The Ecclesiastes principle

Learning the lessonsof the past

Dave Neary, Red Hatdneary@redhat.com / @nearyd

Ecclesiastes 1:9What has been will be again,

what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

The Great Frontier

3 examples

ArchitectureCity planning

Diplomacy

Community intimacy gradient

● Public: Forum, public mailing list, ...● Semi-public: IRC, blog comments, ...● Semi-private: Moderated mailing list,

invitation-only IRC channel, BOFs/meet-ups, ...

● Private: Private email, phone, face to face

MixedUses

Professional Amateur

The projects that have been the most successful... are good at all sorts of “soft skills”

David Eaves

Harvard Negotiation Project

● Founded in 1970s● Been used in international peace negotiations,

business negotiations, ...

A typical “negotiation”

I'll give you 40 for it

40? It cost me more! I'll give it to

you for 70.

You're joking! I'll give you 50, not

a penny more! You're a good customer, I could go to 60,

not a penny lessI can go to 53,

but that's all the cash I have with me

Negotiation overview

Interests

Options

Legitimacy

Discussionspace

Relationship Communication

Negotiations in Open Source

● Mailing list discussions● Bug report closed as “Not a bug” and reopened● Patch review● Feature priority● Conflict resolution

Photo credits:Slide 1: CC by-sa 2.0 by doratagold on FlickrSlide 3: Public domainSlides 6-8: “A Pattern Language”, Alexander et alSlide 12: “The Death and Life if Great American Cities”, JacobsSlide 13: CC by-sa 3.0 by revizionist on WikipediaSlide 15: Public domainSlide 16: CC by 2.0. Pencil by taylor.a on flickr, Cassette by victoradrianramia on flickrSlide 18: © David Eaves

Thank you!