Social architecture: 4 steps to a self-governing community

I would like the community to be completely self-governing, and maybe someday it will be, but for now it’s not like that. ZeroMQ is close to this, but in my experience the community needs four things:



Firstly , simply because most people are too cute, we need some kind of symbolic leadership or owners who will act as final arbiters in the event of a conflict. Usually these are the founders of the community. I saw how a self-selected group of “elders” managed this, but old people love to chat too much. I have seen communities split up when faced with the question “who is in charge?” And create legal entities with a board of directors that only exacerbates the controversy over control. Maybe it turns out, because it seems that there is something to share. But one of the real advantages of free software is its remixability, so instead of fighting for the cake, just pinch off a piece.



Secondly , communities need rules of life, and also a lawyer who is able to formulate and write down these rules. The rules are critically important - being well drafted, they eliminate friction. And incorrectly compiled, or ignored, will lead to strife and difficulties that will scare away most of them, leaving the disputing group at the head of a burning house. I myself tried to create universal rules for ZeroMQ and previous communities, so, probably, we don’t really need lawyers.



Third , communities need some financial support. These sharp reefs sank more than one ship. If you keep the community on a dry ration, it will be more creative, but the key participants will be emotionally burned out. If you add too much money to it, you will attract professionals who never say no, and the community will lose its diversity and creativity. If you create a common fund for distribution, then people will fight (and violently) for it. At ZeroMQ, we (iMatix) spent our money and time on marketing and promotion (like this book), as well as on basic things, such as fixing bugs, releases and websites.

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Last but not least , sales and commercial intermediation are also important. Naturally, there is a market relationship between the participating professionals and consumers, but those and others are not very able to communicate with each other. Consumers believe that support should be free or very cheap because the software is free. Participants are too shy to ask for decent pay for their work. This complicates market relations. An increasing part of my work and my company's profits are provided by connecting ZeroMQ users who need help with community experts who can provide it, so that both parties are happy with the results.



I have seen bent communities of genius people with noble goals because their founders did some or all of these four things wrong. The main problem is that no company, person or group can ideally lead a community all the time. What works today may not work tomorrow, moreover, the structure over time becomes more rigid, not flexible.



The best solution I came to is a combination of two points. The first is the GPL, since it provides the ability to re-process the material (remixability). No matter how bad the leadership will be, no matter how hard it tries to privatize and seize the community’s work — if it is under the GPL license, then the job will simply go away and find better managers. Before you say "any open source offers the same thing", think. I can end the project with a BSD license by hiring key members and stopping the release of new patches. But even with a billion dollars, I can’t kill a project with a GPL license. The second point is the attitude to the leadership from the position of the philosophy of anarchism, which is manifested in the fact that we choose leadership, it does not own us.



Translation of the book "Social Architecture":

• Preface. Crowd wisdom
• Chapter 1. Toolkit
• Chapter 2
  
  - Emotional burnout of volunteers
  
  - How to capture / protect an open-source project
  
  - The myth of individual intelligence
• Chapter 3
  
  - ZeroMQ Community
  
  - Psychology of software architecture
  
  - Importance of contracts
• Chapter 6. Living Systems

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