
What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer - montogeek
https://nolanlawson.com/2017/03/05/what-it-feels-like-to-be-an-open-source-maintainer/
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daly
Apparently you've avoided one of the greatest joys of open source... forks.

I worked for 7 years on an open source project with hundreds of people
subscribed. My most trusted maintainer started a drumbeat about project goals
that ended up causing two forks, decimating the user community, and destroying
a lot of potential. Even more interesting is that all I ever seem to get, if I
get mentioned at all, is negative press. But, as John Gorka once said, "What
matters most is what you do for free".

As for the worry about combining open source and money... forget it. William
Stein, lead developer of Sage, built Sage using grant funds and graduate
students. Unfortunately the grant money dried up and the students graduated.
He has since taken a leave of absence and started a company in the hope of
keeping the project alive. Wish him luck.

I've looked for funding from a number of different sources, government,
industry, and a separate business, all without success. I spent an average of
$3,000 per year for the last 16 years, all out of personal funds. That's
assuming my time is $0/hour.

Rest assured, mixing open source and money is the least of your worries.

So why do open source programming? Real musicians MUST make music, in spite of
poverty wages. It's not what they DO, it's what they ARE. Similarly, I'm a
programmer... it is what I am, not what I do.

~~~
adekok
> As for the worry about combining open source and money... forget it.

I dunno... I've done well. Offices in Canada and France, 6 people working for
me (not all full-time).

The key for me is to sell services around the software, and also sell support.
If it takes people 10 days to figure out how to do something, a decent
percentage of them will pay you to do it for them.

But it has to be the right market, too. Selling to consumers is a non-starter.
You need to sell to people who have money.

~~~
Arizhel
>But it has to be the right market, too. Selling to consumers is a non-
starter. You need to sell to people who have money.

What about small businesses? Is that a pipe dream, or do you think it's
possible to get them to actually spend money on service and support? (I'm
asking because I have a business idea for software which would only appeal to
SMBs, generally smaller ones I think.)

~~~
adekok
The problem with SMBs is marketing. How do they know to use your software?
What is the cost of sales?

I've had 6 months of negotiations with customers. For a large contract, that's
OK. For a small one, it's not worth my time.

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lacampbell
_I’ve already told my partner that, if and when we decide to start having
kids, I will probably quit open source for good. I just can’t see how I’ll be
able to make the time for both raising a family and doing open source. I
anticipate that ultimately this will be the solution to my problem: the
nuclear option. I just hope it comes in a positive form, like starting a new
chapter of my life, and not in a negative form, like unceremoniously burning
out._

I sometimes forget behind a lot of my favourite open source projects there are
real life people with real fulltime jobs that aren't related to the projects.

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Kubuxu
I am lucky to combine open-source and work but this doesn't mean that those
issue don't affect us. Endless stream of issues, anger and expectations is a
norm. I love open-source and at the same time sometimes it feels like my work
just makes people angry.

Every time that angry to-be users shows up, I am trying to remind myself that
for every one of them there are hundredths or thousands of happy ones.

It is also important to find a balance on what you work on. Will resolving
this issue solve problem of many users, how many, is it the aim of a project.

Other important value is being able to say no. "Sorry, this is not issue of
this project", "No, this feature doesn't align with the aim of a project" and
even in case of PRs (which is extremely hard as someone put quite a work into
it) you sometimes have to say no.

This might be the hardest part of maintaining open-source, this and noise
overload. There is no input filter, if you are luck other contributors will
step in and act as one but it isn't sustainable either.

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qplex
Look, you're doing it wrong. You don't need to apply this kind of 100%
customer-service attitude to open source software development.

It is simply a waste of time for a developer to answer every trivial question,
or address non-issues.

Have a clear format and policy on what kind of contributions you accept:
bugreports, patches, etc. If the sender fails to comply with the rules, ignore
the input.

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SFJulie
Since I still like my projects and my family, I decided to give the finger to
the so called «open source community».

Most open source users see open source devs as the cheapest workforce on earth
they can bully.

I decided I couldn't care less of the opinions of strangers and went on after
numerous IP violations, and decided to give up on helping people trying to
just abuse benevolent people.

I am a MINOR -like shit- dev, famous/respected (for good reasons) devs that
are treated like shit and still behave nicely are suffering for me of a major
Stockholm Syndrome.

Someone trample you while you try to make a gift, my policy is to headbutt
directly.

I ignore github notifications nowadays aggressively. I interact with people at
the speed with which people interact with me IRL (which is ___slow_ __), and
decided since even a minor dev 's code is good enough to be stolen I must be
great, and thus should treat myself like a star.

Help yourself, be a human that behave as if life was too precious to be
spoiled. Have fun, be wild, enjoy life.

~~~
nunez
> Have fun, be wild, enjoy life

Absolutely love and agree with this.

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tomcam
An illuminating post. The original author seems to be worried about being seen
as a whiner, but I found it to be exceptionally lucid and informative.

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mack1001
I see this as a consistent thread in OSS projects - lack of a sustainable biz
model. Have you tried joining any not for profit foundations?

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kcmastrpc
have you considered asking for help? contributors can do more than just submit
PRs and create bug tickets.

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thr0waway1239
I looked at the article going in with a somewhat sympathetic view. But after
reading that the person is at Microsoft, I thought "Well, good. Maybe now he
will know what it was like about 10 years back for folks who were probably
working just as hard as he is, _plus_ having to deal with the absolute jackass
behavior of the same company he now works at."

Karma?

~~~
Veen
So the unpleasantness and stress he deals with as part of a good-faith and
unpaid effort to provide something of value to the wider community is
perfectly fine because a decade ago his current employer caused problems for
other open source developers? He's getting bad karma because of something
other people did?

I'm struggling to comprehend the thinking that makes such sentiments seem
remotely reasonable or rational.

~~~
thr0waway1239
Well, if you want to be _that_ precise about the usage of words like karma,
lets just say it is the organization's karma. I would like to think others can
see my first comment as rhetorical.

Although I am now curious. If I found a way to link it to his karma would you
actually like to hear about it?

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madez
This reads as if the author were not suited for that kind of work. Yes,
working through code and figuring out what it does, and why it does it that
way, and whether it can be improved is work, maintainer's work, and if it's
stressful, hard or not fun to you, than maybe you just shouldn't do it.

I have seen the other side in this situation. I've found it at times very hard
to get reports about real bugs to developers. While some developers won't even
listen to you if you tell them why their code is broken, others actually tell
you what you need to do to give them what they need, and then they work on it.
Shoutout to the xorg/mesa people; I've found them to be of the latter type.

