Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software

by Nadia Asparouhova

In his 1975 book The Mythical Man-Month, Fred Brooks tackles the problem of organizational design for teams building software. He cites an idea from computer scientist Harlan Mills, who suggests organizing developers like a surgical team, “rather than a hog-butchering team.”140 In the surgical-team model, there is a “chief programmer,” who, like a surgeon, sets the project’s specifications and design. The surgeon has a “copilot,” who serves as their confidante and right arm. Then there are a number of supporting roles, including someone who handles money and administration, someone who writes documentation, and so on. But Brooks first proposed this concept at a time when writing code was significantly more cumbersome than it is today. In addition, it can be difficult—politically and practically—to identify and appoint the right “chief programmer” on modern software teams, although informally there are junior and senior developers, as well as engineering managers who set priorities for the team. It’s not common to hear developers employed at your typical software company talk about themselves like a surgical team. However, the surgical-team concept is useful for explaining the different roles in an open source software project, because maintainers have a set of indisputable responsibilities and permissions that other contributors do not. In particular, projects with centralized communities are centered around one or a few maintainers who play the role of surgeon, with other...