--- title: "Merge Conflicts: what happens when open source governance procedures aren’t written down?" date: 2026-11-02 author: "Courtney Robertson" featured_image: "https://courtneyr.dev/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/merge-conflicts-1.png" categories: - name: "WordPress" url: "/category/wptips.md" - name: "Open Source" url: "/category/open-source.md" tags: - name: "open source governance" url: "/tag/open-source-governance.md" - name: "Merge Conflicts" url: "/tag/merge-conflicts.md" - name: "WordCamp" url: "/tag/wordcamp.md" - name: "wordpress" url: "/tag/wordpress.md" - name: "community" url: "/tag/community.md" - name: "training" url: "/tag/training.md" - name: "open source" url: "/tag/open-source.md" --- # Merge Conflicts: what happens when open source governance procedures aren’t written down? On September 20, 2024, I stood at a microphone at WordCamp US and asked who decides. Merge Conflicts is my long answer: who decides in open source projects, how, and who can review it. Twelve projects answer the same questions about their open source governance procedures. I’ll show you the documents, label the evidence, and tell you where I stand. ## 🎤 I asked on stage, and now I’m in the record *I work at Pantheon, a WordPress and Drupal host. In 2024 I worked at GoDaddy. Every relationship that bears on this series is one click below.* Who’s writing this, and every relationship that bears on it- **Pantheon**, my current employer, is a WordPress and Drupal host; I wrote about [my first day at Pantheon](https://courtneyr.dev/2026/09/14/day-one-at-pantheon-good-docs-good-company/). That covers every hosting post and Drupal as a compared project. - **GoDaddy**, where I managed its Five for the Future contributors until July 2026; I wrote about [what came next after GoDaddy](https://courtneyr.dev/2026/08/17/whats-next-open-source-sbom-docs/). It applies to Five for the Future posts and 2022 material. - **FAIR**, where I sit on the FAIR Package Manager Technical Steering Committee. Any FAIR post carries it. - **The WPOCC**, where I’m a co-founding board member. Posts about community nonprofits and funding carry it. - **The WordPress Training Team**, where I’m a faculty member and a former team rep. It applies to Training Team posts, including this one. - **Questions I asked on stage** at WordCamp US 2024 (September 20, 2024), the WordCamp Europe 2025 fireside (June 7, 2025) and WordCamp Canada 2025. - **My own words appear in court exhibits** in *WPEngine v. Automattic*: Dkt. 18-28 and 107-4 (the question below), Dkt. 18-5 (a September 27, 2024 WP Minute conversation) and Dkt. 69-16.[1](#1b3ffb2e-81c4-4e69-9539-d2e605cef652) The series reports that litigation in pairs. I don’t characterize the exhibits. ## 🎬 What I asked, from the public video [Source-derived](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) Here’s what I asked, from [the public video of the WordCamp US 2024 Q&A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnI-QcVSwMU), between 20:20 and 22:13.[2](#6f7601e4-b90b-4054-bd57-5620a0db64c0) It’s from the auto caption, with punctuation added and no words changed, until I check it against the video. The player below starts at 20:20, where my question begins, and the auto caption runs beside it as a transcript. Captions and an interactive transcript are in the player controls (Transcript button).> Hey Matt, howdy. Courtney Robertson, Developer Advocate at GoDaddy. I like to ask Matt questions at a lot of our WordCamps. In Europe we mentioned the Contributor Dashboards, and since then I had done some research, and you were interested in the findings of that research. It is transparency about the contribution that is happening. There’s a post on make.wordpress.org/project, and it’s an MVP. We’re using data that we’re getting right now from a few sources, such as the numbers we’re manually cranking from Meetup, but we have got some tooling that could pull in our stats from GitHub, was talking with Auto\[mattic\] and Meta about getting our data from Trac, better ways of tracking with GatherPress, which is a potential Meetup replacement. So we’re bringing transparency about the contribution that is happening. ## 🔥 The hard part, verbatim > Hard part. I’ve been on the receiving end, and I want to say this with all due respect, I’ve been on the receiving end about improving contribution, and this is why I am dedicating most