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This is a discussion between Dirk Hohndel, VP & Chief Open Source Officer at VMware, and Swapnil Bhartiya, Founder & Host at TFiR, about the people aspect of open source. As committed as people are to their projects the fact is that often they leave their projects for various reasons. Projects should not come to a standstill as their key people leave. There should be systems in place that the project doesn’t suffer as its key people move on.

Timestamp:
00:01:48 – How much does a project suffer when key people leave?
00:03:16 – Projects should have the structure in place to survive the movement of key people
00:07:25 – As much as open-source projects come to exist organically, there must be a structure to it.
00:11:52 – Orientation of new contributors who have invested time in the project
00:14:53 – How can projects learn from established projects to build their own structure?
00:18:05 – Owner of the project should look beyond just pushing the code and think of themselves as managers of the project – Linus Torvalds is a great example here who has promoted himself to the role of a manager ;P
00:21:12 – At what point and stage of a project should you start thinking about a structure?
00:23:06 – Conclusion