Author: Ben Cotton

Ben formerly led open source messaging at Docker and was the Fedora Program Manager. He is the author of Program Management for Open Source Projects. Ben is an Open Organization Ambassador and frequent conference speaker. His personal website is Funnel Fiasco.

2023-08-02

Be careful how you treat AI-looking posts

When you prohibit anything that you think is AI-generated, you can end up creating an unwelcoming environment.

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2023-07-26

How to re-write your project

In most cases, the risk of rewriting your project isn’t worth the reward. When it is, the technical part is easy. People are the hard part.

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2023-07-19

A year of Program Management for Open Source Projects

Today, I celebrate the first anniversary of Program Management for Open Source Projects by answering questions from newsletter subscribers.

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2023-06-28

Separating announcements from discussion

The problem is rarely that the important information isn’t communicated. The problem is usually that people can’t find it.

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2023-06-21

How to take meeting notes

If you know how to take good meeting notes, you can help make the meeting useful.

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2023-06-14

Managing the attention budget

Contributors donate their precious time to your project. Make good use of it by managing the attention you require.

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2023-06-07

How a company should stop participating in an open source project

When participation in a community no longer meets business goals, it’s common to leave. The key is to have a graceful withdrawal strategy.

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2023-06-02

Is an accidentally reverted feature a release blocker?

You should have a policy in place, and it needs to be more sophisticated than “yes” or “no”. Decide when adding a feature if it should be release blocking or not.

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