To clarify, I was more responding from the perspective of the workplace rather than the Rust project. That said, I have been an open source contributor off and on since 2003 and my observation has been the situation isn’t much different.
In a project, rather than apathetic coworkers, you deal with users of the project that have complaints and expectations but without the ability or motivation to contribute themselves. I imagine Rust has slightly less of this than the consumer-focused projects I have worked on, but people are people at the end of the day. Contributing to any large project is largely thankless because there will always be one more complaint/demand issue, or one more PR from someone that didn’t read the contribution guidelines.
It can turn what you’re passionate about into a slog, and while the form may differ, it’s not meaningfully different from having apathetic or incompetent coworkers dragging you down.
To be honest, dealing with open source slog is slightly worse, because it takes much longer for the hope to die. Somebody that submits a bad PR seems to care somewhat, it’s not total apathy. Somebody that submits a whiny issue at least demonstrates that they used the project and cared enough to write. But both demand your attention without demonstrating competent contribution in and of themselves. It’s somehow worse than the coworkers that are on an in-office vacation.
rust has a conflict avoidance problem. i think rust could be much more effective at saying no, and saying it more quickly. i want to talk about that in my next blog post.