{"id":41135,"date":"2023-11-20T15:38:13","date_gmt":"2023-11-20T20:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=41135"},"modified":"2023-11-20T15:38:34","modified_gmt":"2023-11-20T20:38:34","slug":"the-lack-of-compensation-in-open-source-software-is-unsustainable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/20\/the-lack-of-compensation-in-open-source-software-is-unsustainable\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lack of Compensation in Open Source Software Is Unsustainable"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Stringer<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

But… in the back of my mind I know that I have open source projects that need some attention. One happens to be heavily used. I’m nearly 3\/4 million downloads, and it’s something that people seem to think has some level of usefullness. Those are the good parts. The bad parts are that there’s a dozen issues that I haven’t even reviewed much less triaged, investigated, and fixed. There are a few PRs from the community that I need to look through. There are dependencies that need to be updated. The list goes on and on. This project has hit a not-so-uncommon OSS milestone: Maintainer burnout.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

What once resembled passion project<\/em> is now unrecognizable from a motivation perspective. But the demand is high. There are lots of users, many in a corporate sense using my software to further progress their organization. And the bad news is, I get no money at all from it. So motivation is essentially nonexistent at this point.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

This is Volunteering as a Service (VaaS). It is quite literally a free lunch at the expense of hard-working individuals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Dave Dunfield<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

As I retire, my goal now is to release 40+ years of source code to “stuff I’ve written” in the hopes that others may find it useful or maybe learn a few things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n