of my time between now and the end of the calendar year to continuing to improve these contributor dashboards. Because the change that you called out about GoDaddy in this process this week, I saw massive improvements in understanding and how we can further that contribution and those contribution mechanisms. I was in some meetings with my team about these things, and I feel really good about this. When we name and shame, I want to know, from a leadership perspective, have we gone to the top leaders that you’ve shared, and have you tried to work channels without it becoming an incident? Because I’ve been on the other side. ## 🧷 What I meant by “hard part” I said “hard part” out loud because it was. For a minute afterward I wasn’t sure whether I’d asked a question or confessed something. The answer is on the same video. I’m not quoting it; the series has a rule about that, and I’ll get to it. My words from that minute now sit in a federal court record, under docket numbers 18-28 and 107-4.[3](#f221eab8-3a29-44c0-afd9-373db3a367e9) I’ve asked who decides in open source three times, at three WordCamps. I asked it because of a room. ## 🚪 Nine years earlier, I was walked out of a room *This section is my account. Nothing in it is a finding. The public record sits right beside it.* December 2015. Philadelphia, the Community Summit and WordCamp US. A project leader our team waited on for approvals pulled my co-rep and me into a private room. They told us we were using the wrong words. We’d been calling ourselves training team leads; the title “lead,” they said, belonged to core. Our slide decks for WordCamp and meetup organizers had to go too; we’d stop saying “slides.” I was no longer a lead, they said. A new sponsored, full time contributor, they added, would be joining the team. That contributor was in the room, and from where I sat looked as blindsided as I felt. Then they walked me out and continued the meeting with the other two. I felt small, diminished in a way I couldn’t quite name, and I didn’t have the standing to say so. No title, no seniority, no evidence to point to that would make my discomfort legitimate in anyone else’s eyes. So I stayed quiet and carried it alone. I left believing I’d done something wrong, replaying the moment over and over, searching for the misstep, and no one had shown me a written rule. We didn’t have a procedure about what to do now and it would’ve gone to the very same person that had escorted me to the room. I had a vague, unshakable sense that I had failed some unspoken standard, one that existed only in the room where it happened and nowhere else ## 🧾 Now the written rules, mostly in my own handwriting [Verified](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) Six months earlier, on June 16, 2015, I wrote [the team’s June 16, 2015 meeting recap](https://make.wordpress.org/training/2015/06/16/hello-recap-of-last-meeting-evolving-team/) myself. Under “Evolving team roles” it lists “Team Reps (@courtneyengle and @bethsoderberg).”[4](#ae6ae2b8-7013-47e4-b660-fe00abc0410c) So in writing, I was already a rep, not a lead. In the room, in my memory, we were leads. Both are true, and the gap between them is what this series means by open source governance procedures: the written ones, and the ones made in rooms. [Verified](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) My co-rep wrote [the recap of the team’s December 8, 2015 meeting](https://make.wordpress.org/training/2015/12/09/recap-of-december-8-2015-meeting/). It says we “met with” the same leader, who “helped reset the focus of the team to be on creating lesson plans that will fit into four tiers.” It adds that “we will not address slides again as a group until all lesson plans are written.”[5](#3616dc99-b0d1-45b2-9502-d5155730956f) [Verified](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) On December 15, I posted [the four tiers for workshops](https://make.wordpress.org/training/2015/12/15/4-tiers-for-workshops/) myself. The post opens “As planned by” that leader “during Community Summit.”[6](#f3cd67fd-6b55-4bac-9d7b-f53936e324bd) In other words, the public record says the team decided. My account says it was decided for us in a room. I wrote both. ## 🔎 Belief and record, side by side [Unknown](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) I believed, that week, that the team could be shut down. The research behind this series read every captured message from that leader in the team’s channel. None called for the team to close, pause or disband.