zlacker

>>jashke+(OP)
> You are responsible for your own needs. If you want things, make them.

>I am grateful for the contributions of the community. Every Clojure release incorporates many contributions. [...] Open source is a no-strings-attached gift, and all participants should recognize it as such.

>The time to re-examine preconceptions about open source is right now. Morale erosion amongst creators is a real thing.

Sad that it has to be said. I think as a creator you need to brace yourself for the reality of what it means to offer something to the world. There is a sort of normal distribution of consumers and some can be surprisingly toxic.

>>Isamu+L3
You know, I wrote a number of successful open source packages. By and large, feedback is positive, or at least utilitarian: bug reports, feature requests, questions. But there is also the occasional angry user, or, rarely, a simple thank you.

Recently, I published my first-ever commercial video game plugin. And was dumbfounded by the sheer positivity of the response. People thanked me! I got dozens of purely positive emails. I had never experienced such a thing in my Open Source work.

If we had more of that in Open Source, maybe maintainership wouldn't be such a burden.

>>Derbas+Px
I wouldn't dare writing just to say "thank you", it would feel like a no-op wasting people time. Instead, I would rather star the project on github. Did you consider those as thanks?

>>_pctq+fy
Having published some apps a few years ago, the occasional thank you mail can be a real moral boost. Dehumanized interaction such as staring a project is not of the same category.

>>titani+Pz
I totally get it, it's all a question of balance, I guess. An _occasional_ thanks you mail is great. On the other hand, getting pass the 100 stars on a project on github is a big moral boost too, and probably wouldn't feel so great if each one was a mail :)

But actually, I realize both can easily be reconciled : we could send a "thank you" message to projects with low amount of github stars, and just star those which have a high amount. This would both cheer solo dev starting their project and avoid annoying bigger teams on well established projects.