@jessmartin and @danversf have started putting together thinking in the form of a website to problematize commons “resourcing” (eg funding, time, attention, coordination, etc) in the open source space.
https://sociotechnica.org/
They are already welcoming feedback, from the title, to topics covered, to the design of the microsite. This is going to be fast changing, so please add your comments and feedback below, and be aware that comments below might not reflect the site as it evolves.
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Firstly, thank you both for this work in trying to hash out a framework and an approach that is accessible for outsiders to be able to intelligently consider this problem and potential solutions.
Reading the sort of early iteration of the site, the things that jumped immediately to mind include:
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Historiography: there is no mention as to what came before, and where to situate this new approach. What I would expect to see here is mention of historical solutions (naming big foundations by name, talking about NSF, etc). Not in massive depth, but some quick mentions with links to resources to help people catch up to where you are.
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Definitions: Out of the gate I need to know what “sustainable” means? Especially coming into this thinking that devs can make like hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and when I look on OpenCollective I see just 10s and 100s of dollars being committed. Why should this not demoralize me? (there are other word definitions, but this one was the big one for me)
- Can your Roadmap aka “Proposed Solution” (5 steps) be simplified into:
- Understand historical context
- Create a stakeholder map to understand present context
- Build-Measure-Learn experimentation
- I think the thing you might want to call out here more is that you are BML-ing throughout the process. ie it isn’t serial
- also, after talking through this with Jess live, it seems that doing things like qualitative interviews as a form of learning is skipped here. Maybe that is coming in the Approach document?
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