How much time per month should an unpaid volunteer maintainer dedicate to an Open Source project?
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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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@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.
Say I have a moment in my life when I have a bunch of free time and I create something cool and put it on github.
Say a bunch of people think this is awesome and add it as a dependency for their projects. Maybe a few bigcorps decide to use it.
Then say I get a different job, or have kids, or get sick, or just get bored or tired.
And now everyone is emailing me, "when are you gonna fix X?"
My response is either gonna be "tough luck" or "pay me".
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@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.
@tess the question is a practical one for Open Source volunteers. How much time should you have in your schedule before you take a role as a maintainer for a project (or launch a new project)?
Do you do any Open Source software maintenance? What about other volunteer roles? Do you at least estimate how much work it's going to take, or do you just say yes (or no) automatically?
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@tess the question is a practical one for Open Source volunteers. How much time should you have in your schedule before you take a role as a maintainer for a project (or launch a new project)?
Do you do any Open Source software maintenance? What about other volunteer roles? Do you at least estimate how much work it's going to take, or do you just say yes (or no) automatically?
So that's a completely different question.
If you're *applying* to be a volunteer maintainer *on an existing project you do not own*, then obviously, there will be expectations set by the existing community, which will be different for every single project.
For reference: I write primarily OSS software, but I do it professionally. So, naturally, my employer sets the expectations for my contribution.
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So that's a completely different question.
If you're *applying* to be a volunteer maintainer *on an existing project you do not own*, then obviously, there will be expectations set by the existing community, which will be different for every single project.
For reference: I write primarily OSS software, but I do it professionally. So, naturally, my employer sets the expectations for my contribution.
And this is where I differ:
"the question is a practical one for Open Source volunteers"
No, it is a practical one for established OSS projects, or those looking to take on volunteer maintainers.
The community sets the standard, not the individual.
The individual can choose to abide by the standards of the community or not, and there may or may not be consequences within the community.
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@shtrom so, if it's not because they owe somebody something, why do volunteer maintainers do the work in the first place? And if they do have a goal, how much time do they have to put in to reach it? Are there different amounts of time for different goals?
@evan I'd say so. Depends on the size of the goal and the importance to the contributor. Definitely not one-size-fits-all there (:
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Say I have a moment in my life when I have a bunch of free time and I create something cool and put it on github.
Say a bunch of people think this is awesome and add it as a dependency for their projects. Maybe a few bigcorps decide to use it.
Then say I get a different job, or have kids, or get sick, or just get bored or tired.
And now everyone is emailing me, "when are you gonna fix X?"
My response is either gonna be "tough luck" or "pay me".
@tess right, and at some point you are not maintaining the software.
It's not about whether people have a right to demand that you do the job. The question is about how much time the job takes.
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And this is where I differ:
"the question is a practical one for Open Source volunteers"
No, it is a practical one for established OSS projects, or those looking to take on volunteer maintainers.
The community sets the standard, not the individual.
The individual can choose to abide by the standards of the community or not, and there may or may not be consequences within the community.
@tess if you don't think the question has an answer, feel free to skip it.
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@tess right, and at some point you are not maintaining the software.
It's not about whether people have a right to demand that you do the job. The question is about how much time the job takes.
@evan okay so you are asking about when one should deem a project "unmaintained".
Depends entirely on the project.
Also while you are centering project volunteers, the judgment is one that necessarily must be made by downstream users, not by the alleged maintainers.
(Though it's fine and helpful to say "hey this project is now unmaintained, just FYI".)
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@evan as much as they want, thatโs the whole point of volunteering
@mitchellh cool. So, can I have admin access to all your repos? I can't commit to any amount of time, but I still want to be a maintainer. I'm evanp on GitHub.
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no pressure. not every day's a winner ๐
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@aeva yeah nah it was from an instance of 4 users, none of which i knew, and only found cuz a friend of a friend boosted a post asking about "which open source chat apps do you use and have experience with"
the account hated my use of software enough to then make other posts about it complaining about like, me? indirectly?
the pettiness amuses me, so for me it was good
i just hope no one on my homeserver followed any of those 4 accounts
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@det it sounds like you didn't really lose anything from it at least
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@aeva well, i got my entire homeserver defederated from someone else's homeserver
...for using software they dislike
so that was something fun for me to laugh about for a bit
...but thats also not very traditionally "good", so
maybe not what youre looking for
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anything good happen today
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@molly0xfff thoughtful of them
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Current* conditions near Vermilion, OH:
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@molly0xfff Itโs worth a shot.
