you sort of like delegating this authority footer. 11:14.000 --> 11:19.000 And this is like an even, this is a foundation of foundation structure. 11:19.000 --> 11:21.000 Like CNCF, for example, right. 11:21.000 --> 11:24.000 It's like, you have like a foundation and it has like a foundation project. 11:24.000 --> 11:25.000 Oh, yeah. 11:25.000 --> 11:26.000 CNCF. 11:26.000 --> 11:27.000 Oh. 11:27.000 --> 11:29.000 Cloud native. 11:29.000 --> 11:31.000 Computing foundation. 11:31.000 --> 11:32.000 Yeah. 11:32.000 --> 11:33.000 Uh. 11:33.000 --> 11:38.000 See, I spotted out right below God. 11:38.000 --> 11:39.000 This is bad. 11:39.000 --> 11:43.000 So, anyway, you see how do you have these complex structures. 11:43.000 --> 11:46.000 I mean, I'm trying to, like, to take away of these things, right? 11:46.000 --> 11:52.000 It's like, um, all of these different pieces that look like completely 11:52.000 --> 11:53.000 disjoint, right? 11:53.000 --> 11:57.000 Like a code of conduct till like a governance.md or something like this. 11:57.000 --> 12:01.000 They're all part of the system that actually starts in like legislation 12:01.000 --> 12:03.000 at, you know, national and international level. 12:03.000 --> 12:04.000 And it all goes now. 12:04.000 --> 12:05.000 This is how it works. 12:05.000 --> 12:06.000 Right. 12:06.000 --> 12:09.000 So, I think it's super important to be aware of this because, uh, 12:09.000 --> 12:13.000 whenever things go really badly and sometimes like they do, right? 12:13.000 --> 12:18.000 Like understanding like where you set makes, helps you make right decisions 12:18.000 --> 12:22.000 for you and your company and like the community and the project. 12:22.000 --> 12:23.000 All right. 12:23.000 --> 12:26.000 And so, the last thing I want to say is governance is bounded. 12:26.000 --> 12:27.000 Right? 12:27.000 --> 12:28.000 People will talk about governance. 12:28.000 --> 12:33.000 And I'm here to tell you, like governance happens in this place in the middle 12:33.000 --> 12:36.000 where people are willing to work together, right? 12:36.000 --> 12:42.000 Um, and, you know, there's places where people are telling you what to do, right? 12:42.000 --> 12:45.000 And, you know, and that can be through legislation. 12:45.000 --> 12:46.000 You might have a board. 12:46.000 --> 12:49.000 You might have like, you know, there are social norms, right? 12:49.000 --> 12:50.000 For example. 12:50.000 --> 12:53.000 Um, and then on the other side, it's like, well, you know, 12:53.000 --> 12:56.000 uh, you can also just like not be interested in leave, right? 12:56.000 --> 12:59.000 Like there's, you know, if everyone leaves your project, 12:59.000 --> 13:02.000 oh, you know, this was the open AI situation, right? 13:02.000 --> 13:04.000 It's like if everyone leaves, you can like yell, 13:04.000 --> 13:07.000 governance governance, like there's no one that's listening to you. 13:07.000 --> 13:08.000 Right? 13:08.000 --> 13:13.000 Um, so essentially, like, there was this small, uh, middle place 13:13.000 --> 13:16.000 between what people tell you to do and like, you know, 13:16.000 --> 13:20.000 what, um, you know, people being willing to work with you, right? 13:20.000 --> 13:22.000 That's like, where we can work together, 13:22.000 --> 13:25.000 and this is where governance of open source projects happen. 13:25.000 --> 13:26.000 Right? 13:26.000 --> 13:28.000 So it's really important to understand that. 13:28.000 --> 13:31.000 If someone doesn't like it, and, you know, they won't, 13:31.000 --> 13:33.000 they can leave and like fork, right? 13:33.000 --> 13:36.000 And if everyone leaves, well, then whatever governance 13:36.000 --> 13:38.000 you've set up no longer matters. 13:38.000 --> 13:40.000 And then a bunch of examples in, you know, 13:40.000 --> 13:44.000 in our communities, uh, in the past of things like this happening. 13:44.000 --> 13:45.000 Right? 13:45.000 --> 13:48.000 Um, so I think it's really important to remember, 13:48.000 --> 13:52.000 um, it's governance happens in this bound, right? 13:52.000 --> 13:56.000 Um, and so, yeah, you know, 13:56.000 --> 14:00.000 as long as there's, and the slides are available, by the way, 14:00.000 --> 14:02.000 um, if you want to dig a bit more into it. 14:02.000 --> 14:05.000 Um, so essentially, like governance exists as long as 14:05.000 --> 14:07.000 this is willing as to collaborate, right? 