How much time per month should an unpaid volunteer maintainer dedicate to an Open Source project?
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@evan depends on what you consider an open source project.
Personally I'd argue that anything not copyleft is effectively throw away and not really a project that wants to be open long term. But, others may disagree.
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@evan @ted thanks evan for clarifying the poll :) this is why poeple ask.
if i were to exclude all the cases where lots of ongoing work isn't required to serve customers, i still would reply "less than 4" because if nobody's paying you for it, you're
under
no
obligationif customers want that labor and they're not getting it for free the customers have to step up and provide some financial support
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@evan @ted thanks evan for clarifying the poll :) this is why poeple ask.
if i were to exclude all the cases where lots of ongoing work isn't required to serve customers, i still would reply "less than 4" because if nobody's paying you for it, you're
under
no
obligationif customers want that labor and they're not getting it for free the customers have to step up and provide some financial support
@evan @ted the corollary is that you shouldn't promise maintainership you can't provide.
so if you maintain a project *that people use and you don't have time or inclination to do the work they need* you have two options:
* recommend someone else do it (add maintainers or let them fork it)
* get support so you can do that instead of a different day job -
@evan @ted the corollary is that you shouldn't promise maintainership you can't provide.
so if you maintain a project *that people use and you don't have time or inclination to do the work they need* you have two options:
* recommend someone else do it (add maintainers or let them fork it)
* get support so you can do that instead of a different day job -
@evan @mitchellh evan, please stop being a dick to people replying honestly in good faith to your polls because your wording was unclear about the secret second question. you know better <3
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@evan I’ll note that for maintainers that are inactive for an extended period of time well freeze or revoke access for security reasons, but if they come back then we just give it back. It’s all just based on trust and mutual respect. Been doing it for 20 years now with success
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@evan also the *required* maintenance for a mature, small, or rarely used project is often less than 4 hours a month.
don't invent work requirements for people who happen to publish projects with open source licenses!
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@evan @ted As it stands I'm kind of an odd example. I'm only a maintainer on one (mostly) unpaid project and I'm also the only maintainer. Most of my unpaid contributions to other projects are just one-offs, though the number of projects I've contributed small amounts to is quite large (it includes things like libpng, libtiff, FreeBSD, Linux (though now I am paid for that and my contributions have skyrocketed) and a significant number of other projects I'm forgetting).
Said long-term project I've been working on for nearly 13 years but I've done less and less work on it over the last 9 of those, after having burnt out. As such, I don't really have opinions on those questions. But I also have refused to start new projects as this project still isn't what I'd consider feature complete and I don't want to further split my attention.
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@evan as much or as little as they want to; they're under no obligation to perform unpaid labor by definition. [4 hours or less]
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@evan @mitchellh that question couldn't be answered without knowing the size of the project, how active its development is, etc. no general answer can be given.
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@evan coaching a kid's soccer team is an amount of work that can be approximately quantified in some way because that implies the scope of the necessary work
not so of the original question. give people a break. :)
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@evan what do you mean done? Anyone can be done whenever they want. The project has no obligation the maintainers have no obligation the community has no obligation. I’m sorry I don’t understand what you’re asking.
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@evan what do you mean done? Anyone can be done whenever they want. The project has no obligation the maintainers have no obligation the community has no obligation. I’m sorry I don’t understand what you’re asking.
@evan if I decide tomorrow to stop working on any OSS I’ve ever done as either a contributor or creator that’s…. Totally fine. I’ve never promised anything else.
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@evan I'm choosing "4 hours or less", not because the volunteer should work less but because they should be paid more (i.e. at all) 🙃
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@evan coaching a kid's soccer team is an amount of work that can be approximately quantified in some way because that implies the scope of the necessary work
not so of the original question. give people a break. :)
@evan "how much time should you spend on a woodworking project?"
a chair?
a table?
a wardrobe?
a system of cabinets across a house? -
@evan "how much time should you spend on a woodworking project?"
a chair?
a table?
a wardrobe?
a system of cabinets across a house?@evan who's using the project? am i in a hurry to get it finished for some reason or is this a hobby project? do i have the tools in place or are their restraints on when i can get them and use them? am i doing this full-time or part-time? do i have other stuff going on?
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