Leadership in open source projects involves shouldering responsibility to ensure work gets done without roadblocks. It means communicating a shared vision, coordinating activities, and mentoring others. Effective leadership requires attributes like honesty, fairness, and approachability. Leaders must self-reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, and receive feedback without defensiveness. Mentoring is important for developing skills and norms, with key aspects including setting expectations, giving feedback, and experiential learning.

1. Leadership in Open Source
scott.wilson@it.ox.ac.uk
@scottbw

2. What I’ll be covering in this session
1.
2.
3.
4.
What is leadership in an OSS project?
Leadership attributes, character and styles
Mentoring
Leadership communications

3. 1. What is leadership in OSS?
Leadership is really just
common sense. Which is why
its so difficult.

4. If your actions inspire
others to dream more,
learn more, do more
and become more,
you are a leader
John Quincy Adams

5. What is leadership?
• Leadership is a characteristic that can be
demonstrated in any role, in any function, and at
any time
• Leadership is about the tone of our behaviour,
not a set of rules to be followed
• Leadership is not doing everything yourself

6. Management is not leadership?
Managers
Leaders
Follow Rules
Follow Instincts
Focus on getting things
done
Focus on getting the right
things done
Side with safety
Side with risk
Focus on delivering today
Focus on articulating
tomorrow
Mark Anderson: The Leadership Book

7. Does OSS need leadership?
“… what is leadership in open source communities? It's
accountability. It's shouldering the responsibility for
making sure work gets done. Largely that means
making sure that those who want to do work can do it that there are no roadblocks for those doing the work.
It may also mean doing the work yourself if no one else
steps up. Sadly, many people don't realize this and
work towards attaining leadership roles ... This almost
always fails in a community ... In short, if there's a
change you want made, and you aren't participating in
making it happen, then you aren't doing it the open
source way.” - David Nalley

8. Cooperation vs. Collaboration
The genius of open source has been
to break projects into chunks where
people can go and work in isolation.
Then bring it back and fold it into the
project.
This is what makes projects efficient.
Always be thinking about how you
can make problems into cooperative problems, rather than
collaborative problems.
David Eaves

9. Management in cooperative work is
through leadership
- communicate the vision, tone and norms
- ensure appropriate division of work to prevent
deadlocks and stalling
- minimize overlaps that can cause conflict
- facilitate communication over shared concerns
and overlaps
- shepherd occasional larger-scale strategic
refactoring

10. In summary…
OSS projects are social capital:
leadership is about growing and
directing that social capital

11. 2. Leadership attributes, character
and styles

12. Leadership Attributes

13. Standard Bearers
Establish the ethical framework of an organisation
Set the tone of work by their demeanor
Set the norms of work through their behaviour

14. Developers
Help others through teaching and mentoring
Take opportunities both to learn and to teach

15. Integrators
Orchestrate the activities of the organisation
Articulate the vision of the future

16. ACTIVITY
Think about one OSS leader who you've worked
with in the past. How much did they act as
standard bearer, developer (of people) and
integrator?
Did they pay too much attention to one and
ignore the others, or did they balance out these
attributes?

17. Leadership Character

18. Leadership Character Traits
Demeanor
Principles
Visibility
Honesty
Messaging
Respect
Communicating direction
Fairness
Approachability
Clarity
Listening
Openness
Fairness
Collegiality
Performance mgt
Decisiveness
Personal development
Humility
Open to innovation
(Respect for) Diversity
Respecting diversity
Bravery
Mark Anderson: The Leadership Book

19. USMC:
Even more lists!
Justice
Judgment
Dependability
Initiative
Decisiveness
Tact
Integrity
Enthusiasm
Bearing
Unselfishness
Courage
Knowledge
Loyalty
Endurance
TPG:
Honest
Competent
Forward-looking
Inspiring
Intelligent
Fair-minded
Broad-minded
Courageous
Straightforward
Imaginative
Tanya Prive,
Forbes:
Honesty
Ability to delegate
Communication
Sense of humour
Confidence
Commitment
Positive Attitude
Creativity
Intuition
Ability to Inspire

20. OK, so..?
Don’t be too concerned with the lists..!
Take a process approach: appraise your
strengths and weaknesses, and devise
strategies to address what you see as problem
areas
To be a better leader, you need to take your
own personal development seriously

21. Self-analysis
To develop leadership character you should be
reflective and self-aware
Questionnaires and self-tests
can bring useful insights, even
when they are complete
nonsense

22. ACTIVITY
Reflective thinking is important for leaders - you need to calibrate and take an
outside view of your leadership behaviour and demeanour.
Ask yourself:
Am I fair?
Do I listen to others?
Do I take responsibility?
Do I care about other people?
Am I honest?
Am I willing to debate?
Do my colleagues trust me?
Where do I excel as a leader?
What are my weaknesses - where do I know I could do better?

