Open Source Summit Europe 2022

Maslow’s Hammer refers to the adage that if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Non-profits serve open source project communities in very particular ways. Creating non-profits to support the community’s work takes skill and thoughtfulness, often as much as the work building the community itself around the project. The successful creation of the non-profit structure can lead to the next wave of growth for the community. An unhealthy non-profit is a drain on everyone’s energy.  This talk provides a framework for understanding how a non-profit solves certain inescapable problems that successful open source project communities encounter in their growth. It provides practices and processes and tools to engage partners in creating successful non-profits. It looks at a number of real world examples. Anti-patterns are presented along the way.