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1. Nolan (nolan@toot.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2018 19:00:10 UTC Nolan

   Being an open-source maintainer is really hard. A lot of people tend to act very entitled towards you, as if you "owe" them your time or your attention.

   It's totally illogical: you put something out there for free, and now because of that, folks feel like they deserve more of it! And yet this is often the prevailing mood in OSS communities.

   At the same time, you may start to believe this logic yourself, leading to "open-source guilt." This often ends in burnout.

   • Hallå Kitteh repeated this.
   • Nolan (nolan@toot.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2018 19:02:11 UTC Nolan

     I also got some follow-up posts from other folks in the community, trying to give me advice on how not to burn out:

     - https://medium.com/@mikeal/time-to-leave-a68294ccb2af
     - http://writing.jan.io/2017/03/06/sustainable-open-source-the-maintainers-perspective-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-caring-and-love-open-source.html

     Ultimately, I followed Mikeal's advice and left the project. I was too burned out by that point.

     Hallå Kitteh repeated this.
   • Nolan (nolan@toot.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2018 19:02:29 UTC Nolan

     in reply to

     Here are some other great talks/posts on the subject of open-source guilt and maintainer burnout:

     - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIDb6VBO9os
     - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqcuzSwySR4
     - https://www.michaelbromley.co.uk/blog/why-i-havent-fixed-your-issue-yet/
     - http://thejameskyle.com/dear-javascript.html

     Hallå Kitteh repeated this.
   • Nolan (nolan@toot.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2018 19:02:58 UTC Nolan

     in reply to

     To conclude this thread: please don't treat open-source maintainers as the goose who laid the golden egg. They don't owe you anything. If they tell you it's too much work to maintain some piece of functionality, either offer to maintain it yourself or support them in their decision.

     Hallå Kitteh repeated this.
   • Nolan (nolan@toot.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2018 19:03:19 UTC Nolan

     in reply to

     Open-source software can be a huge mental burden on those who write it, but it also adds some incredible beauty and value to the world. It's a rare kind of software that tends to be an expression of someone's passion rather than the goals of some corporation or organization. Let's make sure there's more of it in the world.

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     Hallå Kitteh repeated this.
   • Drew DeVault (sir@cmpwn.com)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2018 19:37:40 UTC Drew DeVault

     in reply to

     @nolan I can totally relate. My solution is to hardly provide support at all to users - but I provide plenty of support to contributors. Everyone who contributes to my projects has their own agenda and their own list of things that are important to them (including me) and if there aren't any devs whose interests align with a user enough to fix their bug or implement their feature then that user is encouraged to write a patch themselves.

     Hallå Kitteh repeated this.
   • june (odinsdream@octodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 20-Jan-2018 20:13:57 UTC june

     in reply to

     @nolan this report examines the effect of this issue at scale:

     https://www.fordfoundation.org/library/reports-and-studies/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure/

     Hallå Kitteh repeated this.