Couldn't agree more. I don't think I will ever publish another open-source project without making it painfully clear that it is my gift to the world and comes with no support whatsoever. No issue tracker, no accepted pull requests. If it's useful and you're interested in making it better, I'm more than happy for you to fork.
Running a moderately popular open-source project wasn't the only thing that burned me out, but it sure didn't help.
What I meant between the lines is that there are a lot of entitled people everywhere, FOSS users are just an example of it, and one needs to be ready for them whenever setting up for a public-facing endeavor, be it an OSS project or a shop or whatever. Just not let that hit you with low defenses.
I've been an OSS project maintainer myself, and realized that one must be ready to deal with people and their behaviors.
If I could give an actionable tip to the author and all FOSS maintainers (or soon to be) is to add a README section "This project is a garden", and copy it from Valetudo:
The author complains about how many (probably entitled) users he started having to support, but deeply inside that was not a problem of being an Open Source maintainer as much as a problem of not being prepared to deal with the social side and the normal people's behavior.
There's conflict everywhere. If you gave free umbrellas on the street and some of them were broken, for sure part of those people would turn around and request a good one, to which one needs to be prepared to have an answer, it can be "yeah sorry here you are" or "well it was free, be happy you got something at all"
Call me selfish or old-fashioned, but my approach to open source software I make is just to "throw it out there".
And what I mean by that is unless one of my projects is going to go big and have enough users to generate revenue either from sponsorships or something like Patreon - I'm making open source software for me, myself and I. So you can have my source code and some instructions about how to get it running, but don't expect me to also be your guide or tech support. My intention in throwing it out there is to help out people who have the same exact issue as I do and are willing to get it working, not to be a donor for all the help vampires around.
You don't owe anyone support. If you want to work in the code, do that. If you find value in reading / answering the issues sometimes, do that. If someone annoys you, ignore or block them.
If the whole project bores you now, move on.
Never feel responsible to those who might like to demand your attention
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 19.8 ms ] threadRunning a moderately popular open-source project wasn't the only thing that burned me out, but it sure didn't help.
What I meant between the lines is that there are a lot of entitled people everywhere, FOSS users are just an example of it, and one needs to be ready for them whenever setting up for a public-facing endeavor, be it an OSS project or a shop or whatever. Just not let that hit you with low defenses.
I've been an OSS project maintainer myself, and realized that one must be ready to deal with people and their behaviors.
If I could give an actionable tip to the author and all FOSS maintainers (or soon to be) is to add a README section "This project is a garden", and copy it from Valetudo:
https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo?tab=readme-ov-file#valetu...
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The author complains about how many (probably entitled) users he started having to support, but deeply inside that was not a problem of being an Open Source maintainer as much as a problem of not being prepared to deal with the social side and the normal people's behavior.
There's conflict everywhere. If you gave free umbrellas on the street and some of them were broken, for sure part of those people would turn around and request a good one, to which one needs to be prepared to have an answer, it can be "yeah sorry here you are" or "well it was free, be happy you got something at all"
If the whole project bores you now, move on.
Never feel responsible to those who might like to demand your attention