Am I the only one who is confused by all the recent uproar in open source? I think open source software should be created purely based on joy with no monetization expectation from the creators.
On the other hand, people using the software should have no expectations either, they should be grateful for the gift they have received.
I believe the spirit of OSS should be contribute if you want to, if not, that's also ok.
If you demand compensation for your OSS work or you demand the OSS maintainer to implement features yesterday, you're doing it wrong.
I feel like the spirit of people creating software for the sake of software is fading away.
Have you ever maintained a large open source project? It is so, so far removed from the pure "just creating for the sake of software" idea. It is a job. It can exhausting, frustrating, boring, tedious, etc... you trade your nights and weekends for... the creative spirit? The joy of creating?
People talk about OSS like /r/choosingbeggers. "Why would I pay you for art? You should do it because it's your passion"
To be honest, I still love open source, but I have to take long breaks from maintenance because the "work" side of it -- the tedious zero effort issues opened, just gets to be demoralizing. The next large project will be closed source. I'm getting too old and grumpy to do project maintenance for free.
I've never maintained a large OSS project, it's mind boggling to me that the community have somehow managed to push the maintainers towards burnout instead of being grateful for the free gift they are receiving.
Expecting the maintainer to keep pushing updates forever is insanity imo. It also rubs me the wrong way when maintainers demand monetary compensation I feel like this muddies the water. But maybe this is the reality we are living in now.
Don't blame the community for pushing maintainers towards burnout. Blame the folks who make maintenance needlessly necessary, by doing things like pushing for systemic tooling reforms that only serve big company use-cases, or the ones who create license drama. If it weren't for them, then works contributed to the open source commons wouldn't need maintenance any more than the Super Mario Bros. ROM needs to be maintained.
On the other hand, people using the software should have no expectations either, they should be grateful for the gift they have received. I believe the spirit of OSS should be contribute if you want to, if not, that's also ok.
If you demand compensation for your OSS work or you demand the OSS maintainer to implement features yesterday, you're doing it wrong.
I feel like the spirit of people creating software for the sake of software is fading away.