I think one of the biggest changes over the past decade or so is that the values and the perception of the values that participants offer has changed. It used

I think one of the biggest changes over the past decade or so is that the values and the perception of the values that participants offer has changed. It used to be that you wanted your open source code to be popular because having users like and use your stuff felt good. There wasn't really much "fame" or career boost to be an open source maintainer. The users themselves and the positive feedback they provided were basically the sole intrinsic motivation. But now companies look at open source contributions when it comes to hiring. You can get paid speaking gigs or use keynote talks to further your career. Having a lot of users means a maintainer can extract value from other sources. And users know that now. They now that their tiny popularity vote is transferring something valuable to the maintainer who may then use it elsewhere. That leads to entitlement. In GitHub these days, I often see PRs and issues where the contributor or person filing the bug clearly thinks the maintainer "owes" them something in return for their support. It's like, "Hey, I'm making you be popular, so do what I say." That kills the intrinsic reward maintainers used to feel because now it feels transactional and obligatory. My experience is that almost everyone filing issues and PRs is well-meaning and helpful. But it only takes a few cranky ones to suck a lot of the fun out. And even the good ones can be draining at a certain scale, though no fault of their own. Managing those social demands takes emotional skills that many maintainers don't have. After all, part of the reason many of us got into software is because we found human interaction difficult or anxiety-inducing.