You get to have exactly one top priority.

If there were more than one, it wouldn’t the “top”.

Compromises are excuses we justify with lies. We excuse a decision by saying: “well, we had this and this and that to think about”. It’s never true. Really, we just didn’t want to hurt anyone's feelings.

Making people feel good is our top priority now. Much better that everyone is happy.

We try to avoid conflict, we compromise, our top priority becomes a process, a set of ideals, or simply avoiding conflict itself is our top priority. And it shows in our products and in our communities.

Identifying the goal of a product is hard, making it your top priority is even harder.

Open source projects are lucky, the product’s goal is never the top priority, encouraging contribution is the top priority. Without contribution the project’s heart will stop beating.

If you make a decision that puts encouraging contribution second you’ve change your priorities. You are not encouraging contribution, something else has become more important. You’re slowly failing, you just don’t know it yet.

The compromises stack up, each one a small lie we tell ourselves and others until we believe them. Eventually contribution is no longer a priority at all, better to make everyone happy, better to avoid conflict, maybe better to not have a project at all.