zlacker

>>Philpa+(OP)
This is a good description of what life is like working on almost any significant open source project. The only thing not included was the comments from overly entitled users that saps whatever morale and energy you have left. Probably best he did not include that though as that is what all discussion would be about.

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.

>>markph+H4
Amen. Especially on open source projects where just enough people use it to have an active user base, but not enough where you have a good stable of contributors.

I’ve burned myself out on a handful of projects like this and also why I haven’t started any new ones lately. It’s very tiring (doubly so if maintaining open source isn’t part of your paid job, so you’re doing it on your free time).