3 ms·

I think the burnout is kind of related to money, but more about expectations - and demands - of your users as it grows. Once a free or OSS project becomes real

I think the burnout is kind of related to money, but more about expectations - and demands - of your users as it grows. Once a free or OSS project becomes really popular, you suddenly start getting a lot more people asking suppor questions, asking for new features, calling your project crap because it doesn't do X, etc. I think that's the point where burnout starts to be an issue, because you have to spend so much time to satisfy your users, and because you invariably have to put up with crap from very rude users. At this point, you might start to think about monetising your project - after all, you're spending a lot of time on it. And of course, it's extremely likely you will fail here.

rvnx 6y ago
Ah, ah, the "choosing beggars" are sometimes golden. Fortunately most users are very friendly and it balances out. One bigger issue is that usually open-source projects are fighting against well-funded for-profit projects who will not hesitate to do everything they can to destroy your project. It's not a money issue in this case, in front of you you have very determined people who will do anything legal or illegal to protect their cash-cow. For example, OpenOffice if not shielded by Oracle would have been killed long time ago by Microsoft's pressure.