[7](#3c5c9812-c254-431e-8a54-59b6d1d9f079) Belief and record, side by side. That’s the format for the whole series. [Unknown](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) I never formally stepped down. I stopped showing up. No public post marks the end of my term, and I’m not going to pretend one does.[8](#36deaa73-60ff-4a5e-ab2a-a81c31393737) ## 🗂️ The open source governance procedures existed. Nobody linked to them. [Verified](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) Here’s the part I only learned while building this research, years later. The rules for what a team rep was, and what a rep had to do, lived at [make.wordpress.org/updates/team-reps/](https://make.wordpress.org/updates/team-reps/). The September 2015 capture of that page says it in writing: teams elect two reps “twice a year (December and June),” a rep who misses three updates “may be removed from the Team Rep role,” and “please avoid calling people Team Lead rather than Team Rep.”[9](#2bcebd21-2935-4d16-93a9-0dbacefb8e5b) Everything I was told in the room was already a published rule. The problem was that there was no navigation to get me to that page, and no one had told me this `/updates` site even existed. I was the one, years later, to request that the Updates team site be added to any navigation and pushed to have things explained, or clarified at least, to me before returning to contributing. [Verified](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) [![Internet Archive capture of the Team Reps page dated September 6, 2015, listing the open source governance procedures for team reps. Under Team Rep Orientation, the section The Title reads: please avoid calling people Team Lead rather than Team Rep.](https://courtneyr.dev/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/team-reps-page-2015-09-06-orientation-up.jpg)](https://web.archive.org/web/20150906205129/https://make.wordpress.org/updates/team-reps/)The written rules for a team rep, as captured by the Internet Archive on September 6, 2015. The bold line says to avoid calling people Team Lead.[Verified](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) The [make.wordpress.org](https://make.wordpress.org) front page, as captured on June 2, 2015, linked to thirteen team sites and not to /updates.[10](#0361b5d7-a9da-42d7-a0e0-505fbb64776c) [Verified](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) And [learn.wordpress.org ](https://learn.wordpress.org)was live on September 24, 2015, calling itself “a work in progress” that “will be your source for handbooks, downloadable training materials.”[11](#c41a4d82-d772-4e09-8faf-36f804bbddbd) [Account](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) **Our team, as I remember it, had no access to put anything there.** [Verified](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) [![Internet Archive capture of the Make WordPress front page dated June 2, 2015. A blue banner invites people to help make WordPress, above cards for the Core, Design, Mobile and Accessibility teams. No link to the updates site is visible.](https://courtneyr.dev/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/make-wordpress-front-page-2015-06-02-up.jpg)](https://web.archive.org/web/20150602113140/https://make.wordpress.org/)The Make WordPress front page as captured on June 2, 2015: thirteen team links, none to make.wordpress.org/updates.[Verified](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) [![Internet Archive capture of Learn WordPress dated September 24, 2015. A blue banner reads Level Up and says the new site is a work in progress that will be the source for handbooks and training materials. One post is listed, a San Diego troubleshooting workshop from March 2013.](https://courtneyr.dev/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/learn-wordpress-front-page-2015-09-24-up.jpg)](https://web.archive.org/web/20150924145201/https://learn.wordpress.org/)learn.wordpress.org as captured on September 24, 2015: live, calling itself a work in progress, with one post.So the open source governance procedures for my role were published on a site I’d never heard of, linked from nowhere I went. In git terms, the README was on a branch nobody told me existed. Check it yourself: the three archive captures are above, and the footnotes say what each one shows. ## 📚 I stopped, then I taught the lessons anyway After that week, I stopped opening the team channel. I went quiet everywhere, not only in WordPress. Then I went back to teaching in a public high school. I taught the lesson plans we’d built, because they were good and students needed them. The work outlived the room. Eventually I came back, when a job made contribution part of the work and I needed those lesson plans again. I asked a community team member about resuming. Years had passed. The leader from the room had left the project’s work in 2016.