How much time per month should an unpaid volunteer maintainer dedicate to an Open Source project?
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https://chaos.social/@joergi/116054283810328140
@TerryHancock @preinheimerI think the problem is for most of the open-source projects, there is no big team.
or even there is a team of maintainers, but do they have the rights to push new releases without the owner? Trust is everything.To your question: it depends, how much you can offer? if you are single without kids or if you have a family. and that can switch. so, you aren't obliged to work on it. but the project owner is obliged to have a working team
@evan
and I'm not talking about very small projects.
it also depends what the project is.
If you fail in it, what will happen with the people who uses your project?Will there life goes on without it?
"with great power comes great responsibility"....and you should have a team, a bus can hit you and the project (your legacy) is unmaintained forever.
So, I still stand with my first answer: as much as you want and as long as it's healthy.
+ GET A TEAM ;-) -
@evan I say this, because the replies seem to indicate that many people are not assuming the RFC 2119 definition of "should", and are thus coming to a radically different interpretation of the poll question
@aeva thank you so much for this answer! It really means a lot to me.
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@aeva thank you so much for this answer! It really means a lot to me.
@aeva I think there's an interesting part of your answer. There's a minimum amount of time just to deal with dependency changes, triage bugs and hopefully fix some. But doing that minimum is probably not sustainable -- it probably means you're losing interest in the project. Having a little more time for new features, refactors, and so on is probably better for the long term.
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@evan I'm going to assume you mean the RFC 2119 definition of "should", in which case the poll is asking how much time is recommended for a maintainer to reserve in their schedule each month, and not how much time they are obligated to. I think reserving a day of slack in one's schedule to be able to spend 8 hours moving things along in the project as needed is probably a good idea, but different projects and different maintainers will have radically different needs and constraints.
@aeva I don't think your interpretation of RFC 2119 SHOULD is correct. RFC 2119 SHOULD basically means "MUST, unless you have a really good reason."
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@evan if you're asking how much time you would have to spend to be able to *call yourself* a maintainer, the answer is probably "more than a random sample of your software's users".
@tess I'm actually asking a real question about the craft.
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@evan
and I'm not talking about very small projects.
it also depends what the project is.
If you fail in it, what will happen with the people who uses your project?Will there life goes on without it?
"with great power comes great responsibility"....and you should have a team, a bus can hit you and the project (your legacy) is unmaintained forever.
So, I still stand with my first answer: as much as you want and as long as it's healthy.
+ GET A TEAM ;-)@evan
and tbh: yes it drives me crazy, if I see that the main maintainer of a project I use is not releasing new software, even they promised it, and prefer working on their new project. It drives me nuts, but it's their right to do.Hopefully there will be a bigger team at one point, so the complete project is not relying on one person (who did a great job so far).
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I wish I had a hard number on what I though it'd take "to be a maintainer"
"It depends" *feels* like a cop out, but:
- Is the code stable & well written?
- Or is it spaghetti code that just mostly runs?
- Is it a niche app? Or super-popular that everyone uses?
- Or does Russia *really* want data off one of your servers?The curve could easily go from negligible (0-5 hrs/week) to being 60 hrs+ for months
My work is 30-40hrs/week, but I'm still greenfield, not maintaining, sooo š¤·š¼āāļø
@benpate @tess it's probably fair to pick a minimum number, although @aeva rightly pointed out that your motivation is going to flag if you never make any progress whatsoever.
So, regular review of security reports, bug triage, dependency and platform updates, that kind of thing are probably the minimum for "this software is not unmaintained".
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@tony so, how much time do you think it takes for maintainers to keep software in a state where it still works for you?
The amount of time and expertise an Open Source project needs is not coupled to the amount of time an unpaid, volunteer maintainer should dedicate to it.
Conversely, an unpaid, volunteer maintainer has no obligation to dedicate any particular amount of time to an Open Source project.
Perhaps it takes more time to maintain a project to my satisfaction than any maintainer is willing to dedicate to it. If so, I'll be disappointed. I'm used to it.
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@aeva I don't think your interpretation of RFC 2119 SHOULD is correct. RFC 2119 SHOULD basically means "MUST, unless you have a really good reason."
@hober I think I would prefer to defer to the hypothetical maintainer as to whether or not they might have a really good reason to put aside volunteer work for a month
[a sock puppet with a little shirt that says "hypothetical maintainer" on it rises up from the bottom of the screen] child care! personal emergency! health crisis! fascist goons kidnapping your neighbors!
thank you hypothetical maintainer, that was very informative.
