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FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects

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Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects

#11

Post by Tade0 »

PaywallBuster wrote: post #6

makes you wonder, babel say they can't live with 300k a year in funding but the 1000s of projects used by 1000s of devs to build 1000s of things barely get 10$ a month or even a year OSS donations should be more fairly distributed, not power law, rock star levels, where 1 project can get more funding than 99% of projects.

Babel is particularly shady, because before asking for this money they dropped making their own polyfills in favour of core-js, which turned out to be a bad move considering the main contributor of that library found himself doing time in a Russian penal colony.

Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects

#12

Post by esperent »

Tade0 wrote: post #11
PaywallBuster wrote: post #6

makes you wonder, babel say they can't live with 300k a year in funding but the 1000s of projects used by 1000s of devs to build 1000s of things barely get 10$ a month or even a year OSS donations should be more fairly distributed, not power law, rock star levels, where 1 project can get more funding than 99% of projects.

Babel is particularly shady, because before asking for this money they dropped making their own polyfills in favour of core-js, which turned out to be a bad move considering the main contributor of that library found himself doing time in a Russian penal colony.

Unfortunate about the maintainer of core-js. But how does that make Babel shady? Especially if they made the change before asking for money.

Sounds more like they were struggling with workload and made what, at the time, seemed like a reasonable decision to offload some of the work to another library.

Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects

#14

Post by phpnode »

esperent wrote: post #12
Tade0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Babel is particularly shady, because before asking for this money they dropped making their own polyfills in favour of core-js, which turned out to be a bad move considering the main contributor of that library found himself doing time in a Russian penal colony.

Unfortunate about the maintainer of core-js. But how does that make Babel shady? Especially if they made the change before asking for money. Sounds more like they were struggling with workload and made what, at the time, seemed like a reasonable decision to offload some of the work to another library.

Also the core-js maintainer single handedly carried that project, with no financial support from Babel (or hardly anyone else for that matter). It became a vital part of the ecosystem, and then the community hung him out to dry when he asked for more support. The whole thing was shameful, especially those who mocked him for his unfortunate personal situation.

Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects

#15

Post by cheschire »

Okay but how many FOSS projects decide to pivot like Ukuu did and just drop the F? If the free is killing you, stop being free. Leave your free repo as is, add a link to your purchase page for future versions.

Where’s the problem? People seem hell bent on sticking to core principles until their dying breath, but that’s not healthy.

Edit: and before people start laying into me about free as in speech/beer, this article is about the latter, not the former.

Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects

#16

Post by FiloSottile »

Open Source volunteerism is the result of the early hacking culture and of what makes the Internet special: people choose to experiment and share their work, and their work can reach every corner of the world. It has no significant parallel in other industries, it's beautiful, and I owe it my career.

However, it's not a sustainable, fair, or effective foundation for an industry with the responsibility to power modern society. We need the critical role of Open Source maintainer to professionalize. This is most likely to happen through capture by large intermediaries, but I wish to see it happen through the formation of a serious professional role, organized independently or in small firms, like lawyers.

This will require changes both from the maintainers [1] (become legible, get a LLC, send real invoices, offer guarantees) and from companies [2] (pay the maintainers, pay them real money, pay for maintenance, and keep paying them).

[1] https://words.filippo.io/professional-maintainers/

[2] https://words.filippo.io/pay-maintainers/

Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects

#17

Post by FiloSottile »

chernobogdan wrote: post #13

The situation can be improved by actually contributing instead of asking for features.

No, it can't. More contributions require more maintainer effort, not less, if you want the project to follow a design and pursue a goal, rather than be a kitchen sink.

Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects

#18

Post by draw_down »

PaywallBuster wrote: post #6

makes you wonder, babel say they can't live with 300k a year in funding but the 1000s of projects used by 1000s of devs to build 1000s of things barely get 10$ a month or even a year OSS donations should be more fairly distributed, not power law, rock star levels, where 1 project can get more funding than 99% of projects.

No post body was provided.

Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects

#19

Post by yakak »

FiloSottile wrote: post #16

Open Source volunteerism is the result of the early hacking culture and of what makes the Internet special: people choose to experiment and share their work, and their work can reach every corner of the world. It has no significant parallel in other industries, it's beautiful, and I owe it my career. However, it's not a sustainable, fair, or effective foundation for an industry with the responsibility to power modern…

The recent elementary OS melt down shows the problem with this path. Creating a business to act as a middle man creates a situation where no one can reach the people who want to do maintenance because business interests will develop and want to hold the code hostage. It is better to form non-profits that hire maintainers.

Re: FOSS devs are burning out, quitting, and even sabotaging their own projects

#20

Post by FiloSottile »

throwaways85989 wrote: post #4
xwdv wrote: post #3

If you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen.

Eh, what, this is not a kitchen. This is a hobby project, a child-toy-kitchen, some people seem to mistaken a a career. Patch is welcome and if you want software work for free, fork it and do your own work on it.

Is that really the outcome we want? That large companies fork all the OSS they need and take control away from the maintainers? Because it's what is going to happen if we don't build an alternative where maintainers have a proper career path.
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