14:07.000 --> 14:10.000 Um, and I like to think of governance as the organization 14:10.000 --> 14:13.000 of willing collaboration, right? 14:13.000 --> 14:18.000 Um, and if you're being unreasonable, people will leave. 14:18.000 --> 14:21.000 Uh, I think it's super important to remember. 14:21.000 --> 14:23.000 Um, but that said, like you still, you know, 14:23.000 --> 14:25.000 you can write all of the governance that you want. 14:25.000 --> 14:28.000 You still remain subject to, on the authority of entities 14:28.000 --> 14:30.000 that are above you, right? 14:30.000 --> 14:32.000 The law, um, etc. 14:32.000 --> 14:34.000 Um, and yes, again, you know, 14:34.000 --> 14:37.000 those authorities, they might be like very explicit. 14:37.000 --> 14:39.000 It might be like a legal framework, 14:39.000 --> 14:42.000 but it also might just be like if you're being really annoying 14:42.000 --> 14:46.000 to like the, your core contributors, like they have authority over you, right? 14:46.000 --> 14:49.000 Um, if you're being really annoying was a very large corporate 14:49.000 --> 14:52.000 member that actually is like funding a whole bunch of things, 14:52.000 --> 14:54.000 they can decide to just leave, right? 14:54.000 --> 14:56.000 So governance happened in that space. 14:56.000 --> 14:57.000 All right. 14:57.000 --> 15:00.000 So, key takeaway is from point one, then I'm going to have to start 15:00.000 --> 15:02.000 hurrying up a little bit. 15:02.000 --> 15:04.000 Um, so governance is the organization of willing 15:04.000 --> 15:06.000 collaboration, right? 15:06.000 --> 15:08.000 It's bounded by delegated authority and others 15:08.000 --> 15:10.000 willingness to collaborate with you. 15:10.000 --> 15:13.000 Um, it fits within an existing system. 15:13.000 --> 15:16.000 Um, and, um, yeah, at the point about it, 15:16.000 --> 15:20.000 fitting an existing system is just right the part of that, 15:20.000 --> 15:22.000 no, that part, right? 15:22.000 --> 15:26.000 You don't need to rewrite the whole of like a European legislation 15:26.000 --> 15:28.000 to explain why trademarks, blah, blah, blah, 15:28.000 --> 15:29.000 give you all of this stuff. 15:29.000 --> 15:31.000 You need to know what's there, 15:31.000 --> 15:35.000 and just like write the governance that actually is where, 15:35.000 --> 15:39.000 where you actually have authority over something, right? 15:39.000 --> 15:43.000 Um, yeah, governance should be proportional to projects 15:43.000 --> 15:45.000 reaching complexity. 15:45.000 --> 15:48.000 Like, uh, you know, make it as simple as you can. 15:48.000 --> 15:51.000 Um, like, I've never seen a project. 15:51.000 --> 15:53.000 I've never seen, um, two little governance. 15:53.000 --> 15:56.000 I've seen like too much like so many times. 15:56.000 --> 15:58.000 And as soon as there was too much governance, 15:58.000 --> 16:00.000 people are just stopping attention to it and make their own rules. 16:00.000 --> 16:02.000 And then you have like this complete, 16:02.000 --> 16:05.000 this joint, it's completely disjointed between like what is written 16:05.000 --> 16:07.000 and what people do and that's really bad. 16:07.000 --> 16:10.000 It yields to, you know, creates really bad outcome. 16:10.000 --> 16:12.000 Um, aspirational governance. 16:12.000 --> 16:15.000 Like people are just like, you know, kind of disorganized 16:15.000 --> 16:17.000 and they're kind of like, and they're like, 16:17.000 --> 16:19.000 oh, we got to write this stuff of how it would be 16:19.000 --> 16:21.000 if we did it well, right? 16:21.000 --> 16:23.000 And that never works. 16:23.000 --> 16:26.000 Like, write what it is and then bit by bit 16:26.000 --> 16:28.000 move through something better from there. 16:28.000 --> 16:31.000 But start by actually just saying what it is that you do. 16:31.000 --> 16:34.000 Um, and oh, last thing, I think that's super important. 16:34.000 --> 16:36.000 You want to convey intent, right? 16:36.000 --> 16:39.000 Don't just write rules, right? 16:39.000 --> 16:43.000 Explain what you're trying to do with those rules. 16:43.000 --> 16:44.000 So important, right? 16:44.000 --> 16:47.000 Because down the road, even yourself, you're behind. 