Open source maintainers need to go in with open eyes
Link: Report on Burnout in Open Source Software, by Miranda Heath
This bleak report on burnout in open source software communities from last year has been doing the rounds. I think it’s clearly indicative of where open source is at (and its trajectory), but the solutions aren’t immediately clear — we know this because similar concerns have been anecdotally highlighted by various people for well over a decade. However, this is the first formal research report I can remember reading.
It’s pretty stark: 60% of open source maintainers work unpaid, 60% have quit or considered quitting, and 44% cite burnout specifically.
From the author:
“In my report, I draw upon a combination of academic literature and OSS community discussion to identify 6 factors that contribute OSS developer burnout: difficulty getting paid, workload and time commitment, maintenance work as unrewarding, toxic community behaviour, hyper-responsibility and pressure to prove oneself. I then make 4 broad recommendations for how to address it: pay OSS engineers, foster a culture of recognition and respect, grow the community and advocate for maintainers.“
The thing is: who is going to pay OSS engineers? Every attempt to get downstream users to pay out of the goodness of their hearts has failed at scale. There are certainly corporate sponsors of OSS maintainers already, when there’s a clear link between an open source project and a company’s bottom line. That could certainly be a broader standard, but there are also a ton of open source projects that tie less obviously into bottom lines, or are useful for communities outside large corporations.
Beyond the lack of direct compensation, it’s also a pretty thankless job. Downstream users will often make demands of maintainers that don’t take their contexts into account; people who are unpaid and overworked find themselves treated as if their users had paid them large sums of money. Open source users communities can sometimes also be wildly detached from reality; I’ve had people tell me that the solution is to move beyond a money-driven society or to have a revolution to overthrow capitalism. I mean, sure, whatever, but is that going to happen tomorrow? In the meantime there’s rent to be paid and food to buy.
The answer may be that, actually, open source doesn’t work very well except (1) in mutualistic co-operative communities (2) as a strategic move by corporations who want to change the markets that affect them in some way (3) as a self-promotional way to gain more widespread recognition for your abilities. If that’s the case, maintainers should go into it with open eyes: if they’re successful, their work will be used by people who make a bunch of money without compensating them in any way.
If new maintainers understand that they’re voluntarily signing up for extraction, I think it’s uncomplicated. If they think they’re going to “win” open source and make a living by giving their work away for free, they may be sorely disappointed.
