The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable

I have never understood this "I have an open source project and it eats all of my time, and I must scream".

Just stop. It's a hobby. As in life in general, don't have hobbies you don't enjoy. That's weird. Give your project to someone else - if this is you, skip to the bottom for my advice on how to do this.

I maintain a couple popular open source libraries, and a ton of unpopular libraries. At least two of the popular ones are way more popular than this guy says his is. For the most part they maintain themselves via pull requests. A good test suite, static analyzer and code standards validator go a long way towards making this possible with far less intervention. If you don't have those, that is where you should put your time.

When someone does open an issue, you look at it for 2 seconds, make a judgment call. Either label it wontfix, or ask them directly if they think they can handle fixing it.

If they can't fix it, you again make a judgment call about if it's worth your time or if you want to slap "Help Wanted" on it. And that's it, go eat dinner with your family. That's all you needed to do. Takes 30 seconds.

Once in a blue moon there's a hotfix that demands immediate attention, but it should be rare if you're building good software. If it's not rare, I'm sorry, I have bad news. Every once in a while a platform change requires some refactoring, but even that will often get PR'd by someone in the community who enjoys living on the edge.

At the end of the day, if you don't enjoy it, don't do it. If the library is truly popular just hand the reigns off to someone else. Forcefully if need be.

And don't just post a vague "maintainers wanted" somewhere. No one will see it. Scan your contributions for quality PRs and actually reach out to those people who are clearly invested in your code enough to understand how it works.

One of the projects I maintain, the original author literally just threw maintainer rights at me after having opened a handful of quality PRs myself. Didn't even ask. It worked :shrug: but YMMV.

I'll tell you what so many tech bros tell artists upset about AI - you should be working for passion and love of the craft, instead of profit. Compensation only corrupts the dignity of the soul and results in terrible software, and programmers who only care about the paycheck.

Maybe you can find a second job, and focus on creating software as a hobby.

> Imagine a new type of open source license that mandated paying a membership fee to a global foundation to use the code commercially.

That would by definition not be open source.

I don't think he is speaking about the ability to get donations. Rather about the tax consequences. It doesn't matter to governments how you got money, you have to declare it, even if it is GitHub Sponsors.

He did not say which country, but my guess would be Germany. You have to declare every penny here.

> Another is that these people are pretty good at starting shit storms trying to ruin your reputation if you don't comply with their unreasonable demands.

If you go on social media and offer your well-thought-out opinions about some controversial subject, you are very likely to get large number of people sending you offensive messages, arguing with you objectionably, trying to start pile-ons, attempting to dox you, etc.

Is the correct response to announce that "your participation in political discussion for free has become unsustainable", and that you need to be paid by all the people who find your comments interesting?