WEBVTT

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<i>34C3 Intro playing</i>

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Herald: Organisational Structures for
Sustainable Free Software Development.

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Title says it all in my opinion and I
think this is a very important topic.

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The talk will be held by Mo, who has
experience with dozens of free software

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projects and funding sources.
As a funder and recipient of grants,

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contracts and donations. The stage is
yours, give a big hand

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and round of applause for mo please.

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<i>applause</i>

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mo: Hello everyone, nice rainy 4th day of
Congress. Yes I'm going to talk about

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organizational structures. What I mean by
that and why am I talking about this?

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I was invited to submit a talk about open
source funding and they cut me short. They

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gave me instead of the 60 minutes that I
offered they gave me 30 minutes. So now

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I'm cutting out all the part that is
actually talking about funding. Because I

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think before you can go and even speak
about funding you need to understand that

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funding can be dangerous, money can be
very destructive for open source projects.

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And in order to be prepared for kind of
the next part of my talk that you're not

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going to hear today. I want to talk a bit
more about organizational structures and

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another alternative title of this talk
could be open source governance so even

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more dry than the previous title. Before I
go into detail of: why am I giving this

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talk? Who am I? Why do I think I have some
experience with all these topics? Some

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caution, some trigger warning as you've
might have experienced I'm using open

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source and free software exchangeably in
this talk and I know this can cause a lot

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of uproar. People can die and I don't want
anyone's feeling to get hurt I can go into

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detail about why I'm doing this and why
I'm using this interchangeably. Both for

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the aspects of the licensing where it
classically would use kind of open-source

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licenses as well as for all the open
source principles and guiding guidelines

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for the development, the collaboration and
everything that is happening on

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organizational level. So bear with me. If
you're a free software person I'm your

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friend.

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So a bit about me. In 2010 I was
studying computer science at the Technical

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University Dresden and as one of my side
projects near the end of the studies I

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started something called torservers.net .
Torservers.net is a network of

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organizations so we started with the first
organization in Germany a non-profit

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members Association. And the goal of this
network of organizations is to run Tor

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infrastructure. So over the years we've
grown this network from this single

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organization in Germany to 22
organizations in 15 countries. Most of

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these organizations have been set up
specifically for this purpose to run

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network infrastructure. And most of them
are also charitable nonprofits so I kind

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of accidentally learned a lot about the
the differences between the different

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countries. On how they look at charitable
law and stuff like that. In 2013 I came

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across a pretty new foundation the
Renewable Freedom Foundation it was set up

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in 2012 by Georg Chef the then newspaper
owner of the Donaukurier in Ingolstadt, so

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it's a daily newspaper and he started a
foundation with the goal to protect and

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preserve civil liberties in the digital
space. And ever since we've been working

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with dozens of organizations and dozens of
projects across the whole sphere of

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anything that you can basically see at the
Congress. And we we are a small foundation

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so we had to find our purpose in this
space. And we are focusing mostly on

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organizational development, taking away
burden from people that set out to realize

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their goals and in order to realize your
goals you sometimes have to do stuff that

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you don't want to do and we help with
that. And this led to the creation of a

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new entity in 2016 the Center for the
cultivation of Technology. Which is a non-

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profit limited liability company in
Germany and a GGmbH and I will go back to

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that and mention it later in this talk. So
why are we here? What are we talking about?

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I cut my talk short, I mentioned this.
A lot of the stuff that you're going

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to see are basically references to outside
material. This is a complex topic and I

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encourage you to look at the references
and pick them up. They should be now

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listed in the Fahrplan for this event. So
you don't have to take pictures or

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anything of this or follow the video to
hunt the references they're all linked on

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the website. And my goal for this talk is
that there's a growing number of people in

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our space that think critically about
funding. That also see that more and more

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funding is coming to this space and that
we need to become better at at organizing

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and learning and collectively sharing our
experiences with funders with funding

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entities. How to write grants and stuff
like that and if at the end of this talk

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maybe one or two people come up with to me
and become part of that network that would

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be great, that that's my hope for this
talk.