16:47.000 --> 16:50.000 Why does it, you know, why did I make this rule of like not do, 16:50.000 --> 16:52.000 you know, XYZ, right? 16:52.000 --> 16:54.000 Think of it as like comments in code. 16:54.000 --> 16:55.000 All right. 16:55.000 --> 16:57.000 Um, 16:58.000 --> 17:01.000 you know, an updated working definition for me is governance 17:01.000 --> 17:04.000 as the formalization of implicit norms and culture in order 17:04.000 --> 17:07.000 to scale willing collaboration. 17:07.000 --> 17:08.000 Right? 17:08.000 --> 17:12.000 So I think this captures quite a lot of the things that we've talked about. 17:12.000 --> 17:16.000 Um, and, you know, that's for me like open source project governance. 17:16.000 --> 17:19.000 Um, and then just like shorter and less formal. 17:19.000 --> 17:22.000 It's just governance as the organization of willing collaboration. 17:22.000 --> 17:23.000 Right? 17:23.000 --> 17:28.000 This is what you essentially do to get people that want to contribute 17:28.000 --> 17:31.000 to something to work together well. 17:31.000 --> 17:32.000 All right. 17:32.000 --> 17:37.000 So now, how you actually do this concretely in a way that is, 17:37.000 --> 17:40.000 you know, is less, it's a little painful as possible. 17:40.000 --> 17:46.000 Um, so, um, think about this for a second. 17:46.000 --> 17:49.000 Right? 17:49.000 --> 17:52.000 Um, you know? 17:53.000 --> 17:56.000 Right? 17:56.000 --> 17:59.000 Um, and so, but the good part of like this, right? 17:59.000 --> 18:01.000 The good point of, sorry, I'm going to read it out. 18:01.000 --> 18:05.000 The good point of governance is code that has to be interpreted by humans. 18:05.000 --> 18:10.000 Is that everything you know about writing good quality code, 18:10.000 --> 18:12.000 like is even more relevant, right? 18:12.000 --> 18:15.000 You have like a squishy interpreter, right? 18:15.000 --> 18:21.000 Um, and you have to be like super explicit about what you do, right? 18:21.000 --> 18:24.000 And I mean, code is essentially writing things for human beings, right? 18:24.000 --> 18:26.000 So, it should be fine. 18:26.000 --> 18:29.000 Um, so, you know, I'm going to talk about, um, 18:29.000 --> 18:32.000 how do you write and maintain governance? 18:32.000 --> 18:34.000 I'm going to look at common issues, 18:34.000 --> 18:36.000 best coding practices as a solution to this. 18:36.000 --> 18:37.000 I've hinted at that already. 18:37.000 --> 18:41.000 A simple framework to get you started and then some additional tips. 18:41.000 --> 18:43.000 And I think there's a bunch of examples in there too. 18:43.000 --> 18:46.000 Um, so common issues, uh, you see in governance, 18:46.000 --> 18:48.000 and then the same as you see in code, right? 18:48.000 --> 18:50.000 We've got a code copy, paste governance. 18:50.000 --> 18:53.000 Like the number of times I see governance for a project, 18:53.000 --> 18:56.000 that's copied from a project that is structured completely differently, 18:56.000 --> 19:00.000 and doesn't work at all, like it's like so common, right? 19:00.000 --> 19:03.000 Um, hike up, coupling and location, uh, 19:03.000 --> 19:05.000 same thing, like everything is like kind of like stuck together 19:05.000 --> 19:06.000 in really weird ways. 19:06.000 --> 19:08.000 And if you want to change anything, 19:08.000 --> 19:11.000 it's really, really hard because you have all of these like weird 19:11.000 --> 19:13.000 connections between things that are not explicit. 19:13.000 --> 19:16.000 Um, and it's generally ends up to be poorly structured 19:16.000 --> 19:19.000 because everyone kind of writes a bit here and there. 19:19.000 --> 19:21.000 And we don't have frameworks, right? 19:21.000 --> 19:23.000 Like in, you know, we're right software where we usually tend to have 19:23.000 --> 19:25.000 like some form of framework and structure that we rely on 19:25.000 --> 19:27.000 and governance we don't. 19:27.000 --> 19:29.000 And so, you know, this is kind of the goal of this as to give you 19:29.000 --> 19:32.000 like a basic framework. 19:32.000 --> 19:35.000 So of course, this leads in governance as it doesn't code 19:35.000 --> 19:37.000 to those, you know, those horrible things. 19:37.000 --> 19:40.000 Uh, maintain this nightmare, governance that's hard to modify 19:40.000 --> 19:43.000 and update, uh, governance that's difficult to understand and follow. 