Duck Alignment Academy

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.

Posts

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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2023-05-31

MVP applies to teams, too

It’s hard to contain your enthusiasm when starting something new, but you have to pace yourself. Otherwise, the enthusiasm goes nowhere.

Posts

2023-05-26

Chat is not documentation

Chat is somewhat ephemeral. When you try to use it as a long-term resource — even if you have years of logs — it gets rough.

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2023-05-24

Just because you write it, that doesn’t mean they’ll read it

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. What happens if you write all of those wonderful words and they don’t get read?

Posts

2023-05-17

Are bug reporters contributors?

Whether they’re made by a contributor or not, bug reports are valuable contributions to your project. Treat them that way.

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2023-05-12

Use your tools, but write like you

We live in a time when we’re awash in tools (often free) that aid writing. You miss out when you don’t take advantage of these tools.

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2023-05-10

Keeping your bug tracker simple

Don’t try to make the perfect system from the beginning. Start with the basics. Solve problems after they become problems.

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2023-05-05

To grow an open source project, give up control

If the project structure shares leadership outside the company, it becomes more appealing to people outside the company.

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2023-05-03

Do release-blocking bugs have to be new?

If a bug existed in previous releases, should it block the upcoming release? There’s a case for “yes” and a case for “no”.

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