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So let's start on April 7th 2014. I

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think you all well recognize this logo.
This was one of the first times where kind

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of in a marketing experiment people
described a weakness in OpenSSL. This is

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heartbleed. And heartbleed kicked off
quite a bit of activities. There was a

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blog post by the OpenSSL developers
basically how they're not getting any

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funding to do their work properly. And also
it kicked off a lot of other research in

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this area about how can we actually
support open source.

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One of the most prominent figures

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that is walking around
talking about these topics is Nagia Eghbal

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this is like three references that I feel
are very important to to look at. The

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unstructured labor behind our digital
infrastructure was a report published in

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July 2016. I picked out another short talk
of her rebuilding the cathedral at the

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Strange Loop Conference. And she's
maintaining a sort of a list of funding

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opportunities so she's comparing the
different ways to to get opensource funded

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so if you're coming only for that part
take a look at that list: "The Lemonade

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Stand". Mozilla also did quite a bit of
research they're as you know a fairly

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large organization handling a lot of
volunteers and a lot of volunteer

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contributions. We also know that there's a
lot of controversy around how well they

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manage this and in order to improve they
commissioned a few studies, one of the

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studies was done by Stanford in 2009. How
do you actually work with volunteers

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basically the topic always is how do you
scale and how do you keep volunteers

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excited around your project and
contributors. There's an interesting

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Community Survey that I invite you to look
at and there's a more extensive report

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published in 2016 about the motivations of
contributors to open source and I will

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come back to this because this is exactly
the crucial part when you transition from

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a project that has been run on volunteer
basis or that has some people involved

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that managed to contribute to the project.
And how to grow your project and keep that

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spirit up and and be inclusive as a
community. Kind of the most famous and the

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most relevant reference here is Jono
Bacon. Not necessarily this book. This is

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a good book, it's a lengthy book, but he
also gave a lot of different talks and

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he's giving seminars about this. And I
highly recommend his stuff. I put a small

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note at the bottom: This book is not an
instruction manual because it is an

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instruction manual. And I don't like that
style so try to read it and read

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in between the lines. There's a
lot of takeaways that you can have from

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this book that are -- that you won't get if
you follow it line by line. I think that

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many people demand an instruction manual
for how to manage communities and then you

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end up with that kind of writing. But I
still think that this is kind of the most

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valuable book describing the motivations
of opensource developers. He talks a lot

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about like creating a sense of belonging
in the community. That you need a shared

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belief in the project and that you will
need to have opportunity to contribute on

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an equal basis. So this is the
announcement of the core infrastructure

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initiative by the Linux Foundation that is
only roughly like two or three weeks after

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heartbleed. So they managed to find some
commercial companies to bootstrap a

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program that would support open source
infrastructure and of course the first

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software that they supported with this and
are still supporting is OpenSSL. And I

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will just briefly mention a bunch of
funding opportunities and a bunch of ways

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how open-source projects might be able to
get some funding. To show that there's

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been quite a lot of movement in these
areas. The P that you can see here is the

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German prototype fund, that's the German
Ministry of Education and Research that is

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supporting this project. So there is
German federal government money that is

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used to fund open-source development and I
encourage everyone of you to check out the

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prototype fund website and look at the
previous rounds of projects that they've

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been supporting because I think it's an
excellent selection. I listed a bunch of

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others I'm not going to go more into
detail about the funders that's for a

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second talk, a separate talk, but you can
find these resources like, I picked out

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tools specifically the snowdrift wiki the
market research they did, that Aaron did

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is really excellent into the different
ways of funding. And also we maintain a

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huge list of funding sources that's, I
think, around 300 foundations listed there,

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not all of them fund open source
technology. But since we are active in a

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more broader space of like digital
everything you will find a lot of material

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there. One thing that I want to
specifically pick out and highlight

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because it hasn't been talked about before
not that I know of. Is a program that is

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currently in its phase of accepting
applications. With a wonderful name of

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ICT-24-2018-2019, it's a European
Commission call for participation. For the

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next-generation Internet. And this is
relevant and interesting because the way

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they're framing this call will show you
quite clearly that they are interested in

