Introduction

As software developers, we tend to deal with technical things for the most part. There are numerous reasons why some of us might have chosen this path. But one fact is certain: some things cannot be described in technical terms alone. Some may say that people are just biological machines, yet most our decisions are not driven just by logic, but also by our feelings and emotions, where feelings has a large influence in our decision-making processes.

While we can achieve something ourselves, we can only go as far as our sole efforts allow. That’s why humans have learnt to come together and collaborate to achieve a common goal. Due to the above, the human factor is what actually determines the end result. Nothing too extraordinary about it, to be honest!

The ability to collaborate in software development industry is no exception to above statement. Specifically, collaboration becomes a very important and outstanding aspect of the open-source software movement and its ethos. Due to this, the subject of this book is mainly focused on concepts like development philosophy, community-led development, governance model, and less about technical side of things. Godot Engine as an open-source project is used as a prominent example where poor decisions are caused by lack of understanding, incomplete and/or misleading disclosure of such vital information associated with those concepts to the worldwide community.

Given the importance of those concepts and being prerequisites for all truly successful open-source community-led projects out there, this book mostly reveals contradictory aspects of Godot Engine, where these concepts are neglected, ignored or even rejected by Godot’s toxic leadership, and hopefully you’re going to see why this makes Godot Engine destructive in relation to human values as a consequence.

This book challenges beliefs about what constitutes community-driven development approach in the context of open-source community, and toxic leadership which exploits the community-driven image for attaining unjust advantage by means of undue influence. Specifically, this books shows that Godot Engine’s development is not community-driven, nor based on any notion of democracy, meritocracy, or even do-ocracy, contrary to Godot followers’ existing assumptions about project’s de-facto decision-making process. This, of course, is not the only issue covered in this book.

If you’d like to build a healthy and trustworthy open-source project where people are not afraid to express their feedback, where individuals can express their authentic self, their conscience, creativity and critical thinking, this book is for you.