The Open Source Management Guide: Four Ways to Successfully Open Up Your Project Infrastructure

【51CTO.com Quick Translation】Open source means more than just releasing code - we also need to build a supporting infrastructure to invite people to join and contribute. In order to build a vibrant, growing and exciting project, the community needs to involve more people in governance, document writing, code creation and structural adjustments.

Although many projects claim to be "open everything," the doors to their infrastructure are often closed to access. Typically, open source projects rely on only a handful of people to manage their infrastructure and keep it running. While it's not safe to hand over the keys to the heart of the kingdom to everyone, we do need to place a certain level of trust in everyone involved.

The widespread adoption of infrastructure tools such as Ansible, Chef, and Puppet over the past few years means that the open source project's goal of infrastructure as code, which allows every contributor the same level of access, is now a reality.

To keep this momentum going, here are some key takeaways:

• Make decisions in the open: Use public mailing lists to discuss and plan infrastructure-related matters. Ensure that every step in the decision-making process comes from the community. Specifically, avoid any operation that is decided by a few people.
• Define infrastructure as code: Use Ansible, Puppet, or other configuration management tools to ensure that contributors can advance infrastructure. This makes it easier for developers and the broader community to define new types of tasks.
• Define infrastructure ownership: Clearly define infrastructure ownership and publish forensic results after failures. This transparency helps to increase community trust and encourage participants to contribute more actively.
• Clear contribution paths: Define clear paths for contributing to infrastructure. As a friend of mine said, "If you need root access to do your day-to-day work, it's a mistake."

However, in the process of opening up infrastructure, you will definitely encounter some problems. Here are some common problems and their solutions.

• You will inevitably change the status quo: When you change infrastructure processes, the existing working mechanisms will also be affected. This may cause some resentment among the team. Therefore, make sure to announce the plan in advance and implement the changes in a distributed manner. Stand on the team's side and actively fix any factors that affect productivity.
• There are always a lot of problems that need to be fixed in the infrastructure. Please note that in the face of such a complex and disorderly situation, it is best to record them one by one instead of fixing them immediately. The whole process of progress will be quite slow, but it is important to ensure that the effect is steady. Most importantly, don't be overwhelmed by these trivialities.
• Breaking the Rules: When making large-scale changes to processes and infrastructure, some rules will be broken. Ensure that the failures are captured and documented in an open manner. Establish plans to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
• The work never seems to end: And it really does—it never ends. Projects require changes to infrastructure, and they are never “done.” When you solve one problem, there’s another waiting to happen.

Most importantly, this openness does not simply mean distributing the control of the infrastructure to each contributor, but also means that everyone can participate in improving the related documentation and processes.

Original title: 4 ways to open up your project's infrastructure

Original author: Nigel Babu

[Translated by 51CTO. Please indicate the original translator and source as 51CTO.com when reprinting on partner sites]