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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

#121

Post by Mc91 »

jlokier wrote: post #112
Mc91 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a take I have seen and don't hear often. I depended on a FOSS project once that was mostly done by one maintainer, and would sometimes send feature or fix patches upstream. Once I sent an e-mail that I could give him hundreds of dollars for some bug bounties - his program would improve and he would make some money out of it. He said thanks but no, he made enough in his day job and only had limited time to mai…

I think your experience may be different from the psychology-of-obligation issue that the GP describes. For someone in a stable, salaried job that pays reasonably well (assuming USA level or the better paid parts of Europe), it rarely makes financial sense to accept "hundreds of dollars" for a complex task. That's due to the amount: "Thousands to tens of thousands" would likely get a different sort of response, assum…

> They would have to change the way they file taxes to accomodate (sic) this payment outside the regular flow of salary?

This affects my end as well - I was monetizing their product, and could probably justify an unsolicited bug bounty as external work. I don't know what the status of an unsolicited donation would be, I would have to ask my accountant.

The main premise is that some FOSS projects turn down smaller donations. In my case for a bug bounty, in GP's case a more general donation. When people discuss the need for FOSS donations, these cases aren't always mentioned.

In this specific case for me, the upstream was already fixing bugs in the tree, (as was I), and upstream was monetizing their product as well, so I thought it might work out well for everyone. At the end of the day I felt better about it anyway, because I was monetizing and using their product, and I did make an offer. I wound up contributing back with feature and bug patches (the bugs I could figure out how to fix).

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

#122

Post by mrlemke »

jleahy wrote: post #107
tarsinge wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody has any right to expect labor from an unpaid person. I'm very grateful for OSS projects and maintainers but this is an interesting question: is doing something for free a free pass for false promises (advertising)? If I commit to help someone for free I then have a responsibility to show up. If an OSS developer advertise their projects as production ready then they have a responsibility to honor what is prom…

This is why we have licenses: … PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE I think it’s particularly clear, and that part is even in all capitals.

This is the only response necessary for those demanding free support. You can even shorten it:

"AS IS"

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

#123

Post by mistrial9 »

CJefferson wrote: post #49
hpcoke wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need the critical role of Open Source maintainer to professionalize. Do we? I do open source work and maintainership, and am happy that this is outside the control and influence of industry. Must even this that "makes the Internet special" also bow to industry needs?

I think it's fine when you are doing open source for fun, and for other individual users. If a company is basing their livelihood on your library, they should (in my opinion) be supporting it somehow -- either by paying you, or paying someone to keep an eye on new versions. The other choice is they are trusting you to fix bugs and not be malicious, which isn't (in my opinion) reasonable, as you get nothing in return.

management and investors, whose goals are clearly stated by their roles, have no trouble taking "shares" and then some.. while people who build things "craftspeople" are motivated in a plurality of ways, and have often and quickly been written out of the bargain by the aforementioned. In each extreme, the situation is obvious. Yet, whole portions of a "modern economy" are now built on this..

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

#125

Post by mistrial9 »

blihp wrote: post #105
rjzzleep wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion Filo is completely off base. It's the Americanization of Open Source. Notice some of the OSS conferences in the US are big sponsored events by O'reilly, to some extent big recruiting events. Contrast that to FOSDEM, which is completely different. This isn't just an offspring of early hacker culture. This is as offspring of how "socialist" european university systems were. A lot of bigger OSS projects we…

It's not as if this was something that started elsewhere and is being adapted to the American value system: Free Software / Open Source started in the U.S.[1] That's largely due to the fact that for the first couple of decades of it's existence, Internet access[2] was heavily concentrated in the U.S. as it was originally a U.S. government funded project. There are a variety of factors that have changed the open sourc…

I was in the room with Richard Stallman, in Palo Alto, in the 1980s, as he gave a careful and serious presentation to about twenty chosen people.. from my point of view, the statement above does show one part of the OSS evolution. Meanwhile, the "net" was growing as a combination of ex-dot-mil and their allies, and people who were deeply committed to signals, evolution and in most cases math or physics training, for its own sake, and the social evolution it implied (science fiction readers and highly creative signal processors like musicians but different).

