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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

#61

Post by nisa »

jameshush wrote: post #38

I like what the React Training guys did with react-router: use the organic traffic from their library fuel their training business. Treat the FOSS project as your lead funnel, then sell a service to those leads. Maybe the service is training, maybe it's hosting the project (e.g Wordpress), perhaps it’s just leveraging it to get a lucrative job offer. You need to sell a service though on top of the project itself.

Please not. I understand that this kind of works and provides income for a lot of people but especially in the Wordpress world every plugin is just one huge piece of upsell ads with limited functionality. I don't blame the developers who do this but it's not a solution.

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

#62

Post by Icathian »

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…

There are an uncountable many "consultants" that basically did this, and use their GitHub basically for lead gen (I've gotten a good handful billable hours off people finding mediocre little packages I've posted for articles, and that's without even trying).

I think the disconnect is for devs that don't want to do that. But those same devs probably don't want to incorporate and go through the hassle of running their own business either. For them, who really just want to hack around and make software, I don't know if there's any real path. The whole value proposition of full time employment for a company is that someone else takes care of all that nonsense and you get to just do the thing you're trained for. Trying to extract that narrow piece out onto its own doesn't work well, and I honestly don't know if your solution really solves for that.

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

#63

Post by FooBarWidget »

I'm an open source maintainer. I have a different take. Yes many projects lack funding, but I'm hesitant to ask for funding for my projects. Because: what sort of social contract would it imply if people fund me? Should funders be elegible for faster response times? Should their feature requests be implemented with more priority, or must they guaranteed to be implemented? What are the expectations of me? Can I take an extended holiday and go offline for a while? None of this is well-specified.

One can argue that funds are donations and thus are free from attached strings, but psychology doesn't work that way. Funders will feel entitled to something, but what? You can see this pattern more obviously in Patreon: donors get something in return, such as faster access to content. So even though it's a "donation", people psychologically still experience it as a trade.

With Phusion Passenger, I've commercialized a open source project. The contract is clear: if you pay then we both know exactly what to expect from each other.

Formalizing the expectations to funders of my other open source projects, effectively turns those projects commercial. But to me, the appeal of my other projects is just that I can code on my own leisure, as a hobby, and give a gift to the community at the same time. It sucks that I have very little time for that because I work on those projects in my free time only, but I'm hesitant to turn those projects into "work" where I have to give guarantees in return for money.

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

#64

Post by kayodelycaon »

chernobogdan wrote: post #13

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

Yeah… no. I’m working on a pretty important project at my job that needs to be done well and as fast as possible without sacrificing quality. I’m writing code solo because I know exactly what I need to write and having to keep a second person in line would use so much time and energy, I wouldn’t get work done.

Don’t worry about the bus factor, other people know what I’m doing and I have a backup who can take over. Might delay the project a month or two, but the company can manage without me.

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

#65

Post by Mc91 »

antattack wrote: post #56

Recent security incidents have shown how quick open-source is to address vulnerabilities compared to closed source. It has shown that FOSS does not come w/o a cost (open-source does not mean free) and it's advantageous and necessary for companies to support FOSS financially.

It has shown this.

> Even more recently, researchers discovered two "critical" security flaws actively being exploited in Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser. Additionally, the open-source Linux operating system was just hit in "its most high-severity vulnerability in years."

OK, but these security flaws are ubiquitous in closed source software as well. The difference in FOSS is the source is there for people to look at and scan for security bugs if wanted, and is there for people to patch when needed as well.

Closed source has these problems as well, it is all just less public.

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

#66

Post by pabs3 »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #63

I'm an open source maintainer. I have a different take. Yes many projects lack funding, but I'm hesitant to ask for funding for my projects. Because: what sort of social contract would it imply if people fund me? Should funders be elegible for faster response times? Should their feature requests be implemented with more priority, or must they guaranteed to be implemented? What are the expectations of me? Can I take a…

I don't think funders should get any more say in or influence the direction of a project than anyone else. That should be up to the maintainer, of course taking advice from the users and contributors to the project. Funders are simply buying sustainability of the project, and that should be enough for them. This is how it works in projects like Inkscape, Krita or Debian.

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

#67

Post by tuyiown »

Open source contribution has shifted from bare technological enthusiasm to career and marketing strategy. Users feels that, and started to show more and more entitlement which erodes contribution satisfaction.

Open source only works if contribution is of selflessness sharing, as soon as it starts to be an investissement, users have the really legitimate feeling that a weird kind of reciprocity is in play, that tatters confidence and candor.

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

#68

Post by cheschire »

schleck8 wrote: post #25
cheschire wrote: post #15

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 articl…

> Leave your free repo as is > Where’s the problem? People will just fork it (e. g. Retro -> Metro with all premium features)

If you want your software to be FOSS, then you must accept than people can and will fork your work and make more money than you while doing it.

If you don't want your software to be FOSS anymore, then you have to accept that at some point previously the "meat" of your code was already FOSS and you will be effectively competing against yourself.

I still don't understand the problem, it's inherent in the decision to become FOSS in the first place. Or do you mean these folks who are complaining just didn't understand what FOSS meant before they got into it?

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

#69

Post by dageshi »

nisa wrote: post #61
jameshush wrote: post #38

I like what the React Training guys did with react-router: use the organic traffic from their library fuel their training business. Treat the FOSS project as your lead funnel, then sell a service to those leads. Maybe the service is training, maybe it's hosting the project (e.g Wordpress), perhaps it’s just leveraging it to get a lucrative job offer. You need to sell a service though on top of the project itself.

Please not. I understand that this kind of works and provides income for a lot of people but especially in the Wordpress world every plugin is just one huge piece of upsell ads with limited functionality. I don't blame the developers who do this but it's not a solution.

I can't think of a better solution, can you? With a lot of WP plugins, the alternative to buying the plugin is writing it yourself.

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

#70

Post by pabs3 »

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #54
amelius wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see FOSS funded in the same way as science.

Germany has government funding/grants available for open source projects. (I haven't looked into it in detail because of a dislike of paperwork).

I think you are talking about the Prototype Fund?

https://prototypefund.de/en/

NLNet also do grants, but the paperwork is minimal, just a short web form describing the idea.

https://nlnet.nl/

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