23. Common mistakes by leaders
Lack of contact
Inconsistency in messaging
Unfairness in decision making
Taking feedback badly

24. How to Receive Feedback
Leaders need to analyse feedback rather than
just react to it
avoid temptation to be defensive, or
dismissive
avoid dwelling on negative feedback
thank people for feedback - even negative.
show you are listening - don't just respond
automatically, but demonstrate that you take
feedback seriously and are thinking it through

25. Common problems experienced by
leaders
Feelings of isolation
Dwelling on mistakes
Burnout
Arrogance
Doubt

26. Are you a leader, or just acting
like one? How could you tell the
difference?

27. Leadership Styles
Autocratic
Participative
Delegative

28. ACTIVITY
Complete the leadership styles
questionnaire - what is your preferred
leadership style?

29. 3. Mentoring

30. Why should I be a mentor?
Mentoring is a key part of leadership
Leaders are often the beneficiaries of mentoring
Leaders pass on their expertise and develop
their community through mentoring
Leaders support their own self-development by
mentoring others

31. Mentoring vs. Coaching
Mentoring is an indefinite, relationship based activity with several specific
but wide ranging goals…over an extended time period. The agenda is open
and continues to evolve... seeks to build wisdom – the ability to apply skills,
knowledge and experience to new situations and processes
Coaching involves ... meeting very specific objectives within a set period of
time … mainly concerned with performance and the development of certain
skills… there is usually a planned programme with a much shorter timeframe
than in mentoring, so the learning goals are usually determined in advance.
(However, often used interchangeably, e.g. GSoC is
probably “coaching” rather than “mentoring” according
to this definition)
CIMA: Mentoring and Coaching Topic Guide

32. What is mentoring for?
Developing knowledge
working with mentees to build their skills and knowledge, either
of the domain, or project-specific knowledge
Developing attitudes
working with mentees to develop their demeanor as a
community member
Reinforcing norms
working with mentees to encourage specific behaviours
Building commitment
encouraging deeper participation in the community

33. Key considerations for mentoring
Frequency of contact
realistically, how much time can you spend?
when do you want to be available?
Method of contact
f2f, skype, email…
Duration of partnership
do you want to set a limit? Or continue as long as you’re both
happy to?

34. Key considerations for mentoring
Confidentiality
Consider how you will handle confidential communications; for
example you may need to discuss difficult situations in the
community with mentees
Setting expectations
Be clear about what you are offering, particularly time and
contact commitments

35. Experiential learning
Adapted from David Kolb’s Learning Cycle

36. Giving feedback
Giving feedback is a crucial part of mentoring
Feedback should be frequent and timely
Be as specific and relevant as possible
I.e. “your method names should be more selfexplanatory and have comments to help other
developers” not “your code is sloppy”
Always acknowledge achievements and progress
Keep it simple and concise

37. Getting started
Nurturing early contributors
can start at any time, just identify a new
contributor, and offer to work with them
Mentoring in formal programmes
join an established programme, or start one up
for your project. Established programmes have
a support network and processes

38. Mentoring programmes
Google Summer of Code
https://developers.google.com/open-source/soc/
Outreach Programme for Women
https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen
ICFOSS
http://icfoss.org/mentor.html
VALS (forthcoming)

39. 4. Leadership communications

40. Leadership communication acts
Summation
Paraphrasing
Acknowledging
Decisions
Reframing
Unblocking
Individual follow-ups

41. ACTIVITY
Reflect on your communications with
your project - can you identify an
example where you have used one of the
communication actions we've listed?

42. Questions

43. Resources
• Mark Anderson, The Leadership Book (Financial Times Series)
• David Nalley, Leadership in Open Source Communities
http://opensource.com/business/11/2/leadership-open-sourcecommunities
• David Eaves, Wiki's and Open Source: Collaborative
or Cooperative? http://eaves.ca/2007/02/05/wikis-and-opensource-collaborative-or-cooperative/