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

[evan@cosocial.ca]

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[tess@mastodon.social]

@evan

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.

[tess@mastodon.social]

@evan

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.

[shtrom@piaille.fr]

@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 (:

[evan@cosocial.ca]

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[evan@cosocial.ca]

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[tess@mastodon.social]

@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".)

[evan@cosocial.ca]

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[endrift@social.treehouse.systems]

@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.

[mitchellh@hachyderm.io]

@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

[mitchellh@hachyderm.io]

@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

[brooke@bikeshed.vibber.net]

@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]

[brooke@bikeshed.vibber.net]

@evan @preinheimer @joergi that's a separate follow up question, evan <3 ;)

[txtx@mastodon.social]

@evan I was giving my honest opinion. If there's something to disagree with, let me know in direct language and I'm happy to discuss.

[brooke@bikeshed.vibber.net]

@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!

[brooke@bikeshed.vibber.net]

@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

[ted@social.gould.cx]

@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.

[brooke@bikeshed.vibber.net]

@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
obligation

if customers want that labor and they're not getting it for free the customers have to step up and provide some financial support

[brooke@bikeshed.vibber.net]

@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

[brooke@bikeshed.vibber.net]

@evan @ted forking is always, *always* an option and sometimes *absolutely* the right one for the case where a barely-maintained hobby project gets used by somebody else and it becomes a dependency, unexpectedly to the original author