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Who?

Github: dmitryvinn

Date: September 2019

Why?

Dmitry Vinnik offered second-hand insight into the reasons for disengagement in open source, specifically involving kindness and clarity on what’s going on with one’s project. Although Dmitry remains fairly active in open source, they share stories of their peers that left their open source communties. They cited a story from their peer who was bothered while on vacation.

“He posted this lovely picture of him enjoying the sun, jumping into the water and then someone made a great comment just that describes the, you know, some of the, not the nicest people. This comment was weird feedback to give to someone who’s enjoying vacation but that’s something we have to deal with, not very kind comments.” (2:08)

Although Dmitry initially refers to this as a “not very kind comment,” they later go on to emphasize how this caused their peer to leave open source completely. This treatment of their fellow contributor led Dmitry to find problems with the project policy such as the code of conduct.

“There is maybe the code of conduct but there is a lack of understanding and appreciation of how important it is, and that’s not going to work well.” (6:50)

Additionally, Dmitry saw the lack of project direction as fuel for these other problems. They felt that without a measure of success, everyone is just lost and this sense of hopelessness would lead those in the community to do sometimes questionable and problematic things.

“And lack of direction is also an important aspect in the area for us to easily burn out because it’s hard to measure success of dev rel hence we’re going to keep that in mind and try to figure out.” (13:29)

For reference:

Interventions

Dmitry hoped that everyone could treat each other with kindness both in and out of open source communities. They reccommend trying to emphasize with one’s community especially since they believe most people in open source are hoping to learn. Most of all, Dmitry emphasizes the need to see others as more than just “meaningless, faceless avatars” (9:03).