There are No Adults in the Room: Learning how to Grow Up as a Team

<p><strong><em>What happens when your project grows up faster than you do?</em></strong></p> <p>The dynamics of the FOSS world allow for young and passionate developers to make real, lasting contributions; sometimes in places where they would otherwise never be taken seriously. As <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/26/rolling_rhino_reboot"><em>The Register</em> put it</a>, Rhino Linux was started by a "<em>teen dream team</em>". We had a bold, fast-paced start that threw us headfirst into the world of Linux maintainership. But while we shared the common goal of 'growing and improving' the distribution, our individual visions often diverged.</p> <p>Being taken seriously has its burdens, too. It's easy to get in over your head - to lose direction, burn out, or stop communicating altogether - especially when there are no adults in the room to offer guidance. We banded together by chance, and had to discover our own limits through trial and error. Saying '<em>no</em>' isn't easy, especially under the internal pressure to keep delivering at a steady pace, when everyone is deeply passionate about the project.</p> <p>FOSS is no stranger to ever-shifting team dynamics, or to developers biting off more than they can chew; challenges that are only accentuated when all involved are still growing up. It's easy to lose sight of when to step back, and when to recognize the need to scale. As we have come to learn, if you want to be a systems maintainer, you need to maintain your own systems, too.</p> <p>Join us as we retrace the human side of <a href="https://rhinolinux.org">Rhino Linux</a> - how we learned to build a team as young developers, what this project taught us about maturity, communication, and sustainability, and the lessons we hope others like us can take from our journey.</p>