Why does this site exist?
To promote the Collective Code Construction Contract (C4). To research its use in practice, not limited to Open Source/Free Software projects, but as part of an exploration to transpose the principles of C4 to other fields of community-led behaviours and actions. To share experiences made with anyone who might be interested.
C4 is the result of years of experience on how Open Source/Free Software communities work but also fail. It has learned from these experiences and draws some surprising conclusions on how to facilitate a goal-oriented, focused and inspiring way of working together.
This is desperately needed in these confusing, hype-driven times with lots of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). Is there a bettwer way to Get Stuff Done?
Reverse engineer C4
So we will go through the Lessons Learned that led to C4. Take it apart, explain, understand, discuss and apply those lessons back to our world — so we can get things done on many levels in better ways.
Some definitions
C4 has it’s rather unique way of contextualising the work in an Open Source/Free Software project. It is helpful to memorise some of these basic terms, that we will explore in more detail in future posts and articles.
- Contract Your project offers a public contract. It is your mission statement. It describes what offer you make to others in general terms and should be free of any technical details.
- Promises are the interface of your procject/contract to the real world. The things that are well defined in what they expect/accept and deliver as result. Also known as the API (Application Programming Interface) and/or ABI (Application Binary Interface). Promises have names for eternity. Their intent never changes. They are stable and reliable. Promises can get deprecated over time or replaced by new promises with ALWAYS new names.
- Problems are the way to ask for solutions. They are as small as possible imn scope. Not philosophical. Focus on the real problem. Solve it pragmatically. Move on.
Welcome To The Real C4
Notice how this abstract approach already eliminates a lot of potential for fundamental discussions? How it forces you to focus on immediate problems and solutions on a small scale, iteratively, guided by bigger principles (the Contract) instead of getting lost in philosophical meta-discussions that lead typically to more problems and disagreement but never to solutions?
Well. Welcome to the C4 way of thinking. May our journey begin!
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