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the kind of technologies that get built by
our communities. And sometimes the

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language is kind of funny and the
terminology is something that you have to

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get used to. But I like it it's kind of
human centric openness, cooperation across

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borders, decentralization, inclusiveness,
protection of privacy kind of that's

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that's the values that also we stand for.
And in this program the the research and

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innovation actions that this is going to
fund should encourage when relevant open

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source software, open hardware design,
access to data, standardization

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activities. So everything that kind of our
communities have been doing and want to be

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doing so this is really a great
opportunity and we will see how this will

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end up because, and now I'm coming to the
to the crucial point of this call. It is a

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call for intermediaries so you're not
supposed to apply as a project directly

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for that kind of money because that just
too huge the amount of money that they're

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giving out in total budget just for this
call is 21.5 million just in 2018. So as

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intermediaries you can apply for these
fundings and they're split across three

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three different topics. One topic is
privacy technologies.The other is peer-to-

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peer technologies. And the third is kind
of data mining big data stuff. And these

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intermediaries then are responsible to
split up that funding and give it away to

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third parties and this is something that
Commission calls usually exclude. Usually

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they require you to develop everything in-
house and make it very hard to involve

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external participants. So this will be
interesting to follow, the deadline is in

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April and sometime maybe during the next
year we will see who got this money and

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how they're going to redistribute this.

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Now, for dealing with money I put this nice

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little piggy bank as a kind of contrast to
how dangerous actually funding can be if

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you don't think about it. So when you want
to deal with money and I'm probably not

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telling you any news as a as a project you
have to decide whether you want to start

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some kind of legal entity to help you with
that because at certain points you don't

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just don't want to have it go through one
individual. So you have the option of

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creating your own organization or you find
an organization -- an existing organization

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to partner with. In the hopes that it's
kind of less bureaucratic, you already have

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some kind of infrastructure, there's
hopefully already some accounting

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happening and all that stuff. So let's
look at the two different options. The one

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option starting your own is something that
a lot of people feel that is the way to go

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because they believe that they stay in
control, right. It's your own

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thing, you're not depending on some
external weird partner organization. But I

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I am warning from this model because
you're actually creating an organism when

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you create an organization you create some
organism and that organism develops its

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own life and then my experience with many
projects is that over time the

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organization swallows its people. And
you're contributing to something that you

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set out to be doing and in this
organization. Without necessarily taking a

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step back and deciding when to let go of
an organization or when to restructure it.

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It will defend itself. So, how do you do
this? What you see here is a very

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elaborate bylaws or chapter or the
articles of creation of your organization.

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And there's typically two ways to do this.
One you go and hire a lawyer and they come

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up with some draft document for you. This
is kind of very often the way that people

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do it in the US. In Europe mostly what you
do is you copy something, you compile it

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yourself. So in Europe you don't need a
lawyer to create organizations. You're not

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expected to get a lawyer involved. So what
happens then is that you look around you

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compare different articles from from
similar organizations and then quite often

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you copy different parts of these
documents together to form your own

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organization and the problem in both cases
is that here what happens is that you are

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getting some template that has governance
structure described. That does not

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necessarily match the governance structure
of your project and it does not

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necessarily match the values and the
spirit of a collaborative environment for

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open-source development. And this is even
more dangerous the kind of copypasta.

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Because you usually end up with a document
that is in itself incoherent because some

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of the articles at the beginning
contradict some articles coming later and

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when you talk to lawyers that see they see
this over and over again. So this is not

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something that just happens sometimes but
this is the usual case that this is not

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even coherent in itself. Let alone
coherent and compatible with how you

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actually want to run the project. And this
is this leads to kind of a feeling that

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you have to have these two worlds you you
think that there are some legal

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requirements for your organization that
that does not exactly fit the spirit. But

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there is opportunity there there is
opportunity there to to express the actual

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governance that you have in your project
and even like probably unwritten right you

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have some idea of how you want to work
together. So I caution people don't just

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copy and paste something don't go to your
lawyer and say I want to create a non-

