Governing the Open-Source Community: Challenges in an Evolving Landscape

Governance is a key aspect of software development, especially in Open-Source Software (OSS), where the collaborative nature of the process requires clear guidelines and policies to ensure effective decision-making and accountability. While some mature projects have established clear governance structures, many others rely on informal practices, which can lead to misunderstandings, conflicts, or lack of accountability. The rise of increasingly diverse contributors—including not only people from different backgrounds but also AI-powered agents—adds a new layer of complexity to governance. This raises important questions: Who gets to decide? How are rules enforced? And how do communities remain transparent and fair when the lines between human and non-human contributors blur? In this talk, we will explore the growing governance challenges facing OSS projects, why they matter for the sustainability of open collaboration, and potential pathways to making governance more explicit, transpare