[12](#3bb15f5e-5027-4074-93a3-1685ba0e6f79) The team had elected reps in the meantime, with a written time commitment and a written removal step.[13](#4451f3d7-4cdb-4b4d-b82d-353a509e8212) Something was finally on paper: written rules for the role. I’m writing this because I wanted someone to have written it when I made my first contribution. Not a warning. A map: here’s who decides, here’s where it’s written, here’s who you ask when you think a decision was wrong. If you’re new to all this, **you belong here**, and you don’t need the research vocabulary to start. I’ll teach it as we go. Finally, here’s what I want to be true in five years, said as a mechanism, not a demand of anyone. Decisions about people, access, and the top role have written rules and a review path. Every post in this series is a question pointed at that sentence. ## 🗺️ What open source governance procedures does Merge Conflicts compare? **Season 2 asks 12 projects the same questions about their open source governance procedures.** In alphabetical order: Backdrop, the CSS and HTML standards bodies, Drupal, Ghost, Joomla, MariaDB, MySQL, Node.js, OpenJS, PHP, TYPO3 and WordPress. Three supplemental cases sit beside them: xz-utils, ClassicPress, and Ruby Central with RubyGems.[14](#dffafb3d-a1d6-4147-a2e8-d80056e0a42d) WordPress is one row in every table, sorted like the others, with no special color. **Season 3 reads WordPress’s record through dated documents**, the way the room section did: a recap, a post, a capture, each dated. **Seasons 4 to 8 turn to how projects work, grow, license, fund and measure themselves.**[15](#fc8ac480-dc7e-4ca8-a3c2-52c4ce1626ff) Also, a few pieces are first person, like this one. Each says so at the top and keeps the account label through the end. What the series doesn’t compare: Python, Apache, and Kubernetes were in an older plan and stay out until someone researches them from primary documents.[16](#61d73afb-f4da-4c31-b782-c5058588a13e) If you came for Kubernetes governance, I’m sorry. The research didn’t go there. ## 🎯 What does it claim about who decides in open source? [Analysis](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-which-six-evidence-labels-do-the-merge-conflicts-methods-use) The claim, at this size, is supported by the evidence. For decisions about people, teams, access, and the top role, the WordPress record shows no written process and no review outside leadership.[17](#21ccbced-c6fe-478b-82b8-df2e3c0d5866) Not “WordPress has no process.” But the counter, in the same breath: team-level work in the research sample follows written governance procedures. Plugin and theme review, release squads, minimum PHP changes and security releases run on rules someone wrote down and published.[18](#aa228cc5-b923-47d3-8614-1f372c8e98c0) Season 3 shows the documents on both sides. ## 🏷️ How will you know what’s evidence about governance procedures? Every claim about a project’s open source governance procedures carries one of six labels, in the research’s own words.[19](#47a7c11d-62aa-44ef-a77f-eb95cd64474f) **Verified**: read in a primary document or record, cited with its passage. **Source-derived**: stated by a reliable secondary source, not yet checked against a primary record. **Account**: a named participant’s attributed account, never a finding, including mine. **Analysis**: the researcher’s reading of cited facts. **Hypothesis**: a claim to test. **Unknown**: searched for and not established, which isn’t the same as absent. Three rules also ride along. An account is never written as fact. Silence is never an admission; no reply, no record and no statement mean only that. And every number carries its date, because counts change as research continues. The full method, the counts and the corrections log live on [the Merge Conflicts methods page](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/). ## ⚖️ How does it stay fair, and who checks me? Twelve written rules govern every draft, each pass or fail.