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@evan if they don't the project won't be as good, and that's okay, it's a hobby.
It's not the only reason people do things, by far, but it is the only way you can rely on someone to do something. Else, it's up to them.
Generally speaking I'd say if you want to have a great OSS project, you need to put time into it, but that may not be their goal. It may be to publish an idea, to learn a library or programming language, etc.
Maintenance is hard work.
@ted I guess I wouldn't call sharing public self-instruction, proof of concepts, or art projects "maintaining" the project. I agree, maintaining software is hard work.
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@hober I think I would prefer to defer to the hypothetical maintainer as to whether or not they might have a really good reason to put aside volunteer work for a month
[a sock puppet with a little shirt that says "hypothetical maintainer" on it rises up from the bottom of the screen] child care! personal emergency! health crisis! fascist goons kidnapping your neighbors!
thank you hypothetical maintainer, that was very informative.
@aeva yes, exactly. which is why "it depends, anything from zero to infinity" is the only reasonable answer to the pol, as far as I can tell. who am I to even guess?
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@ted so, what are the consequences of not putting any time into things?
Is getting paid the only reason people do things?
Why do developers make and maintain Open Source software, anyway?
Could they have different goals? How much time should they put into the project to achieve those different goals?
@evan @ted If you think someone is obligated to put work into something despite not being paid, that's called entitlement. If you want to ensure they keep working on something, you should make it worth their while. Otherwise you're just exploiting them and demanding free labor. It's the same thing as "working for exposure".
What their goals are is entirely orthogonal to the question you asked. Your question was broadly applicable. Narrowing the scope is moving the goalposts.
And I say this as someone who's put tens of thousands of hours into FOSS projects without the promise of compensation.
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@aeva yes, exactly. which is why "it depends, anything from zero to infinity" is the only reasonable answer to the pol, as far as I can tell. who am I to even guess?
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@evan as much as they want, thatās the whole point of volunteering
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@aeva I think there's an interesting part of your answer. There's a minimum amount of time just to deal with dependency changes, triage bugs and hopefully fix some. But doing that minimum is probably not sustainable -- it probably means you're losing interest in the project. Having a little more time for new features, refactors, and so on is probably better for the long term.
@evan in my own projects, if i don't keep some momentum they often fizzle out, but i also have to be careful to pace myself or i'll burn out on them as well. the winter months are especially difficult for this for me.
granted, the stakes are pretty low because (afaik) none of them are critical infrastructure. I have in the past had a project I didn't have the time or motivation to continue working on, and ended up abdicating ownership of it to the other person who was contributing to it.
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@evan up for them to decide. Why should someone even have an opinion on how someone should spend their time?
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@evan @hober I agree that is often true, but not always. Sometimes a project is just complete for the time being, and the maintainer is still available to update it as needed. It is an unusual state of being for projects with any significant complexity, but it's worth acknowledging that there's a subtle difference between unmaintained and very stable.
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@evan @ted If you think someone is obligated to put work into something despite not being paid, that's called entitlement. If you want to ensure they keep working on something, you should make it worth their while. Otherwise you're just exploiting them and demanding free labor. It's the same thing as "working for exposure".
What their goals are is entirely orthogonal to the question you asked. Your question was broadly applicable. Narrowing the scope is moving the goalposts.
And I say this as someone who's put tens of thousands of hours into FOSS projects without the promise of compensation.
@endrift @ted thanks for the answer.
As an Open Source maintainer, do you have a rule of thumb for how much effort you'd need to put in to join a maintainer team for a project, or to launch a new project?
When do you know that you *don't* have time for a project, and start thinking about finding co-maintainers, deprecating it or winding it down?
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@tess I'm actually asking a real question about the craft.
@evan I'm genuinely confused as to what the question is.
Is it about taking credit as a maintainer?
Is it about being counted among other maintainers who contribute more time?
Is it about when to deem a project unmaintained?
Is it about when to donate vs. volunteer vs. fork?
Is it about something else?
There is no craft. We are not union; we do not have a trade association or certification board. We're just people who write code and put it online.
Nobody is obliged to work for free.
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@evan @hober I agree that is often true, but not always. Sometimes a project is just complete for the time being, and the maintainer is still available to update it as needed. It is an unusual state of being for projects with any significant complexity, but it's worth acknowledging that there's a subtle difference between unmaintained and very stable.
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