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

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@malwareminigun the question is, how much is "very little"?

[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]

@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@cosocial.ca]

@fbartho so, how easy is easy as possible? Is there some nonzero effort?

Is recognizing the real requirements for maintaining Open Source software more respectful than just saying "any time, it doesn't matter," but not really meaning it?

[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.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@txtx you could go all the way to 744, or even a few more if you're willing to do some travel across timezones at the beginning and end of the month.

[ted@social.gould.cx]

@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.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@TerryHancock @preinheimer @joergi so, does unmaintained software have maintainers?

And how about you switch the roles around? If you are deciding whether or not to become the maintainer of a piece of software, how much time should you plan to put into it?

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@malte for a single project?

[tess@mastodon.social]

@evan zero

They may spend as much as they like, of course, but they are under zero moral or ethical obligation.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@tess If they put in zero hours, the software is unmaintained. They are no longer maintainers in that case. The question is about maintainers.

If someone is *a maintainer*, *maintaining software*, how much time should they expect to put in?

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@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.

[tess@mastodon.social]

@evan I'm not entitled to anyone else's time or attention.

If I felt a project was not sufficiently maintained for my use case I would simply not use it.

What that threshold is has more to do with complexity, known bugs, etc.

But if I download some code someone wrote and put online for free, the author has no obligation to me, nor do I think they should.

If it mattered so much to me, I could offer to help - or fork the project.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@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

[benpate@mastodon.social]

@evan @tess

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 🤷🏼‍♂️

[joergi@chaos.social]

@evan

https://chaos.social/@joergi/116054283810328140
@TerryHancock @preinheimer

I 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