I am not sure what to do about the burnout problem. The way he described it is very on point though. Since everyone working on the project is overloaded there is a great feeling of things only get done if you do them.
Most of my open source work was in the pre-GitHub days when we used mailing lists, not pull requests, to build community. I do think there was something better about that for the project itself as it encouraged a lot more discussion and community building. PR's and Issues become silos and are not great for general discussion. I think they also encourage drive-by contributions which honestly are intoxicating initially but once you see people are not coming back become defeating.
Pacing and self-regulation. It’s a marathon not a sprint. Set an hours-per-week budget. Beyond that things just don’t get done. That’s okay.
If the community needs faster pace, they can consider supplying hours or dollars to fund more developers to work full-time.
Also, and this can be the hard part, is sometimes you have to have someone who (even politely!) can be a bit of a dick when necessary. People scan be quite entitled and want to boss everyone around and tell them the project is run wrong - if you don’t actively run at least some of them off the devs will curl up and disappear.
Also having a defined procedure for “hiatus” helps quite a bit - make it easy for a dev to say “I’m off” and it can be indeterminate - this allows them to easily come back later. Encourage devs to use it liberally.
As an Eastern European I always found fascinating how many Westerners are struggling hard with this. To me and many of my peers (and apparently to Linus Torvalds and a good chunk of the entire Nordic culture, probably?) it's the easiest thing in the world to say something like:
"Listen up dickhead, I do this in my free time. If you don't like the direction of the project or the urgency with which your issues are [not] being addressed, you are free to not use it, and it also costs you nothing to not comment at all. I got better things to do than to reply to entitled cunts, now piss off."
It's very amusing what a huge drama many Westerners make out of just... being direct. Honest. Straight to the point.
"But he won't ever contribute and he might infect others with the opinion that the project leaderships is toxic!"
OK. That's a price I am willing to pay. My mental health > the second-hand opinion of people who were only 0.1% likely to contribute anyway. The math is very easy yet so many Westerners struggle so much with these [to me and many] mega obvious solutions, like "be a bit of a dick when necessary".
This is really very similar to the discussions I had with a lot of women long time ago. It goes like this: they tell me:
"I have to go tell X and Y about event A because otherwise Z will tell them lies and they'll think something wrong about me."
To which I reply with a cold expression: "Then you don't need X and Y in your life, if they can be so easily influenced by lies and won't even ask you about what truly happened."
Their expressions were priceless. The cognitive dissonance can hit us all VERY hard.
Back to the topic at hand, yes, I firmly believe all open-contribution projects need a Linus type of person. It's also a fact that many devs are introverted and can be chased away by entitled and insolent loud people. So somebody must put a shield in front of the devs.
But why pride yourself on taking the easy way out?
It isn't being honest and direct and straight to the point, it's a power move being deliberately rude/offensive/cruel hiding behind "just being honest and direct". Which only works as long as you have the power behind the powerslam putdown (in a personal project you do) and can deal with the consequences of cutting people off (which you say you are willing to). For everyone who doesn't have that power, and needs to work with others, it's not an option. Compare a physically large man saying "I find it funny that people don't just stare others down and threaten them like I do" and thinking that will work for everyone in every situation.
If that's your project selection criteria - "don't be thin skinned, man up, grow a pair!" - it's not-meritocratic; like a selection based on wealth or social class or accent or nationality isn't. If you want X and Y's skills (public project) or contacts or signoff (professional work) then you will have to face their susceptibility to Z's manipulations and deal with it. If you need help to do more work than you can do alone, you will have to work with other people's issues. "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go a long way, go together".
> To which I reply with a cold expression:
> Their expressions were priceless.
That story shape is a perfect fit for "everybody clapped" meme, you feel superior to the stupid women who didn't even think of this power move, and wait for your applause. Were their priceless expressions "you solved my problem, my hero!" or were they "you have no clue that my life is different to yours and with no attempt to empathise or understand, you expect the first thing you thought of will solve my problems and want me to be impressed?" Women generally have less power in society, in companies, far less physical intimidation, less respect, fewer options, and need to depend more on social networks and support and building consensus to get along in life or get things done. Cutting off the network and getting a reputation as difficult to be friends/work with risks a lot more for women than it does for you.
That "I'm colder, more vicious, than you so I win. Empathy and emotions are weakness." is so ... last season.
> "It's also a fact that many devs are introverted and can be chased away by entitled and insolent loud people. So somebody must put a shield in front of the devs."
It isn't a shield, it's a counter-offensive. Many devs don't want their workplace turned into a battlezone by people trying to shout the loudest. Again, fine for your personal project, but having a shouty vicious bouncer is turning away the porentially useful contributions of unknown people who don't want to fight their way into that kind of workplace. Consider @dang here at HN doesn't take the easy way out of shouting people down, swearing at them, putting them in their place; instead he patiently links the HN rules and politely explains what he's doing and why (your account is doing A, against the rules here, will be banned in this time, please do this or that specific thing), over and over and over.
Trying to build a community of disparate people is much harder than being a dictator who can tell disagreeable people to piss off. Is it any wonder people who are trying to do that, are struggling with it?