Community development is a lot of work. I was very active in the Apache Incubator for several years, so I've seen many projects build exactly what you're talki

Community development is a lot of work. I was very active in the Apache Incubator for several years, so I've seen many projects build exactly what you're talking about. Once the community exists, it doesn't get easier. Core maintainers now have more to do: reviewing contributions, steering architectural discussions, teeing up starter issues, nurturing prospects, resolving personality conflicts... It's not impossible to do that kind of work as a hobbyist, but it's more sustainable when there is somebody getting a steady salary to do it. But not everybody enjoys such tasks, and not every open source project needs to be able to be economically viable. All of this leads to the kind of burnout described in the article. And what makes it worse is the guilt tripping that if they don't either respond to every support request (reasonable or unreasonable) or build a community that does, they are not living up to their supposed obligations as open source authors.