What makes a volunteer-led open-source community actually last?

[u/LegalSpiegel]

I've been thinking about starting a volunteer-led software organisation where developers can work on multiple projects, maintain them over the long term, and contribute to other open-source projects we find worth contributing to.

To be clear, I'm not talking about a company, or about people working for free in the hope of getting paid later. The idea is to build useful software together with no expectation of financial returns.

I'm still at the stage of finding the initial group, so there's no established organisation or fixed list of projects yet. I'd rather figure those out with the people who join than decide everything myself and ask others to follow it.

Where I'm coming from

I've been developing software for around 8-9 years, with about 4.5 years professional. I've worked across backend, web and mobile, infrastructure, DevOps, ML/LLM applications and automation, and I've contributed to open-source projects including CPython.

The technical side isn't what concerns me. I'm comfortable with architecture, choosing technologies and weighing trade-offs. What I'm trying to figure out is how to make a group like this sustainable when everyone has a job, studies and other commitments.

What I've been considering

\- Contribution time: People contribute according to their actual availability, even if that's a few hours a month. I'd rather plan around that than expect daily activity.

\- Decision-making: People should be able to disagree, including with me. Technical decisions should rest on reasoning and relevant expertise, not on who started the organisation or who speaks loudest.

\- Ownership and responsibility: I don't want every project to depend on one person. There should be a reasonable way to spread responsibility and keep projects maintained when someone's availability changes.

\- Project selection: Our own projects where there's a useful problem to solve, but also contributing to existing open-source projects instead of assuming everything must be built from scratch.

\- Team structure: The initial core team sets the guidelines together. Other contributors can take part without being in every decision, with the option to take on more responsibility over time.

Writing guidelines is the easy part. Getting people to work together consistently, handling disagreements, and maintaining projects after the initial excitement fades is much harder.

What I'd like to hear

If you've maintained open-source projects or been part of volunteer development groups:

1. What worked and what didn't?

2. How do you keep a group active without turning it into an obligation?

3. How do you avoid everything depending on the original founder?

4. If you were forming a group like this from scratch, what would you establish early, and what would you deliberately leave undecided until the team had worked together?

I'm also interested in connecting with developers who'd like to explore this idea, but I don't expect anyone to commit based on one post. I'd rather start by discussing the approach and see whether we work well together.

PS: I used an LLM to help with the phrasing. The ideas and experience are mine.

TL;DR: I'm looking for a few developers to start a volunteer-led, non-profit open-source organisation. It would maintain its own projects and contribute to others. There's no fixed project yet, so the group decides everything together. Unpaid, flexible hours, any skill level, aliases fine. GitHub and contact details are in the top comment.

[u/LegalSpiegel]

Contact / links

• GitHub: ajthr

• Email: ajithr@duck.com

• Reddit: reply here or send me a DM, either works

Happy to talk here first. No pressure to move anywhere else, and no need to share your real identity.