On Being a Free Software Maintainer
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On Being a Free Software Maintainer
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Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer
#2This has not been my experience. I maintain various popular and not-so-popular projects (although maybe not to the level of gnome calendar) and I just work as much as I want. If I don't feel like handling an issue right then, I say I won't have time soon and that PRs are appreciated.
The vast majority of people are understanding, I don't remember anyone making a fuss about it.
Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer
#3This has not been my experience. I maintain various popular and not-so-popular projects (although maybe not to the level of gnome calendar) and I just work as much as I want. If I don't feel like handling an issue right then, I say I won't have time soon and that PRs are appreciated. The vast majority of people are understanding, I don't remember anyone making a fuss about it.
Maybe because the consumers of your work are developers? GNOME Calendar (the OP's project) is an app for end users.
Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer
#4This has been discussed before and it has been true for me as well. I don't have a large, super-popular package I maintain, but several lesser known ones, some of which I wrote, and several of which I just adopted and passively became a maintainer over time.
At some point the pressure from the community made me pass the magical threshold between fun/useful/rewarding and downright chore.
It has permanently changed my perception of OSS management, to the point that I stopped releasing further projects, no matter how small, simply due to the work that these entail.
Just look at the discussions you find here monthly about being "a good author/maintainer/leader", where most expect full documentation, professional landing pages, useless code of conduct, and so on... BESIDES the project itself. You'll be criticized irregardless.
I have deep respect for the maintainers of popular OSS projects because of the amount of s*it they must take. I know I wouldn't do it for free at these scales. I also wouldn't do it besides another job since it is so demanding.
Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer
#5This has not been my experience. I maintain various popular and not-so-popular projects (although maybe not to the level of gnome calendar) and I just work as much as I want. If I don't feel like handling an issue right then, I say I won't have time soon and that PRs are appreciated. The vast majority of people are understanding, I don't remember anyone making a fuss about it.
Maybe because the consumers of your work are developers? GNOME Calendar (the OP's project) is an app for end users.
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Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer
#6Are there any benefits to being a free software maintainer beyond the obvious pride and satisfaction that comes with the role? For example, is this something that people mention on their resumes? Does getting a job become easier and when you do, can you negotiate higher salaries?
Our world is incredibly indebted to Free Software Maintainers and I wonder how we can pay them back in our little ways.
Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer
#7This has been discussed before and it has been true for me as well. I don't have a large, super-popular package I maintain, but several lesser known ones, some of which I wrote, and several of which I just adopted and passively became a maintainer over time. At some point the pressure from the community made me pass the magical threshold between fun/useful/rewarding and downright chore. It has permanently changed my…
> You'll be criticized irregardless.
For me this is one of our flaws as society. When we like something we just continue with our lives. When there is something that we do not like we stop to say so.
One of the best learnings I got as a manager is to give positive feedback. So, employees know how much we appreciate their job, and that we see their value. And just that one time that it does not work out, I will give them feedback to improve.
But, I realize how little I have applied this with OSS and on-line in general. I rarely stop to say thank your for your comment, it was informative. Even, that I may donate some money I never stop to say thank you to the maintainers of OSS.
So, that's probably why you mainly hear complains and comments from seemly entitled people.
Thank you for sharing your experience it gave me a perspective to think about.
Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer
#8> People really do find their way to you.
Sigh... and everyone else thinks programming is a lonely job.
Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer
#9Are there any benefits to being a free software maintainer beyond the obvious pride and satisfaction that comes with the role? For example, is this something that people mention on their resumes? Does getting a job become easier and when you do, can you negotiate higher salaries? Our world is incredibly indebted to Free Software Maintainers and I wonder how we can pay them back in our little ways.
People can use sites like Open Collective, Patreon or the likes to directly pay open source projects or people involved with them. There's a lot of different platforms for this and I don't even know half of them. If there's a project you'd like to support, check if they take monetary contributions somewhere and if not, maybe suggest it to them and start donating :)
Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer
#10Are there any benefits to being a free software maintainer beyond the obvious pride and satisfaction that comes with the role? For example, is this something that people mention on their resumes? Does getting a job become easier and when you do, can you negotiate higher salaries? Our world is incredibly indebted to Free Software Maintainers and I wonder how we can pay them back in our little ways.
In my limited experience, I'm not sure it's an advantage.
You do get to break the ice faster during interviews and contacting new clients. But it can easily backfire as well: people will ask why "project X" is not up to their coding standards, why you didn't contribute to "X" and/or why "X" has not been fixed yet.
Not everybody seem to grasp this notion that these might not be professional products.
I often discuss with my friends that do not have any public projects to show off during interviews. It really doesn't seem to affect the outcome, unless the company in itself is interested in one of your projects (which is pretty rare considering the breadth of OSS).