19:43.000 --> 19:44.000 All right. 19:44.000 --> 19:47.000 Um, and then you also, as I was handing out before you started having 19:47.000 --> 19:50.000 two realities, right, what's on paper and what actually happens? 19:50.000 --> 19:54.000 Um, none of those, uh, desirable outcomes. 19:54.000 --> 19:58.000 Um, and so, you know, best coding practices as a solution, right? 19:58.000 --> 20:01.000 So every time you bump into something like this, 20:01.000 --> 20:04.000 just think about how you would do it in code, right? 20:04.000 --> 20:08.000 And you probably have a really good answer to this, right? 20:08.000 --> 20:12.000 Um, so simple framework to get you started, right? 20:12.000 --> 20:18.000 Like, limit yourself to these five kinds of documents. 20:18.000 --> 20:23.000 You handle the leg delegation of authority through charters, right? 20:23.000 --> 20:29.000 A charter is, you know, the board charters like the TSC to do these things, right? 20:29.000 --> 20:33.000 And it gives like scope of what the TSC can do. 20:33.000 --> 20:40.000 Um, and, um, it, um, you know, creates accountability in return, right? 20:40.000 --> 20:44.000 Um, and then I think something that's really important is you want to split policy 20:44.000 --> 20:50.000 and process and you can call these different ways, if you want, right? 20:50.000 --> 20:56.000 But essentially, um, policy is kind of like the what, right? 20:56.000 --> 21:01.000 What is it that you want to make sure it happens a certain way or doesn't happen? 21:01.000 --> 21:05.000 Um, and that can be kept like super high level, right? 21:05.000 --> 21:12.000 Um, and then process and I know these like names and terms sound like really, uh, uh, 21:12.000 --> 21:14.000 might rub people in a wrong way, right? 21:14.000 --> 21:15.000 Process policy etc. 21:15.000 --> 21:17.000 That's what governance is about. 21:17.000 --> 21:22.000 Um, I have to learn to deal with it and I'm sure you can too, right? 21:22.000 --> 21:26.000 Like it's a little unpleasant at first and then if you embrace it, it's fine. 21:26.000 --> 21:31.000 Um, and so yeah, if you separate the what from their how, right? 21:31.000 --> 21:36.000 So if you separate the, um, what is it that you're trying to, to organize from like, 21:36.000 --> 21:37.000 how you do that? 21:37.000 --> 21:39.000 Um, that's really good. 21:39.000 --> 21:41.000 Um, and I give a quick examples of that. 21:41.000 --> 21:43.000 And then like the two extra things are guidelines, right? 21:43.000 --> 21:47.000 The idea of guidelines is sometimes there's a bunch of things that are very complicated 21:47.000 --> 21:53.000 and a guideline helps address like a common use case, right? 21:53.000 --> 21:57.000 And then, you know, documentation for everything else, right? 21:57.000 --> 22:03.000 Um, and so the way I think about these things, right, is a charter is kind of like your framework 22:03.000 --> 22:06.000 or your config file or like your main, right? 22:06.000 --> 22:10.000 So this is like way you run the whole thing, right? 22:10.000 --> 22:15.000 Um, and then policy think of it as like, uh, API ahead of files, 22:15.000 --> 22:18.000 type deaths, interfaces, depending on what language you come from, right? 22:18.000 --> 22:22.000 This is like, this is like, you know, the functions are going to do this, right? 22:22.000 --> 22:26.000 And then process is like that's where you write the actual implementation code. 22:27.000 --> 22:33.000 For me, like, that like entirely, once I found this is like everything started being so much easier. 22:33.000 --> 22:34.000 Right? 22:34.000 --> 22:40.000 Um, and then, you know, think of guidelines as like, um, you know, the facade, uh, a seat, I'm French. 22:40.000 --> 22:43.000 Like a nice, uh, city here. 22:43.000 --> 22:45.000 Um, I don't know how that happened. 22:45.000 --> 22:48.000 Uh, you know, the facade, the facade pattern. 22:48.000 --> 22:53.000 Um, like, essentially, like, you have like a complex, the main model that's, um, 22:54.000 --> 22:56.000 design, like, you know, very low level. 22:56.000 --> 22:59.000 And then, like, there's a common use case that you do all the time, right? 22:59.000 --> 23:01.000 And you just write an API for that. 23:01.000 --> 23:02.000 That's the facade pattern. 