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Altruistic FOSS works best when there are many more users than issues, ideally technical users capable of fixing them, so a fraction of the users can donate jus
by jarfil 7y ago
Altruistic FOSS works best when there are many more users than issues, ideally technical users capable of fixing them, so a fraction of the users can donate just a small amount of their time and get the project going. Alternatively, when some business players decide to collaborate on a project and fund its development.
Otherwise, when there are many more issues than users, particularly users who aren't capable or willing to fix them, then it's just a few developers working their skin off to pull the project, and that requires a more direct form of compensation.
- jkoudys 7y agoTruth. It's especially stressful, because too many will value your time as much as they pay for it. If you work on a team doing some big $10M deploy for an enterprise client, that client will be buying you dinners and setting you up in a nice hotel. You get on the hotel wifi and check into your foss projects and find a dozen messages saying how angry they are because some feature wasn't implemented, or see a comment on a post about it saying how much your work sucks and that they have written something better (that will be released some day "soon").