[londons_explore]

> value of governance in OSS

You are assuming that a strict and stable governance model is good for OSS.

But often it is the least stable projects with lots of hostile forks and huge mailing list arguments which turn out to be the most successful projects.

Strict and stable governance model is perhaps dull and turns away contributors who feel they will never get to the top of such a stable project with long timelines and complex procedures for everything.

[softwaredoug]

"Strict and stable" isn't quite the important feature, its being community-managed. Chaotic projects with lots of forks, and disorganized governance may be a sign that there is a strong community. If the chaos goes on forever, then you're going to probably lose people to the drama (or the forks themselves will eventually stabilize). If the chaos is short, spasmatic, and leads to a better outcome, then it was overall a good thing in the project's governance.

[londons_explore]

It's the difference between:

> "Ask bob on discord and he'll give you commit access to the repo"

and:

> "First you need to fill out the CLA and send 3 pull requests before you can then apply for committer access at the bi-monthly steering group committee. Present your case in an email to them at least 28 days beforehand, and make sure an existing committer seconds it"

[TylerE]

There are things people argue over, and things no one cares about.

[hodgesrm]

Can you give a couple examples of such projects?