Sustaining Community
Tags: opensource, tauri, sustainability, productivity
Published: 2022-01-10 14:59:03

Open source is a complex entity composed of not only lines of code and miles of documentation, but also a living being that is nurtured by people from all walks of life. Young or old, experienced or beginner, corporate or independent, cis or fluid, Eastern or Western. No matter which reasons we choose to build and use open source software, one thing is clear: Together we are stronger.

[Tauri](https://tauri.studio), by its nature, seeks to be inclusionary. Whether rust maximalist or typescript pro, vue or svelte, windows or linux, dominator or solidjs, frontend or backend — Tauri brings classically opposed and tribal communities together, because we know, deep in our hearts, that, just like ice cream, no modern framework is better than any other: It’s all just different flavours for different folks.

Obviously everyone has their own agenda, and seeks to further their own cause. And yet, by pulling on the same rope we are all moving toward a better system than we could ever make in proprietary isolation. This is the premise and promise of open source, and it is very clear that it works for Tauri. We are in the top 400 most starred projects on Github (out of 14million), we are about to release our horizontally and vertically audited 1.0 stable. We invite anyone interested to become a member of the working groups, and we are doing our best to stay transparent, remain accountable, and make the most elegant, secure, and resource-preserving system we can.

And yet in every family there can be stress, miscommunication, hurt feelings, and division. In open source, as with all types of community organising, there is not only a massive risk of burnout, but also alienation as a result of perceived entitlement. But the most terrible thing that can happen, is that volunteers work so hard at trying to help others, that they forget about not only taking care of themselves, but also that there are people on the other side of the screen who have real feelings. Frustration can boil over and they lash out to people who are just trying to get their problems solved.

Since Tauri’s inception, there have been several occasions where the tone of voice of some of us did not meet the mark of our own expectations of ourselves, and were in clear violation of our own [Code of Conduct](https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/blob/next/.github/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md). This was even a thematic topic on Hacker News, where frustrated people shared their horrible experiences with the larger community.  We are truly sorry for this, because we want to do better. 

It was a signal to all of us on the Tauri Board of Directors that self-policing doesn’t scale. We urgently need to double down on helping our community take care of itself. 

This is why today, we are making a call for a Lead Community Liason - a one or two-person team to help nurture the community, acting as role-models more than police, and assisting in the mediation of challenging acts of miscommunication. This role will be part time, can be done anywhere by anyone, and will be paid 100% from the donations that the community has made to the project. If you (or you and a friend) are interested in this freelancer position, love Tauri, and are able to write invoices to OPENCOLLECTIVE, please send your CV with relevant community experience to @nothingismagick on Discord. We will conduct interviews, and the final decision will be made by the Board of Directors.

Our hope is that by using donations to help the community be a safer and more inclusive space, that we are taking the right action to make Tauri a better and more sustainable Open Source project.