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Sorry everybody, I failed with you

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Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#271

Post by imiric »

yarcob wrote: post #14
radarsat1 wrote: post #7

Of course it's terrible to become burnt out and it feels awful not having enough time to work on an open source project that you love. But, is it just me or has it become rarer for open source project maintainers to feel free to let projects go? I don't mean to let them die, I mean, to find like-minded individuals to which you can defer some or all of the work? I realize that as the original author one feels a sense…

I maintain two slightly popular open source apps, and my experience is that there are a lot of people interested in using your product, but very few people interested in contributing to it. I've had a few people offer help over the course of the years, but unfortunately they don't always have all the skills needed, so they can only help with a part of the project. When they do have the necessary skills, they don't ha…

Have you considered adding your project to a site like https://www.codeshelter.co/ ?

I don't have experience with it, but it seems active and better than abandoning a project.

Good luck!

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#272

Post by steelframe »

For every single one of my Open Source projects, having an exit strategy has played a central part. This included setting clear expectations and boundaries around what the scope of the project is, defining "feature complete" to be below what some users are happy with, and making sure occasional contributors can fix the critical bugs. Millions of people are currently using what I've built, and I spend zero time on those projects any more. Life's too short to be a slave to anything.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#273

Post by AtNightWeCode »

First, no need to apologize!

Then, I don't think this is a specific problem with open source. My view. The lack of knowledge about how to delegate work is a real problem. I mean, I worked with junior developers on the edge of breaking down while being on same team writing pointless games to pass time.

I think this is more of an issue with young people enjoying the heights of the Dunning Kruger Effect.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#274

Post by AtNightWeCode »

First, no need to apologize!

Then, I don't think this is a specific problem with open source. My view. The lack of knowledge about how to delegate work is a real problem. I mean, I worked with junior developers on the edge of breaking down while being on same team writing pointless games to pass time.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#275

Post by zxzax »

cnml123 wrote: post #242
zxzax wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never liked that approach, it's leading with the stick and not the carrot and IMO it defeats the purpose of open source. It cuts away one of the main benefits of open source -- that companies can use it and start contributing back to it right away with no friction. AFAIK Microsoft, Amazon and Google actually DO hire a lot of open source maintainers at this time, for exactly this reason.

Companies rarely contribute back except for very few projects like gcc and LLVM. FAANG does hire OSS devs, but a lot of them don't really do that much apart from being excellent politicians. To be fair, they don't get any time for OSS development in the first place. However, they do have time for politics and often ruin the projects. People play along because they want to get hired at GNAAF. As a result, these projec…

That seems to be a mostly orthogonal concern -- you're talking about a general issue of "doing business with big corporations" and not really something I would say is specific to any given project. One way to help improve the situation would be to help them win those battles so they can negotiate for more time to upstream useful things.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#276

Post by ajarmst »

The only problem here is that the author perceives a need to apologize, or to even feel regret. If the only compensation for starting and maintaining an open source project is the work itself or personal use of the product, then you are your only customer. The moment it stops being fun or worth the effort, you have every right to just stop without feeling a tiny bit of guilt or remorse.

You have a bug they want to fix or a feature they want to add and the author/maintainer is not doing it fast enough? Fork away! Submit a pull request! Oh, you don't have the skills/time to do that? Wow, that's too bad. Offer to pay the author! Post a message to the project list or bug reporting tool offering to pay someone to do it for you. Oh, you want it for free? Immediately? You built critical infrastructure around a tool you don't understand and don't have the skills or resources to maintain? You're a parasite, and can be safely muted and ignored.

This is the important bit: If you're afraid the person maintaining your key infrastructure for free might suddenly stop doing that, just take some time to send them a nice note thanking them. Periodically getting one of those in your inbox is remarkably effective in maintaining passion for a project. Find a way to give them a gift. Do they have Venmo/Patreon/Amazon wish list? Use it. Are you a developer or do you employ some? Fix a bug. Say nice things about them in social media. Offer to help pay for the resources to host the project. Send them an effing Starbuck's card with your sincere thanks.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#277

Post by asim »

After 6 years of working on two open source projects full time (16k and 10k GitHub stars) I decided to close off issues and discussions. GitHub has a nice checkbox you can untick to remove that tab and I did it. It's a thankless job, one that's pretty stressful and it's unclear what you gain from letting people berate or complain at you about their problems. I think I mostly built these tools for myself anyway so it felt like the right time.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#278

Post by mixedCase »

ergot_vacation wrote: post #233
glangdale wrote: post #98

Seeing a lot of posts like this. Open source is wonderful in its way, but it's really not sustainable to work on projects that make money for other people - including big commercial interests - when they don't help out in any fashion. I'm not just talking money or contributions. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement: "we use project X" - even privately. A open source library that I worked on at Intel (the Hypersca…

I've long believed "open source" is for suckers for exactly this reason. Literally being open source, having the code open for review, isn't a problem. But usually "Open Source" also ends up meaning free as in beer, for EVERYONE, whether you're some college student or a billion dollar company. The only sane, healthy, sustainable license is the "wacky" one you describe: individuals (and possibly even (very) small busi…

"Sharing stuff you want to share with other people is for suckers"

Ok man. I mean, I'm quite capitalist myself but I draw the line before "don't share things with everyone because sharing free things like that is for suckers/commies/whatever".

If you don't like doing open source, don't do open source. There was never a requirement for you to do open source.

Doing open source doesn't mean tending to other people's feature request, or even looking at pull requests. It's just releasing code under a certain list of licenses. Which you can do, if you want to, or don't. If you want to discriminate between your users, you do you, that's not open source but unless you run afoul of the law you can go and do that.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#279

Post by dane-pgp »

rkntt wrote: post #265
zksmk wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit off topic, but instead of FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) I much more prefer the MAAAF or FAAAM acronym (Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft) because their monopolies basically make them a mafia family, and I don't really see Netflix belonging in the group.

That's a good point, also Netflix rarely has bad press as far as I know. MAAAF for Mafia of MAGAF (Make Google Great Again, F...) are nicer.

If you want to make the allusion to the Mafia more obvious, then Apple could be abbreviated "i" (as in iOS, iPhone, iPad, etc.).

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#280

Post by galimaufry »

ergot_vacation wrote: post #233
glangdale wrote: post #98

Seeing a lot of posts like this. Open source is wonderful in its way, but it's really not sustainable to work on projects that make money for other people - including big commercial interests - when they don't help out in any fashion. I'm not just talking money or contributions. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement: "we use project X" - even privately. A open source library that I worked on at Intel (the Hypersca…

I've long believed "open source" is for suckers for exactly this reason. Literally being open source, having the code open for review, isn't a problem. But usually "Open Source" also ends up meaning free as in beer, for EVERYONE, whether you're some college student or a billion dollar company. The only sane, healthy, sustainable license is the "wacky" one you describe: individuals (and possibly even (very) small busi…

GPL is also a possible alternative. Big companies pay you back by contributing to the project, insofar as it is worth it to them to maintain a fork and add features for their own use.
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