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I used to maintain several popular open-source projects and contribute to even more popular ones. It was always fun at the beginning, especially because I built

by yblu 5y ago

I used to maintain several popular open-source projects and contribute to even more popular ones. It was always fun at the beginning, especially because I built them for my own needs. But I kept getting asked to fix bugs or improve things even long after my needs had expired. I tried the donation route for a little while but it didn't go anywhere - I received maybe a few hours worth of money (versus hundreds if not thousands of hours I had spent working on those projects). I also tried releasing a paid version for one of the projects and got buried with hate mails and, unfortunately, online abuse. That was when I stopped working on open-source and I'm happier than ever. I'm very happy for people who make it from doing serious open-source work. I think they deserve it. But at the same time I feel bad for those who build or maintain no less serious or popular work and yet couldn't make enough to worth even a portion of the time they'd spend.

mwattsun 5y ago
The reality is: most companies are taking economic advantage of the generous spirit of open source developers. That needs to stop. SPONSORING OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPERS Rich Hickey - December 15, 2020 https://cognitect.com/blog/2020/12/15/sponsoring-open-source-developers https://cognitect.com/blog/2020/12/15/sponsoring-open-source... HN Thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25436335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25436335
- smashah 5y ago
  Sponsorship is not a panacea unfortunately as corporate use of a project is not proportional to the maintainership burden. Hopefully the industry can fix this one day.
  - hawkesnest 5y ago
    If you could even get it! Think about all the millions of dollars dealing with the Log4J issues last December. How much has that prompted sponsorship of any logging libraries by the affected companies? Not much, from what I've seen.
mikepurvis 5y ago
I related pretty strongly to this. I've never tried to monetize, and the community I'm mostly working in (ROS) is populated almost exclusively with exactly the sort of kind, considerate people who will happily roll up their sleeves to take a crack at it themselves, given a little guidance. Nonetheless, there are dozens of effectively abandonware ROS projects out there attached to my name— drivers for some sensor I shipped years ago and haven't touched since, interface libraries that aren't really relevant but don't have a clear alternative, stuff that was never out of the prototype phase and doesn't have anywhere close to the level of test coverage that would let me just merge much less release changes without extensive manual running of it. I suppose I should go in and just mark them all as archived so that well-meaning people don't file issues (and even PRs) that will never be addressed or perhaps even acknowledged. And in some cases I've just granted PR authors write access and been like "there it's yours now." But none of these end states feel quite right; in all cases I end up feeling guilty and unsatisfied with how it turns out.
- morgante 5y ago
  > And in some cases I've just granted PR authors write access and been like "there it's yours now." But none of these end states feel quite right; in all cases I end up feeling guilty and unsatisfied with how it turns out. What feels wrong with this? Personally I'd much rather hand a project over to someone else than leave it completely archived.
  - tpxl 5y ago
    This has resulted in projects turning to malware multiple times.
  - mikepurvis 5y ago
    It's the ideal outcome, I guess. But a number of projects end up just re-abandoned six months later after the person merged their own thing and pushed a release with it. I guess that's good for having moved it forward at all, but it certainly doesn't feel like a complete solution.
- pabs3 5y ago

by yblu 5y ago

mwattsun 5y ago

The reality is: most companies are taking economic advantage of the generous spirit of open source developers. That needs to stop. SPONSORING OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPERS Rich Hickey - December 15, 2020 https://cognitect.com/blog/2020/12/15/sponsoring-open-source-developers https://cognitect.com/blog/2020/12/15/sponsoring-open-source... HN Thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25436335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25436335

smashah 5y ago
Sponsorship is not a panacea unfortunately as corporate use of a project is not proportional to the maintainership burden. Hopefully the industry can fix this one day.
- hawkesnest 5y ago
  If you could even get it! Think about all the millions of dollars dealing with the Log4J issues last December. How much has that prompted sponsorship of any logging libraries by the affected companies? Not much, from what I've seen.

mikepurvis 5y ago

I related pretty strongly to this. I've never tried to monetize, and the community I'm mostly working in (ROS) is populated almost exclusively with exactly the sort of kind, considerate people who will happily roll up their sleeves to take a crack at it themselves, given a little guidance. Nonetheless, there are dozens of effectively abandonware ROS projects out there attached to my name— drivers for some sensor I shipped years ago and haven't touched since, interface libraries that aren't really relevant but don't have a clear alternative, stuff that was never out of the prototype phase and doesn't have anywhere close to the level of test coverage that would let me just merge much less release changes without extensive manual running of it. I suppose I should go in and just mark them all as archived so that well-meaning people don't file issues (and even PRs) that will never be addressed or perhaps even acknowledged. And in some cases I've just granted PR authors write access and been like "there it's yours now." But none of these end states feel quite right; in all cases I end up feeling guilty and unsatisfied with how it turns out.

morgante 5y ago
> And in some cases I've just granted PR authors write access and been like "there it's yours now." But none of these end states feel quite right; in all cases I end up feeling guilty and unsatisfied with how it turns out. What feels wrong with this? Personally I'd much rather hand a project over to someone else than leave it completely archived.
- tpxl 5y ago
  This has resulted in projects turning to malware multiple times.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  It's the ideal outcome, I guess. But a number of projects end up just re-abandoned six months later after the person merged their own thing and pushed a release with it. I guess that's good for having moved it forward at all, but it certainly doesn't feel like a complete solution.
pabs3 5y ago