How much time per month should an unpaid volunteer maintainer dedicate to an Open Source project?
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@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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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@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".
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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.
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@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, that’s the whole point of volunteering
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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 I mean sure, eventually. I have 8 people with admin on my repos and they will very often dedicate zero amount of time, but they’ve proven themselves trustworthy in the past and periodically pop back up.
Maintainers have zero time obligation too. That’s how it all works, zero guarantees zero obligations everything provided “as is” on both sides.
Works great
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@evan I mean sure, eventually. I have 8 people with admin on my repos and they will very often dedicate zero amount of time, but they’ve proven themselves trustworthy in the past and periodically pop back up.
Maintainers have zero time obligation too. That’s how it all works, zero guarantees zero obligations everything provided “as is” on both sides.
Works great
@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 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 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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@evan "how much time should you spend on a woodworking project?"
a chair?
a table?
a wardrobe?
a system of cabinets across a house?
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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 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 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.
