Governance of decentralized autonomous organizations that produce open source software
Paul van Vulpen, Jozef Siu, Slinger Jansen
Abstract
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have found use in the governance of Open Source Software (OSS) projects. However, the governance of an OSS producing DAO should match the particularities of OSS production while also overcoming the existing challenges of decentralized governance. Existing decentralized governance frameworks do not contain all the governance activities of open source software projects. Therefore, this study presents a governance framework for DAOs that produce open source software. The framework is built upon a total of 34 articles on DAO and OSS governance. The framework was evaluated in three leading DAOs that produce open source software. The evaluation underscored the significance of the framework and proved the potential of the systematic categorization of governance mechanisms. Finally, we list emerging governance practices in various governance domains in this developing field.