Ian's projects are what they are today because of what he has invested in them, without any guarantee of reward. The work that he has done will remain even now that his willingness to maintain these projects 'for free' has waned.
It is the open source developer's responsibility to fight for their own OSS/life balance, and it is good to see Ian taking this step to stand up for himself. Hopefully Ian's transition away from his own self-admitted naïveté will go smoothly -- these projects will continue even when he chooses to ignore destructive input and/or give an outright 'no' (or 'not right now') when necessary. Ian and other OSS maintainers do well to take a few pages from the lean startup customer support desk handbook: creating email templates, personal developer/contributor FAQs, etc. No doubt this blog post will serve its part as something Ian and others can point corporate developers to as a not-so-subtle hint in the future!
In my own very limited (and far less impressive) experience, I have found maintaining a list of alternative projects to be very helpful. Then, when someone brings an urgent need to my attention, I can point them to the list so they can solve their problem without me. One such conversation went like this:
>
> Hi ______,
>
> I will not be able to resolve these issues in what it sounds
> like is the timeframe you need.
>
> My recommendation would be that you install the trial version
> of a tool on the list of commercial alternatives: [url]
>
> One that I have very limited experience with is [url]. The page
> also lists all of the free tools that I am aware of.
>
> Thanks for reporting these problems; I will create issues to
> track the progress of resolving them.
>
Edit: PS. Hopefully Ian will invest some time in sharing some of the details of his positive experiences in OSS, perhaps even in interactions with the corporate world. In addition to what not to do, examples of what has worked well could make it easier for others to request more of the same! This discussion seems to serve both sides of this coin as well.
Ian's projects are what they are today because of what he has invested in them, without any guarantee of reward. The work that he has done will remain even now that his willingness to maintain these projects 'for free' has waned.
It is the open source developer's responsibility to fight for their own OSS/life balance, and it is good to see Ian taking this step to stand up for himself. Hopefully Ian's transition away from his own self-admitted naïveté will go smoothly -- these projects will continue even when he chooses to ignore destructive input and/or give an outright 'no' (or 'not right now') when necessary. Ian and other OSS maintainers do well to take a few pages from the lean startup customer support desk handbook: creating email templates, personal developer/contributor FAQs, etc. No doubt this blog post will serve its part as something Ian and others can point corporate developers to as a not-so-subtle hint in the future!
In my own very limited (and far less impressive) experience, I have found maintaining a list of alternative projects to be very helpful. Then, when someone brings an urgent need to my attention, I can point them to the list so they can solve their problem without me. One such conversation went like this:
Edit: PS. Hopefully Ian will invest some time in sharing some of the details of his positive experiences in OSS, perhaps even in interactions with the corporate world. In addition to what not to do, examples of what has worked well could make it easier for others to request more of the same! This discussion seems to serve both sides of this coin as well.