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Sorry everybody, I failed with you

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Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#31

Post by bleepleblopple »

cheph wrote: post #20
yarcob wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. So whats wrong with allowing them to help with those parts?

Allowing people to help also takes time...there's a non-trivial management effort involved...one that's too frequently forgotten about in these discussions.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#32

Post by superasn »

I don't say for this project but if you own a popular open-source project which is used by many companies it does make sense to think off it as your main business sometimes. I mean not just donate to me or follow me on patreon business, an actual business business.

I think once you start making a lot of money from your project and can do it full-time it may help to bring some enthusiasm back (if it doesn't, well you can always leave the project too).

For example, take Laravel. The guy created Spark and Forge and it was an instant hit for those who love his software. I think fontawesome, tailwind, sidekiq, browserless are more such successful examples.

Some means of montesing OSS projects I've seen include:

- Approach big companies to sponsors your project. Often times big and funded companies will love a spot on your readme for a monthly subscription (but they need a little nudge).

- Offer a hosted version (like browserless)

- Offer specialized subscription courses (like Vue Mastery)

- Offer premium features (like Sidekiq)

- Use it to drive traffic to your own commercial business (like jwt.io is for auth0)

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#33

Post by mavhc »

robin_reala wrote: post #9
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 think part of the worry of handing projects over stems from a couple of fairly high-profile events when projects were handed over to theoretically trust-worthy people who went rogue and used them as a platform for malware or spear phishing. Suddenly, even just relinquishing control can be a bad thing for the community.

What's really required is to build a community large enough that the 0.1% of people who can run it are big enough to have a group in charge, set up a foundation etc etc. It's just like going from a monarchy to a democracy, hard, takes ages, fails a lot.

That won't work for most small projects though, so orgs like https://sfconservancy.org/ exist.

Not sure what other options like SFC exist, and the differences between them though.

At a minimum you'd want them to be in charge, and fire the current lead developer if they go rogue.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#34

Post by andrewstuart »

The pattern is familiar:

* open source project

* success

* no monetary reward, maybe just cost

* burnout

* project abandoned

This is why I don't try to make any open source projects - what's the gain?

I'd only do it if it paid money. If people aren't willing to pay then I'm not willing to work.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#35

Post by fxtentacle »

arkitaip wrote: post #24
danbmil99 wrote: post #2

This may be an obvious point but how can you say you failed when due to the fact that it's open source, anybody could check out the code and start supporting it?

How about the insane entitlement that many devs have when it comes to open source? Getting bombarded with requests and angry emails from people who demand free support and bug fixes can burn anyone out. I think Github can be a positive force for change here. Redesign the UI to encourage donations, to encourage people to get involved in project work, to write less hostile issues, etc. If devs and designers can weaponi…

This! Several of my github repos now have a disclaimer that says "if this doesn't work, don't send me insulting emails"

It's especially bad if a big company links to you from their tutorial or in their add-on catalogue because then some of their customers will feel like your open source is part of the commercial offering that they bought. So then you're forced to do open source support for entitled aholes and someone else is cashing in on your work.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#36

Post by zx2391 »

I maintain OS projects and my stance is simple: I'll fix thing, that are broken - mostly because I want things to work. I won't add new features for you, unless I really see the appeal. If you come up with a PR, nice! I'll take the time to review, but even for that there is no guarantee.

The same limits I impose on the community I fully expect to follow when working with any OS project. Period.

Remember, in that "other world", we would have to pay for each and every little proprietary piece of sh* code. The "new world" will not be built by profit-maximizing value-extractors, and if you think it will, then I wish you a happy burnout.

Also remember, that for millions of people the notion of giving away something valuable for free is totally absent. They literally fail to comprehend. They are happy to sell the same thing many times over.

In my book, OS software developers are living in the future, today and a lot of the friction comes from a world, that just works by a totally different set of rules.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#37

Post by muyuu »

superasn wrote: post #32

I don't say for this project but if you own a popular open-source project which is used by many companies it does make sense to think off it as your main business sometimes. I mean not just donate to me or follow me on patreon business, an actual business business. I think once you start making a lot of money from your project and can do it full-time it may help to bring some enthusiasm back (if it doesn't, well you…

monetising OSS is not as trivial as starting all these extra fronts and just hope it somehow pays off, people need to survive in the meantime

success in terms of usage doesn't necessarily lead to success in these ancillary efforts - take for instance docz which is the project in question, its very main selling point is that it's simple enough you don't need support and it generates output without dependencies that is trivial to package or serve yourself

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#38

Post by muyuu »

intricatedetail wrote: post #6

That's the dark side of open source. Companies think these projects grow on trees and they use them without paying anything. We need law changes to ensure that open source can be sustainable and companies pay the fair share of revenue they make by using it.

I was onboard until you suggested law changes

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#39

Post by bawolff »

arkitaip wrote: post #24
danbmil99 wrote: post #2

This may be an obvious point but how can you say you failed when due to the fact that it's open source, anybody could check out the code and start supporting it?

How about the insane entitlement that many devs have when it comes to open source? Getting bombarded with requests and angry emails from people who demand free support and bug fixes can burn anyone out. I think Github can be a positive force for change here. Redesign the UI to encourage donations, to encourage people to get involved in project work, to write less hostile issues, etc. If devs and designers can weaponi…

I wonder if this is a back-firing of the push for people to be "nice" and "professional".

Open source maintainers used to have the sterotype of being rather harsh, and basically telling people to f off if they had stupid questions, didn't RTFM or didn't follow cultural norms. And dont get me wrong, there's a lot wrong with that, but maybe it was also that way for a reason.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#40

Post by fxtentacle »

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…

In my opinion, there's just a shortage of experienced engineers.

Everyone these days is chasing the latest Javascript framework hype and practicing the next big modern language, e.g. Rust or Go.

But most important infrastructure open source is written in C++ and to maintain a cross-platform library linked into hundreds of apps, you need years of practical working experience to accurately estimate the side effects down the line from a seemingly innocent patch.

There's few people who have that experience. Plus as the greybeards retire, more and more companies need to hire this kind of developer to keep their own stuff running. So the people who could do open source usually have a waiting list for future freelancing clients.

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