How much time per month should an unpaid volunteer maintainer dedicate to an Open Source project?
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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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@shtrom so, if it's not because they owe somebody something, why do volunteer maintainers do the work in the first place? And if they do have a goal, how much time do they have to put in to reach it? Are there different amounts of time for different goals?
@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".
@tess right, and at some point you are not maintaining the software.
It's not about whether people have a right to demand that you do the job. The question is about how much time the job takes.
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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.
@tess if you don't think the question has an answer, feel free to skip it.
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@tess right, and at some point you are not maintaining the software.
It's not about whether people have a right to demand that you do the job. The question is about how much time the job takes.
@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, thatās the whole point of volunteering
@mitchellh cool. So, can I have admin access to all your repos? I can't commit to any amount of time, but I still want to be a maintainer. I'm evanp on GitHub.
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@endrift @ted thanks for the answer.
As an Open Source maintainer, do you have a rule of thumb for how much effort you'd need to put in to join a maintainer team for a project, or to launch a new project?
When do you know that you *don't* have time for a project, and start thinking about finding co-maintainers, deprecating it or winding it down?
@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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@mitchellh cool. So, can I have admin access to all your repos? I can't commit to any amount of time, but I still want to be a maintainer. I'm evanp on GitHub.
@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 theyāve proven themselves trustworthy in the past and periodically pop back up.
Maintainers have zero time obligation too. Thatās how it all works, zero guarantees zero obligations everything provided āas isā 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 theyāve proven themselves trustworthy in the past and periodically pop back up.
Maintainers have zero time obligation too. Thatās how it all works, zero guarantees zero obligations everything provided āas isā on both sides.
Works great
@evan Iāll 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. Itās 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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@preinheimer @joergi so, there's no minimum amount of time where you'd worry that the project is unmaintained or under-maintained?
@evan @preinheimer @joergi that's a separate follow up question, evan <3 ;)
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@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.
@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.
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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]
@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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@mitchellh cool. So, can I have admin access to all your repos? I can't commit to any amount of time, but I still want to be a maintainer. I'm evanp on GitHub.
@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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@ted I guess I wouldn't call sharing public self-instruction, proof of concepts, or art projects "maintaining" the project. I agree, maintaining software is hard work.
@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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@ted I guess I wouldn't call sharing public self-instruction, proof of concepts, or art projects "maintaining" the project. I agree, maintaining software is hard work.
@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
@brooke @mitchellh it's not a secret question. "How much time should one dedicate to maintaining an Open Source project" is really straightforward. It's a practical question about bug triage, dependency management, and maybe making some progress or adding new features. If the question was about mushy bullshit, I wouldn't have given fixed time constraints.
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@evan Iāll 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. Itās all just based on trust and mutual respect. Been doing it for 20 years now with success
@mitchellh ok, let me know when it's done.
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@brooke nobody's under any obligation to coach a kid's soccer team, but coaching a kid's soccer team takes 10-20 hours per month.
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@brooke often, yes.
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@mitchellh ok, let me know when it's done.
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@brooke @mitchellh it's not a secret question. "How much time should one dedicate to maintaining an Open Source project" is really straightforward. It's a practical question about bug triage, dependency management, and maybe making some progress or adding new features. If the question was about mushy bullshit, I wouldn't have given fixed time constraints.
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@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
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@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