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profit or I want to create a company
because you're getting the cheap kind of

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capitalist model of an organization. I
call this the stack overflow effect right

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it's copy pasting stuff from stackoverflow
and importing it and bootstrapping an

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organization like that. The alternative
that you have is using a fiscal sponsor

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that's the professional term for looking
for partner organization and partnering

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with an existing organization. And in the
free software space there's a bunch of

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those that you can pick from and all of
these include some guidance along the way

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especially if they're made for open source
projects and if they're already

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experienced with other projects. So this
is a newspaper article that in the LWN

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article. chooseafoundation.com is a
website that compares a bunch of the most

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prominent ones in the US. I want to
highlight the Commons Conservancy. The

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Commons Conservancy is a bit different
model it isn't actually a fiscal sponsor

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and it's it is a way to define your own
governance so independently of what kind

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of legal entities you're going to use. You
can use the material that the Commons

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Conservancy is producing to pick and
choose governance models. So they have

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documents about forking organizations for
example. So you not only forking the

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source code but really forking the
organization and what happens to the

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assets that the organization has domain
names trademarks and stuff like that. So

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ultimately in any case you will have to
talk about this ugly topic and that's why

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I use this kind of very ugly slide to talk
about governance because that's something

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that kind of the projects usually that I
work with are loose collectives, are

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politically motivated, come with anarchy
spirit, are kind of against any form of

00:22:09.220 --> 00:22:14.340
formal governance . Which is not exactly
what anarchism is about but that's a

00:22:14.340 --> 00:22:19.659
separate talk all together. Let's stick to
this. So what we have in open source

00:22:19.659 --> 00:22:27.110
actually is a lot of tools that have been
developed, that implement the governance

00:22:27.110 --> 00:22:34.750
models without it becoming kind of a long
written statements. So when you think

00:22:34.750 --> 00:22:40.790
about issue trackers, when you think about
mailing lists the way you interact on code

00:22:40.790 --> 00:22:48.409
with with revision control systems all of
that is an implementation of inherently of

00:22:48.409 --> 00:22:57.049
a governance model in open-source. And we
are lacking those tools in the other areas

00:22:57.049 --> 00:23:02.700
that become relevant for governance and
this is basically what I want to highlight

00:23:02.700 --> 00:23:08.950
in this talk so. But how do we go from
here? How do we take all these unwritten

00:23:08.950 --> 00:23:17.929
rules and this kind of spiritual or
ethical guidelines that that we come out

00:23:17.929 --> 00:23:21.799
and this will be very different from
organization to organization. How do we

00:23:21.799 --> 00:23:25.909
turn them into something that other people
can follow? And this is important

00:23:25.909 --> 00:23:31.960
especially during the phase where you
start receiving money because then you

00:23:31.960 --> 00:23:35.870
have to make a decision on how to spend
that money and you can still make the

00:23:35.870 --> 00:23:39.289
decision collectively. But over time you
bring in people maybe from different

00:23:39.289 --> 00:23:42.460
spaces and they're coming with a different
background, they're coming with a

00:23:42.460 --> 00:23:47.530
different set of ethical principles. And
they might be spoiled already by working

00:23:47.530 --> 00:23:52.399
in some bullshit company for a long time
and then they come and they take that,

00:23:52.399 --> 00:23:58.250
these these principles that they've
learned into your nice collaborative

00:23:58.250 --> 00:24:03.070
environment. And there's there's a
tendency and I see that in many places

00:24:03.070 --> 00:24:08.980
that as organizations grow up there's this
divide between the principles for the

00:24:08.980 --> 00:24:13.750
software development side and the
principles of how the organization is run.

