Jazzband is a cooperative experiment to reduce the stress of maintaining Open Source software projects. It aims at lowering the barrier of entrance for people willing to step up as maintainers and grants access to GitHub repositories hosted under the Jazzband GitHub organization to everyone who joins. It’s supposed to simplify the process of managing a volunteer project for the original author(s) and makes stepping away easier.
Its purpose can most easily be characterized as “relief”:
Relief from the exhausting parts of being a maintainer — either of big or small software projects, widely used or only written for one task.
Relief of not knowing how to get a fix landed or a feature added as a user.
It normalizes the relationship between creators and consumers, between “core committers” and “end users”.
There are a few guidelines to follow before deciding to transfer existing projects to the Jazzband or creating a new one like agreeing to the Jazzband’s code of conduct.
Some optional features should also be considered to be used by the Jazzband projects to further improve the contribution workflow.
I guess some band members will want to take the lead singer role, but you know how it is not everyone is great at everything so let’s support them and enjoy the diversity – there is more to a band than its lead singer.
Assume positive intent when playing together in the band, but don’t hesitate to call out naysayers. Fix conflicts and differences of ideas by discussion and finding compromises. In other words: Play together.
My role will be the “roadie who also happens to play the guitar sometimes” – I’ll stay in the background and let the band members do their thing. See the Jazzband roadies page for others that have that role.
Sadly nothing of Jazzband will make financing Open Source software development easier – it’s currently out of scope of Jazzband. And I guess the music industry is a bad analogy to figure that out anyway.
But hey, at least you shouldn’t feel bad about moving on to your next “band” or “gig” only because you think you owe it to your “fans” to stick around. The Jazzband will have your back, just join and let’s see where it brings us.
Anyways, that’s all for now. Please feel free to learn more about Jazzband and the see FAQ in case you have more questions.
We are all part of this.
Written by Jannis Leidel on Dec 17, 2015, 10:27:00 AM