[20](#a405b9e1-4f0d-4fc6-93c7-865f225d7e15) The six you’ll feel most: 1. Structures, not people. 2. State reasons first, before describing anyone’s action. 3. Counterevidence beside every finding, in the same section. 4. Litigation reported in pairs. 5. No motive, ever. 6. Every post ends on questions you can use. The one that costs me the most is the lack of motive. You’ve watched me keep it about a room I still have feelings about. Before a post describes a named person’s or company’s action, they get the draft section and a stated deadline, and the post quotes any reply. This post describes no one’s decision but my own. The people in the room aren’t named here; the one name in the post sits inside my own words, spoken into a microphone in public. Meanwhile, corrections work in the open. Reply from your own site or in each post’s public discussion thread, and your reply shows up on the post. Prefer a quiet note? The contact form works. When a correction changes a claim, [the methods page](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/) logs what changed and when. The corrected claim stays visible. ## ❓ What open source governance procedures can you check in your own project? Next: 1.1, “What are the four freedoms of open source, and where does WordPress use them?” Follow along through [the Merge Conflicts series page](https://courtneyr.dev/series/merge-conflicts/), RSS, or the Field Notes newsletter. Before then, take these questions about open source governance procedures to whatever project you contribute to, and tell me what you find: 1. Can a title be taken away in a room, or only by a written step? 2. Is your project’s roles page linked from anywhere a volunteer actually goes? 3. Who hears it when a volunteer thinks a decision was wrong? 4. Where is your team’s charter, and who can change it? If you find a written answer to any of them, send it. That’s a merge I’d like to see. Footnotes (20)1. *WPEngine, Inc. v. Automattic Inc.*, docket entries 18-5, 18-28, 69-16 and 107-4, as listed in “Merge Conflicts series rules,” disclosures, 2026-10-30. [↩︎](#1b3ffb2e-81c4-4e69-9539-d2e605cef652-link) 2. “WordPress Co-Founder Matt Mullenweg’s Spiciest WordCamp Talk Ever!” YouTube video `fnI-QcVSwMU`, WordCamp US, September 20, 2024, 20:20 to 22:13. . Transcript supplied by Courtney Robertson (auto caption), 2026-10-31; video not opened in the drafting environment. The bracket in “Auto\[mattic\]” is the author’s. [↩︎](#6f7601e4-b90b-4054-bd57-5620a0db64c0-link) 3. *WPEngine, Inc. v. Automattic Inc.*, docket entries 18-5, 18-28, 69-16 and 107-4, as listed in “Merge Conflicts series rules,” disclosures, 2026-10-30. [↩︎](#f221eab8-3a29-44c0-afd9-373db3a367e9-link) 4. Courtney Robertson. “Recap of June 16, 2015.” Make WordPress Training. 2015-06-16. . Accessed 2026-10-31. [↩︎](#ae6ae2b8-7013-47e4-b660-fe00abc0410c-link) 5. Beth Soderberg. “Recap of December 8, 2015 Meeting.” Make WordPress Training. 2015-12-09. . Accessed 2026-10-31. The recap names the leader by handle; this post withholds the name at the author’s decision. [↩︎](#3616dc99-b0d1-45b2-9502-d5155730956f-link) 6. Courtney Robertson. “4 Tiers for Workshops.” Make WordPress Training. 2015-12-15. . Accessed 2026-10-31. The post’s opening line names the leader by handle; withheld here as above. [↩︎](#f3cd67fd-6b55-4bac-9d7b-f53936e324bd-link) 7. Governance dossier, lane XI, claims C-XI-031 and C-XI-039: 63 captured #training messages from the leader, 2014-10-30 to 2016-01-26, none discussing closing the team; 2015 and later captured by targeted search, so the set may be incomplete. Internal. 2026-10-28. How the dossier is built, and what it withholds: [the Merge Conflicts methods page](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-how-is-the-record-built-and-how-do-the-methods-handle-private-material). [↩︎](#3c5c9812-c254-431e-8a54-59b6d1d9f079-link) 8. Governance dossier, lane XI, claim C-XI-041: no public record found of when or how the 2015 rep term ended. Internal. 