How much time per month should an unpaid volunteer maintainer dedicate to an Open Source project?

[troglobit@fosstodon.org]

@evan you’re going about it the wrong way, which should be apparent by the responses you get. Chill or be honest and upfront about your agenda. You’re just making people feel bad about their life choices and you are not helping.

[larsmb@mastodon.online]

@evan @tony That's yet another question though?

How much effort a given piece of software requires to stay functional in a changing world is very varied.

I have a tiny C mail delivery agent I wrote for myself in 1997 and last touched in 1998. It's still working perfectly fine locally. (I had to recompile it once.)

Compare with a project like Home Assistant, where I really couldn't guess how much effort that must be.

I'd expect a few hours per month for an average project.

[joergi@chaos.social]

@evan
for me, the main problem on many (smaller) open-source projects is, that there is only ONE maintainer.
there should be a team.

the bigger the project, the more user it uses, the better should be the support.
And: good support needs normally a team.

@troglobit

[evan@cosocial.ca]

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[tony@toot.hoyle.me.uk]

@evan How long is a piece of string? I've worked on stuff that I could poke once a month to see if anyone had any issues.. Big projects are sometimes run like commercial entities with multiple maintainers. And all points in between.

But they're not maintaining software in a state where it works for me.. it's not about me.. They're doing it because they want to, and I (and many others) happen to benefit from that.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

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[larsmb@mastodon.online]

@evan Well, if that's the standard for what "should" means in the original question, then yes, exactly however much they feel like:

Here, “should” means the extent to which actions are good for the actor mentally and physically, [...]

That's all I expect from unpaid people who've made no commitment to me. Open Source is big on the "no warranty" part.

[joergi@chaos.social]

@dannycolin
yes - and no.

if you are the programmer of CURL where the complete internet relies on, or some similar project, you have a responsibility - but tbh, something like that should not be unpaid. so the problem is somewhere else tbh

@evan @preinheimer

[larsmb@mastodon.online]

@evan @tony I stopped reading at the ad hominem attack, have fun!

[evan@cosocial.ca]

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[evan@cosocial.ca]

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[evan@cosocial.ca]

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[malwareminigun@infosec.exchange]

@evan Unknowable. Depends entirely on what the specific thing is.

[ted@social.gould.cx]

@evan as much as they want, they're unpaid.

[terryhancock@realsocial.life]

@evan @preinheimer @joergi

The health of the project is really a separate question. If you don't trust it, that's YOUR problem.

Either you offer to pay them 💰 or you... ahem... fork off. 😅

Free software is the proverbial gift horse. You want to look at the teeth, you need to pony up the cash.

IMHO. 🤨

[fbartho@mastodon.social]

@evan SHOULD is a really heavy word, especially around “unpaid”.

I want it to be easy and possible for devs to maintain OSS.
I want it to be the norm & a cultural value that it happens.

Private companies should sponsor more OSS maintenance to make it easier and more possible for more people.

[txtx@mastodon.social]

@evan Zero to ~150 hours.

Beyond 150ish hours is of course possible, but I believe adequate sleep and rest should be had for obvious reasons.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

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[evan@cosocial.ca]

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[malte@radikal.social]

@evan I chose to interpret this question in an idealistic way, ie. as I'd like society to be. And as part of my premise would be some kind of guaranteed basic income, so everyone wouldn't have to sell their labor-power on a market and could choose their commitments in dialogue with a wider community. Given that, I picked 32 hours or more.