Open source doesn’t have to be about leaders at the front and followers behind. The strongest communities are the ones that move forward together.
Don’t walk in front of me
I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me
I may not lead
Walk beside me, and
just be my friend.— often attributed to Albert Camus, though that attribution has never been definitively verified
That short poem has always stuck with me because it quietly dismantles the whole idea of hierarchy. It isn’t about leaders and followers, or heroes and spectators. It’s about companionship. And honestly, that’s one of the best ways I can describe Joomla.
Joomla doesn’t ask you to march behind a roadmap dictated by a single company, nor does it expect you to defer to a benevolent dictator at the front. Instead, it invites you to walk alongside it. To participate, to question, to build, and sometimes to argue — all as equals. That’s not a weakness of the project. It’s its defining strength.
In the Joomla world, nobody has all the answers. Core developers need site builders. Site builders need designers. Designers need translators. Translators need documentation writers. Documentation writers need people who will actually read the docs and say, “This bit doesn’t make sense.” Progress happens not because one person leads and everyone else follows, but because people move forward together, side by side.
People contribute for different reasons: for some it supports their day job, for others it’s a way to learn new skills or deepen existing ones, and for many it’s simply a hobby they enjoy. Joomla makes space for all of those motivations, without ranking them or demanding justification.
Leadership in Joomla reflects this same philosophy. It isn’t the traditional, corporate model of telling people what to do and measuring compliance. Instead, leadership is about coordination rather than command: helping people align their efforts, removing obstacles, and making sure contributors have what they need to complete a task. It’s leadership that walks alongside, not ahead barking instructions.
Open source is sometimes dismissed as chaotic or directionless because it doesn’t fit the neat shape of a traditional hierarchy. Joomla shows that direction doesn’t have to come from the front. It can emerge from collaboration, discussion, and mutual respect. Decisions are stronger when they’re shaped by many perspectives, not just imposed by authority.
That “walk beside me” mindset also explains why contribution looks different for everyone. Some people code every week. Others show up once or twice a year to fix a typo, test a patch, translate a string, or help at an event. Neither is more “correct” than the other. Joomla doesn’t need you to lead it, and it doesn’t need you to follow blindly. It just asks that, when you can, you walk alongside.
Friendship implies trust, patience, and the understanding that sometimes you’ll move at different speeds. Joomla has had moments where it surged ahead and moments where it deliberately slowed down to bring people with it. That isn’t failure. It’s empathy embedded into a technical project.
And maybe that’s the real reason so many of us stay. Not because Joomla has the largest market share, or dominates every trend, but because it treats us less like users or customers and more like friends walking the same path.