23:02.000 --> 23:06.000 Um, high level API, right, on the web, like, uh, something that you can do just in 23:06.000 --> 23:10.000 HTML versus it's like writing like 29s of JavaScript, something like that, right? 23:10.000 --> 23:12.000 Uh, so think of guidelines as that. 23:12.000 --> 23:14.000 Super useful tool. 23:14.000 --> 23:16.000 Um, 23:18.000 --> 23:19.000 Yeah. 23:19.000 --> 23:22.000 The last thing that's important, right, is like, who owns what? 23:22.000 --> 23:23.000 Right. 23:23.000 --> 23:26.000 And so essentially, um, 23:26.000 --> 23:29.000 think of it, like, there's a authority that delegates power to you. 23:29.000 --> 23:32.000 And you can delegate some of that power, uh, to, like, say, like, a dedicated working 23:32.000 --> 23:34.000 group with something, right? 23:34.000 --> 23:42.000 Um, and so shorter, um, and policy, the delegating authority wants to, to, um, right? 23:42.000 --> 23:46.000 And then the process, uh, you want to keep it really close to the people who are actually 23:46.000 --> 23:47.000 doing the work. 23:47.000 --> 23:48.000 So they own it. 23:48.000 --> 23:49.000 Right. 23:49.000 --> 23:51.000 So that separation is also super useful to actually make things effective. 23:51.000 --> 23:53.000 Oh, boy, I have to hurry up. 23:53.000 --> 23:54.000 All right. 23:54.000 --> 23:57.000 Um, so how this works in practice, I'm going to do that real quick. 23:57.000 --> 24:02.000 So, you know, you can have, um, uh, let me, yeah, examples, right? 24:02.000 --> 24:04.000 Uh, moderation policy forget how, right? 24:04.000 --> 24:06.000 You write the policy about your goals for community, 24:06.000 --> 24:08.000 monitor, and general, right? 24:08.000 --> 24:11.000 Um, where you explain where this is important, et cetera. 24:11.000 --> 24:14.000 You charter a GitHub moderation group to handle it, right? 24:14.000 --> 24:19.000 And then that GitHub moderation group, like, figures out how to implement this in the way 24:19.000 --> 24:21.000 that makes sense for GitHub, right? 24:21.000 --> 24:22.000 And what's really nice, right? 24:22.000 --> 24:26.000 Um, is that if you want to do the same thing for discord, you don't have to rewrite a 24:26.000 --> 24:27.000 charter. 24:27.000 --> 24:29.000 You don't have to rewrite, like, um, uh, policy, right? 24:29.000 --> 24:31.000 It's just like now implementation for discord, right? 24:31.000 --> 24:33.000 So that's super effective. 24:33.000 --> 24:34.000 All right. 24:34.000 --> 24:37.000 I'm going to rush for the last, uh, I'm going to jump the examples, 24:37.000 --> 24:39.000 bug charging, same thing. 24:39.000 --> 24:40.000 You have the slides. 24:40.000 --> 24:42.000 You can look at it and you can come ask questions. 24:43.000 --> 24:45.000 Um, and so why is it good? 24:45.000 --> 24:48.000 High level goals was the leadership, right? 24:48.000 --> 24:55.000 Um, and you, um, you essentially empower the people who are doing the work to do it in 24:55.000 --> 24:57.000 the way that they want, right? 24:57.000 --> 25:01.000 The separation is really clearly articulated between both. 25:01.000 --> 25:07.000 And, um, like this, um, you also have, you can have, like, really great conversations between folks 25:07.000 --> 25:09.000 because they know what they need to talk about. 25:09.000 --> 25:14.000 And in 26 seconds, um, I'm going to jump this. 25:14.000 --> 25:15.000 Yeah. 25:15.000 --> 25:16.000 So why is it good? 25:16.000 --> 25:20.000 Flexible, maintainable and simple as a system, right? 25:20.000 --> 25:26.000 Um, and I'm going to let leave you with two additional tips about governance in general, right? 25:26.000 --> 25:32.000 It's like, don't think that engineering anything is going to save you from having 25:32.000 --> 25:35.000 hard conversations with human beings, right? 25:35.000 --> 25:37.000 You have to have those. 25:38.000 --> 25:42.000 Um, and when you have to have those, call people up, right? 25:42.000 --> 25:44.000 And do it one on one. 25:44.000 --> 25:49.000 Don't, like, fix things in public or, like, enlarge your circles, right? 25:49.000 --> 25:51.000 And yeah, sorry, rushed a little bit at the end. 25:51.000 --> 25:53.000 Hope that was useful. 25:53.000 --> 25:54.000 Slides will be online. 25:54.000 --> 25:57.000 Um, and if you have any questions, come and talk to me. 25:57.000 --> 25:58.000 Thank you very much. 25:58.000 --> 26:00.000 Thank you.