both sides of this odd couple had different motivations and restrictions, but they cooperated in building the network and the software that ran the network. People here have complained, but I claim, TCP/IP was not the only network game in town then, and the massive scaling that you see today was not done yet, and did not work for lots of reasons. Many OSS projects related to the network itself, the signals across the network, and math/science. The media world was largely influenced by commercial print and Hollywood, and was less influential in the early days, as they stuck to the commercial distribution mechanisms. Network media tended to be odd, music-oriented, or sick things, in those early days. Also note that single, massive source code repos were not a thing, so people traded "tarballs" with important releases of whatever.

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

#126

Post by fartcannon »

Accujack wrote: post #108
fartcannon wrote: post #101

The article sums up to 'programming is hard', support FOSS devs. Which is hard to find a fault with. The tone is a bit chicken little given that everyone experiences burnout if they have complex jobs that people depend on. In the end, devs probably need to stop being so easy going. Everyone probably needs to be a little more Linus.

This is the most difficult part of FOSS projects, and why relatively few of them match commercial products in quality or usability. FOSS programming tends to be largely recreational or a labor of love, and a lot of the discipline and organization required to make good software is not fun, and will be actively avoided in recreational projects, especially for people who do the "not fun" parts of projects in their day j…

I disagree with these broad strokes you're stating as universal facts, but I do agree that everyone should have access to some kind of UBI/stipend. That'd be awesome.

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

#127

Post by misslibby »

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 many commercial open source projects already, with developers who get paid.

I don't quite get the moaning. If you are unhappy with FOSS, don't do it?

Nobody is entitled to a FOSS developers time. But on the other hand, FOSS developers are also not entitled to anything.

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

#128

Post by thrashh »

CannisterFlux wrote: post #120
marginalia_nu wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if you aren't getting paid, people can demand all they want. Scream until their faces turn blue, stomp their feet, bawl like a baby, write mean things on twitter, stick a voodoo doll full of needles. It's entirely your prerogative to say no.

It isn't nice though, as the maintainer. I gave up on doing any kind of open source stuff probably a decade ago for way less than screaming. Just getting bug reports is depressing, it was a relief to walk away and never have to think about it again. I know I didn't owe people anything, but hearing that I'd written buggy incomplete code (which worked and was good enough for me) sucked the joy out of it all.

Idk I used to run some big projects and I just told people straight up that I’d love to add or fix that but that I don’t have time

Some people still idolized the hell out of me

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

#129

Post by pkolaczk »

CannisterFlux wrote: post #120
marginalia_nu wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if you aren't getting paid, people can demand all they want. Scream until their faces turn blue, stomp their feet, bawl like a baby, write mean things on twitter, stick a voodoo doll full of needles. It's entirely your prerogative to say no.

It isn't nice though, as the maintainer. I gave up on doing any kind of open source stuff probably a decade ago for way less than screaming. Just getting bug reports is depressing, it was a relief to walk away and never have to think about it again. I know I didn't owe people anything, but hearing that I'd written buggy incomplete code (which worked and was good enough for me) sucked the joy out of it all.

For me, getting bug reports and feature requests is actually fun and makes the project more interesting. It is telling me that someone uses my software seriously and the bug was worth reporting. Many people don't report bugs because it takes some effort.

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

#130

Post by adriangrigore »

I believe this article actually depicts the insanity of how some people "work" and getting paid for that.

> many are quick to press him on what's taking so long.

> people are shouting at you that you need to work on something

This is not normal even in a workplace!

Article not necessarily about open source but workplaces in general (not even IT only) only difference is that people in workplaces are getting paid to work in those horrible conditions.

Disclaimer: I'm unemployed, released some open source stuff https://mkws.sh/, https://adi.onl/projects.html and surviving as I can rather then being pressed or shouted at I need to work. I value my mental health, thanks!

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