00:24:13.750 --> 00:24:22.360
A very good book that talks about this in
a non-technical environment about

00:24:22.360 --> 00:24:28.960
organizations is this book. Frederic
Laloux "Reinventing Organizations" and for

00:24:28.960 --> 00:24:34.669
me this is very inspiring as a blueprint
for how you can actually copy the model,

00:24:34.669 --> 00:24:41.710
you will find a lot of material here where
you can see directly how it relates to the

00:24:41.710 --> 00:24:48.399
open source way of doing things. I picked
out the quote "Impressive! Brilliant! This

00:24:48.399 --> 00:24:53.010
book is a world changer!" and not because
I believe that it is but because actually

00:24:53.010 --> 00:25:00.941
as a bit of a warning because it's written
a very enthusiastic way. So sometimes you

00:25:00.941 --> 00:25:06.520
have to kind of let the author go and and
and but still continue reading there's a

00:25:06.520 --> 00:25:11.200
lot of good thinking material in there and
one thing I want to pick out is the

00:25:11.200 --> 00:25:15.259
sections where they talk about the
different governance models in terms of

00:25:15.259 --> 00:25:21.240
hierarchical structures compared to
consensus structures. And the third and

00:25:21.240 --> 00:25:27.019
the model that is highlighted across this
book is what they call the advice process.

00:25:27.019 --> 00:25:30.620
And when you look at the advice process in
that book it's basically what our

00:25:30.620 --> 00:25:35.299
communities know as rough consensus. So if
you have an idea you have the full

00:25:35.299 --> 00:25:40.750
authority to execute that idea. But you
are you are forced to get input, you're

00:25:40.750 --> 00:25:47.200
forced to get advice from the outside so
the only way to violate kind of rules is

00:25:47.200 --> 00:25:51.320
that you're not reaching out to relevant
people for advice and relevant people are

00:25:51.320 --> 00:25:55.080
the people that you work with are the
people that might have some good ideas

00:25:55.080 --> 00:26:00.290
around that topic. But they cannot block
you the authority stays with you for that

00:26:00.290 --> 00:26:07.990
decision. There's another really relevant
section especially given what's happening

00:26:07.990 --> 00:26:13.389
here with code of conducts and and all
this. Is the clear the need of clearly

00:26:13.389 --> 00:26:18.460
documented and explicit decision-making
processes. In a way that is compatible

00:26:18.460 --> 00:26:22.799
with that kind of thinking that you are a
self-organized group and yourself we want

00:26:22.799 --> 00:26:27.150
to strengthen the self organization in
that organization. And there's really

00:26:27.150 --> 00:26:32.750
interesting material in there that could
avoid some of the weird code of conduct

00:26:32.750 --> 00:26:36.909
stuff that has happened in our
communities. So I really encourage you to

00:26:36.909 --> 00:26:43.029
at least look at that section of the book.
Another interesting thing like they have a

00:26:43.029 --> 00:26:46.770
they had that he's looking at something
some comparing some different entities

00:26:46.770 --> 00:26:52.679
that use this model. In in in their own
ways and one of them is a multinational

00:26:52.679 --> 00:26:58.990
corporation in like active in 80 countries
or something with like 20,000 employees.

00:26:58.990 --> 00:27:02.759
And still they have this principle that
anyone in the organization can spend as

00:27:02.759 --> 00:27:06.669
much money as they want. As long as
they're following that advice principle

00:27:06.669 --> 00:27:14.120
that I mentioned earlier. Ao this is just
something to inspire you when you think

00:27:14.120 --> 00:27:17.399
about like managing money in an
organization and there's a bunch of

00:27:17.399 --> 00:27:24.899
projects starting to appear that are
trying to apply open-source principles to

00:27:24.899 --> 00:27:31.880
this. One is Co budget you're invited to
look at that. The other more known is open

00:27:31.880 --> 00:27:35.990
collective, open collective you can sign
up as an open-source project people can

00:27:35.990 --> 00:27:41.190
donate to your project and you can also
establish some transparency. Because a lot

00:27:41.190 --> 00:27:45.530
of time you lose that transparency of like
what is actually happening with that

00:27:45.530 --> 00:27:51.200
money, and who has access to that money
and who can spend that money. Just briefly

00:27:51.200 --> 00:27:55.860
something about funding sources I already
mentioned the "Lemonade Stand" list.

