Considering Personality Types In Open Source

In Open Source there is a major roadblock in getting things done that isn’t true in other areas of society. In society, money is exchanged, which incentives people to get jobs done. However, because there is no money exchanged in open source, people will only work because of some intrinsic motivation. Also because there is no money exchanged, people in charge of the open source project (or just involved in it in any way) need to be able to communicate these benefits to people properly so they become incentivized to work on the project. That is why it is very important to consider a persons personality and motivations when working with people in open source or in any group environment.

When working with other people, it is always important to consider the best way to communicate. The success of whatever you are communicating with this person for is dependent on your own abilities in reaching people.

An example of this is to consider if the other person is an extrovert or introvert. By considering this, it allows the person to think about how this person feels on any given day. What this shows us is what the person does in there free time. By knowing this, it will be much easier to see how they might want to work on an open source project. What would best motivate them to work on one during their free time? Will they prefer to recruit people and speak at events, or maybe monitor pull requests? Or maybe work on a new feature alone with little communication with others? Considering this helps teach leaders in the open source community to best recruit and work with others to create a happy, inclusive, and open environment.

Something else that is interesting to consider is how the Linux Founder Linus Torvalds maintained and built something as big and important as Linux since 1994. To get into his mind and how he was able to do this, consider reading this interview with him and Robert Young, the founder of Red Hat. What is really interesting about this article is that you get to see into the mind of someone who was such a brilliant open source maintainer. He says here that he used to be more of a programmer on the project, but as he got older he became more of a technical lead. The way he communicates with people is mostly by writing pseudocode or by making example patches now. So he takes a more hands-off approach and lets developers develop while also giving them advice on what he is looking for. This must be a good approach, considering how successful he is.

He says he had to modify his style of communication as he became a public figure over the years. Meaning he watched how people responded to him over the years and made the necessary changes in dealing with people based on personality type.

Regarding my own open source contributions, I am still waiting on coordinating with my group an approach to attack. Considering all the different ways to communicate with my team members to best reach them is what inspired this rant in the first place.