War-game an open source release before secrets, license conflict, or a competitor narrative land in a public repo you cannot un-ship cleanly.
Open source releases fail when private keys and internal URLs ride along, when license choice conflicts with dependencies, when maintainership is assumed rather than staffed, and when the public story overclaims what the code actually does. A clean README is not evidence that a careful and hostile read will leave your customers, counsel, and competitors uninterested.
Freeze the release
State what goes public, what stays private, the license, the maintainership plan, the security review owner, and the success metric after thirty days. Attach the candidate tree, dependency licenses, secret-scan results, and the launch note. If the release mixes a library, a brand story, and a hiring pitch, split them. A war game needs one move under fire at a time.
Write the decision you will make if the war game finds nothing new. Also write the delay criteria if a material secret scan, license conflict, or maintainer gap remains.
Seats that matter
- Security. Secrets, internal endpoints, and attack surface the scan may have missed.
- Legal. License conflicts, contribution terms, and claims the README should not make.
- Maintainer. Issue load, support expectations, and the staffing the launch implies.
- Competitor or journalist. The line that becomes the headline if contradicted by the code.
- Customer. Whether public code changes trust, roadmaps, or support boundaries.
Attach the same source pack to every seat. Secret exceptions for "we will clean it after" only create fake calm.
Loop the review
Feed Pingpong the candidate tree summary, license notes, and launch draft. First pass steelmans the release. Later passes attack from security, legal, maintainer, and competitor seats. Final pass turns surviving objections into a narrower tree, a delayed flip, or a hold. Agreement across passes is not proof. Keep the objections that still have evidence gaps.
Force a week-after narrative: what happens if a secret appears in history, if a dependency license blocks redistribution, or if issues flood a single unpaid maintainer. If those stories are stronger than your mitigation plan, fix the package before you flip the repo public. When the launch note announces a guarantee the code does not make, force legal and journalist seats to invent the FAQ you will need within a day. If you cannot answer with the same facts as the README, the package is not ready.
Pair with stress-test a security incident response, war-game a press release, war-game a partnership announcement, pretend you are the security lead, and the war-game decisions hub. See how to run a Pingpong and how it works.