00:27:55.860 --> 00:28:02.620
There's like the three sections of like
small donor, private foundations, public

00:28:02.620 --> 00:28:09.220
funding. There's a lot to be said about
small donors but my when people ask me

00:28:09.220 --> 00:28:14.250
about crowdfunding and campaigning and
stuff like that I I'm very reluctant about

00:28:14.250 --> 00:28:19.539
that because it usually doesn't work. So
the the only thing that works in terms of

00:28:19.539 --> 00:28:24.510
raising money from small donors is that
you can show the support of the community

00:28:24.510 --> 00:28:29.679
and then get some larger donor to top that
up and and agree oh wow that project

00:28:29.679 --> 00:28:36.440
really has has users. It doesn't really
work that well to for in most cases that

00:28:36.440 --> 00:28:43.740
but that's very specific cases. So quickly
just dealing with funders some some of the

00:28:43.740 --> 00:28:49.779
learnings that I took away from from my
work in the previous years. One that I'm

00:28:49.779 --> 00:28:53.510
still struggling with is how can we make
this planning and writing grant

00:28:53.510 --> 00:28:59.200
applications fun. If any one of you has
some exciting ideas about gamification of

00:28:59.200 --> 00:29:06.880
of grant applications and I'm all ears.
And my advice is and and that's something

00:29:06.880 --> 00:29:12.830
that also a lot of people are making
mistakes there is that plans change.

00:29:12.830 --> 00:29:18.169
Right? You you you develop a plan you give
it to the funder it's maybe for one year

00:29:18.169 --> 00:29:23.320
or two year grant and they expect that
this is going to change because it has

00:29:23.320 --> 00:29:28.990
changed. It like there's no way that you
can follow that plan line by line but

00:29:28.990 --> 00:29:36.490
there's this it's it's mostly the side of
the recipient that feels kind of weird

00:29:36.490 --> 00:29:45.580
when you deviate from your plans. Do that
change your plans communicate this early

00:29:45.580 --> 00:29:48.770
and not because otherwise you're creating
trouble at the end of the project or

00:29:48.770 --> 00:29:55.649
you're doing stuff that you don't really
want to do anymore. In terms of writing

00:29:55.649 --> 00:30:00.539
grant applications a lot of things are
kind of a mistake that people are doing

00:30:00.539 --> 00:30:05.950
because they're like in the developer mode
of thinking. Is they think in terms of

00:30:05.950 --> 00:30:10.710
deliverables and deliverables in terms of
what kind of features can we add to the

00:30:10.710 --> 00:30:15.149
software. This is actually an art form
coming up with estimates for software

00:30:15.149 --> 00:30:19.179
development I encourage everyone to look
into the material about software

00:30:19.179 --> 00:30:23.970
estimation. Because it's kind of crazy I
cannot talk more about this because I'm

00:30:23.970 --> 00:30:29.090
already over time but one thing that I
still want to mention and this is the last

00:30:29.090 --> 00:30:34.850
slide. Is that in a lot of cases I've seen
that you can think about deliveries in a

00:30:34.850 --> 00:30:38.769
completely different way. You can think
about deliverables in a way that is

00:30:38.769 --> 00:30:43.779
actually supporting community growth
rather than just feature sets and the

00:30:43.779 --> 00:30:47.580
metrics of success that you can define
there because funders want some metrics of

00:30:47.580 --> 00:30:51.840
success demonstrated. Is the number of
people that are participating on your

00:30:51.840 --> 00:30:55.080
mailing lists, the number of people you
have in your IRC channel that's all that

00:30:55.080 --> 00:31:01.309
kind of stuff and redirecting some of the
funding to the more kind of community

00:31:01.309 --> 00:31:06.200
oriented hackathons, running events,
t-shirts and all that. You know about

00:31:06.200 --> 00:31:11.419
this, but usually in the moment of a grant
application that all that gets dropped and

00:31:11.419 --> 00:31:16.590
then you're struggling keeping that up so
now that I'm over time I'm going to skip

00:31:16.590 --> 00:31:29.169
like maybe a hundred of slides. And I'm
going to end with this slide. And thank

00:31:29.169 --> 00:31:38.619
you.
<i>Applause</i>

00:31:38.619 --> 00:31:43.810
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