Shane is founder of Punderthings℠ LLC consultancy, helping organizations find better ways to engage with the critical open source projects that power modern technology and business. He blogs and tweets about open source governance and trademark issues, and has spoken at major technology conferences like ApacheCon, OSCON, All Things Open, Community Leadership Summit, and Ignite.
Shane Curcuru serves as VP Brand Management for the ASF, wrote the trademark and branding policies that cover all 200+ Apache® projects, and assists projects with defining and policing their trademarks, as well as negotiating agreements with various software vendors using Apache software brands. Shane is serving a seventh term as an elected Director of the ASF, providing governance oversight, community mentoring, and fiscal review for all Apache projects.
Otherwise, Shane is: a father and husband, a BMW driver and punny guy. Oh, and we have cats! Follow @ShaneCurcuru and read about open source communities and see my FOSS Foundation directory.
Authored Comments
I would think the PATENTS clause would be discriminatory because it only protects Facebook's patents, not the patent rights of any other potential contributors to React itself. There are over 1,000 contributors to React.js, so I don't see how this helps the non-FB employees.
Separately: "Apache Software Foundation", please. 8-)
Making progress towards clear objectives is the most important thing, so yes, you sometimes need to make decisions and work even without full consensus.
The big question for the modern world: how can we quantify the different levels of consensus or ways that leaders make final decisions in traditional settings (i.e. corporations following OpenOrg principles) versus in open source projects (i.e. various contributors from around the world)?
In a traditional corporation - no matter how open - the CEO or board can simply make a decision and enforce it. There are various ways that hierarchy still has some power even when seeking consensus. But those don't (necessarily) translate to open source governance, where the participants don't have any external or financial hierarchy.