[Foundation-l] How not to manage opensource project

Sat Sep 2 14:04:17 UTC 2006

Jan Kulveit wrote:
> just a link-post, but IMO highly interesting
> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2006/08/30/0016.html
>
> often various examples how various free / opensource groups
> organize their matters are posted here: This is a post from 
> one of NetBSD founders describing what problems led the once
> prospective project into irrelevance. (management, culture, 
> Foundation going wrong,..)
>   

I find this part especially interesting, on the need for a strong 
separation between a Foundation that provides infrastructure and a 
community that manages the project:

6) The existing NetBSD Foundation must be disbanded, and replaced with
   an organization that fulfills its original purpose: to merely handle
   administrative issues, and not to manage day-to-day affairs.  The
   extra committees, which mostly do nothing, must be disbanded -- they
   serve only to obfuscate things.  Everything else must revert to the
   historically separate entity, the NetBSD Project, to be managed based
   on technical merits.  There must be no perceived glamour in
   participating in the Foundation; it must be composed of people doing
   it because they are dedicated and want to help the project.

-Mark