2026-10-28. How the dossier is built, and what it withholds: [the Merge Conflicts methods page](https://courtneyr.dev/merge-conflicts-methods/#h-how-is-the-record-built-and-how-do-the-methods-handle-private-material). [↩︎](#36deaa73-60ff-4a5e-ab2a-a81c31393737-link) 9. “Team Reps.” Make.WordPress.Org Updates, as captured by the Internet Archive on 2015-09-06. . Accessed 2026-10-31. The page’s sections: “Team Reps,” “Current Team Reps,” “Team Rep Orientation.” Quoted lines: elections “twice a year (December and June)”; “Missing three updates will cause your availability/dedication to the role to be questioned, and you may be removed from the Team Rep role”; “please avoid calling people Team Lead rather than Team Rep.” [↩︎](#2bcebd21-2935-4d16-93a9-0dbacefb8e5b-link) 10. Make WordPress front page, as captured by the Internet Archive on 2015-06-02. . Accessed 2026-10-31. Of 59 links on the page, 13 point to make.wordpress.org team sites (core, design, mobile, accessibility, polyglots, support, docs, themes, plugins, community, meta, training, flow) and none to make.wordpress.org/updates. [↩︎](#0361b5d7-a9da-42d7-a0e0-505fbb64776c-link) 11. “Learn WordPress.” learn.wordpress.org, as captured by the Internet Archive on 2015-09-24. . Accessed 2026-10-31. The page reads “Level Up!” and “This new site is a work in progress, and will be your source for handbooks, downloadable training materials, and information about educational events,” with one post, a San Diego troubleshooting workshop. [↩︎](#c41a4d82-d772-4e09-8faf-36f804bbddbd-link) 12. Beth Soderberg. “Recap of March 29, 2016 Meeting.” Make WordPress Training. 2016-03-29. . Accessed 2026-10-31. “Jen is transitioning out of work with the project.” See also Jeff Chandler. “In Case You Missed It, Issue 6.” WP Tavern. 2016-04-01. . Accessed 2026-10-31, reporting the departure from Automattic “after eight years to pursue other opportunities” and linking the author’s own post, “End of an Era (for me),” 2016-03-23, read in the Internet Archive capture of 2016-03-26, , accessed 2026-10-31: “On Friday I’ll be leaving my job at Automattic, and my position in the WordPress community.” The original domain now redirects elsewhere. [↩︎](#3bb15f5e-5027-4074-93a3-1685ba0e6f79-link) 13. `chanthaboune`. “Training Team Reps.” Make WordPress Training. 2016-11-29. . Accessed 2026-10-31. “It’s been a long time since we held elections”; “This role has a time commitment attached to it”; a rep who doesn’t meet it “will be removed from the role.” [↩︎](#4451f3d7-4cdb-4b4d-b82d-353a509e8212-link) 14. Courtney Robertson. “What does the series compare?” Merge Conflicts methods page, courtneyr.dev. 2026-10-31. . The public version of the series outline (internal, 2026-10-30). [↩︎](#dffafb3d-a1d6-4147-a2e8-d80056e0a42d-link) 15. Courtney Robertson. “What does the series compare?” Merge Conflicts methods page, courtneyr.dev. 2026-10-31. . The public version of the series outline (internal, 2026-10-30). [↩︎](#fc8ac480-dc7e-4ca8-a3c2-52c4ce1626ff-link) 16. Courtney Robertson. “What does the series compare?” Merge Conflicts methods page, courtneyr.dev. 2026-10-31. . The public version of the series outline (internal, 2026-10-30). [↩︎](#61d73afb-f4da-4c31-b782-c5058588a13e-link) 17. Courtney Robertson. “What does the series claim, and what cuts against it?” and “Which six evidence labels do the Merge Conflicts methods use?” Merge Conflicts methods page, courtneyr.dev. 2026-10-31. . The public version of the series rules (internal, 2026-10-30). [↩︎](#21ccbced-c6fe-478b-82b8-df2e3c0d5866-link) 18. Courtney Robertson. “What does the series claim, and what cuts against it?” and “Which six evidence labels do the Merge Conflicts methods use?” Merge Conflicts methods page, courtneyr.dev. 2026-10-31. . The public version of the series rules (internal, 2026-10-30). [↩︎](#aa228cc5-b923-47d3-8614-1f372c8e98c0-link) 19. Courtney Robertson. “What does the series claim, and what cuts against it?” and “Which six evidence labels do the Merge Conflicts methods use?” Merge Conflicts methods page, courtneyr.dev. 2026-10-31. . The public version of the series rules (internal, 2026-10-30). [↩︎](#47a7c11d-62aa-44ef-a77f-eb95cd64474f-link) 20. Courtney Robertson. “Which twelve fairness rules do these methods enforce?” Merge Conflicts methods page, courtneyr.dev. 2026-10-31. . All twelve rules in full. [↩︎](#a405b9e1-4f0d-4fc6-93c7-865f225d7e15-link) Also on:- [ website](https://fed.brid.gy) - [ Mastodon](https://m.courtneyr.co/@courtneyr/117549047854321100) [](https://courtneyr.dev/2026/11/02/open-source-governance-procedures/)Courtney RobertsonMerge Conflicts: what happens when open source governance procedures aren’t written down?