In my last post, I talked about the MonkeySpace conference conference and how it reflects positive trends in the future of open source in .NET. But getting to a better future is going to take some work on our part. And a key component of that is making NuGet better. Several discussions at MonkeySpace made it clear to me that there is some pervasive confusion and misconceptions about NuGet. It also made it clear that there are some dramatic changes needed for NuGet to continue to grow into a great open source project. In this post, I’ll cover some...
I’ve seen a few recent tweets asking about what’s going on with NuGet since I left Microsoft. The fact is that the NuGet team has been hard at work on the release and have been discussing it in various public forums. I think the feeling of “quiet” might be due to the lack of blogging, which I can easily correct right now! In this post, I want to highlight a few things: What the NuGet team has been working on How you can track what we’re doing And how...
Mary Poppendieck writes the following in Unjust Deserts (pdf), a paper on compensation systems (emphasis mine), There is no greater de-motivator than a reward system that is perceived to be unfair. It doesn’t matter if the system is fair or not. If there is a perception of unfairness, then those who think that they have been treated unfairly will rapidly lose their motivation. Written over seven years ago, the paper is just as insightful and applicable today. For example, let’s apply it to the recent dust-up about the legitimacy...
Ok, this will be my last post on Twitter for the time being. My last two posts on the subject pointed out flaws with it, so I thought I’d follow up with something positive. A lot of people just don’t get Twitter, dismissing it as hype. I was firmly in that camp until I tried it, and now am a total Twit (Twitter addict). This morning as I stepped into the shower, I was wondering why Twitter has such a hold. Jeff Atwood calls it the combination of blogging and IM. But I had this nagging feeling that I’ve used...
A recent confrontational thread within the Subtext forums that I shared with Rob Conery got us into a discussion about the challenges of dealing with difficult members of an Open Source community. There are many approaches one can take. Some advocate not engaging disruptive community members. I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt at first. Rob often commends me for my paticence in dealing with users in the forums. Neither approach is necessarily better than the other. It’s a matter of style.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about running an Open Source project, it’s that it takes two key qualities.
First, you really...