Open source used to be fun (edit: there was a lot less at stake)
You did it because you enjoyed the challenge and the once-in-a-while nerd props you'd get from a mailing list or an irc channel.
How many people went into tech because of a seemingly ingrained nerdly curiosity? Many.
Many more got into it for the money. Absolutely nothing wrong with money, but if you're looking for a log4j or libxz maintainer, you're going to be looking in group A. Compared to group B, group A is tiny.
There is not enough social or economic incentive for most in group B to spend the time to achieve the necessary proficiency or, once attained, actually dedicate the necessary time to a low-visibility/highly-used FOSS project.
>then you're like, ‘Wow, this is amazing, but my inbox is full.'”
This seems like the core cause to me. If the maintainers are tired then they won't have as much time or energy for mentoring new contributors which means we will have less new contributors as time goes on.
Open source used to be fun (edit: there was a lot less at stake)
You did it because you enjoyed the challenge and the once-in-a-while nerd props you'd get from a mailing list or an irc channel.
How many people went into tech because of a seemingly ingrained nerdly curiosity? Many.
Many more got into it for the money. Absolutely nothing wrong with money, but if you're looking for a log4j or libxz maintainer, you're going to be looking in group A. Compared to group B, group A is tiny.
There is not enough social or economic incentive for most in group B to spend the time to achieve the necessary proficiency or, once attained, actually dedicate the necessary time to a low-visibility/highly-used FOSS project.
>then you're like, ‘Wow, this is amazing, but my inbox is full.'”
This seems like the core cause to me. If the maintainers are tired then they won't have as much time or energy for mentoring new contributors which means we will have less new contributors as time goes on.