Twelve documents, zero marketing slop: anatomy of an open source manifesto

The first draft of the manifesto suite consisted of nine documents with three different versions of the same paragraph left inline. The conclusion had two overlapping drafts stitched together. The values list included a broken sentence. “Greater good” appeared four times across four different documents. And the standalone Vision doc was 80% redundant with the Vision & Mission doc.

Editing matters more than writing. Anyone can produce aspirational documents. Making them internally consistent, legally defensible, operationally concrete, and free of the corporate slop that makes community readers close the tab — that’s the work.

What we cut: “proudly and enduringly open” (bumper sticker). “Let’s build it, together, in the open” (generic). “Our leadership and team are amazed by the power of open source” (not a credible sentiment we can claim for every member) – a marketing tagline that had made its way in the Product Vision.

What we added: an AI-Assisted Contribution Policy, a Security Disclosure Policy, a Contribution Guide (with the CLA-to-DCO transition), and a Governance Charter. These four documents didn’t exist in the original set. They exist now because a manifesto that says “we value transparency” without defining how to report a vulnerability or submit a PR is  just words.

The final suite:

1. Foreword (by Kiteworks Leadership)
2. Manifesto
3. Vision & Mission
4. Product Vision for oCIS
5. Engagement
6. Empowerment
7. Lessons Learned
8. Code of Conduct
9. AI-Assisted Contribution Policy
10. Security Disclosure Policy
11. Contribution Guide
12. Governance Charter

Every document will be public. Every document is open to feedback.

Tomorrow: what two forks can teach you about trust.

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This is part 8 of this blog post series.
See the earlier posts:

1. A (re)-introduction to the ownCloud community
2. What happens when you fork twice, get acquired, and keep shipping anyway
3. We killed our own CLA. Here’s why that’s a good thing
4. PHP 8.3. Yes, for Classic. Yes, we heard you
5. What 108 repositories taught us about open source hygiene
6. I’m a script kid running an OSPO. That’s the point
7. Your PR was written by an AI. We don’t care. (But we do have rules.)
8. Stewardship is not the same as control: A governance charter for people who’ve been burned before.