<story><title>Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers</title><url>https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05741</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>KirinDave</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve never understood it. I&amp;#x27;ve only had horrific experiences with my open source efforts. From the simplest cases like being ignored on PRs and tickets to mockery in social circles for algorithmic mistakes to finding out my work was enabling bad people to finding out people were misrepresenting my employment status while using my work in violation of the license, I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ve ever once had a positive experience with open source as a producer. Hell, I never even knew my extensions to the clojure time library were even being used until another maintainer who had added some incremental stuff over my work disappeared.&lt;p&gt;I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self it was all a waste of time and I shouldn&amp;#x27;t do it. Maybe then I could be more positive about it now that I&amp;#x27;m better at writing software.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>x3yyy</author><text>You have had a lot of negative responses (unjustified in my opinion), so I hope my comment makes it through.&lt;p&gt;I have written two medium sized projects, one of which is quite popular.&lt;p&gt;I had great fun &lt;i&gt;writing&lt;/i&gt; the software, but maintaining it in public is hell. OSS has turned into a popularity contest, with people associating themselves with projects quite publicly (conference talks) but doing little work.&lt;p&gt;Generally, there is little respect for creators, a lot of useless bickering and talking and self promotion.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve come to the same conclusion that it is a waste of time.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers</title><url>https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05741</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>KirinDave</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve never understood it. I&amp;#x27;ve only had horrific experiences with my open source efforts. From the simplest cases like being ignored on PRs and tickets to mockery in social circles for algorithmic mistakes to finding out my work was enabling bad people to finding out people were misrepresenting my employment status while using my work in violation of the license, I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ve ever once had a positive experience with open source as a producer. Hell, I never even knew my extensions to the clojure time library were even being used until another maintainer who had added some incremental stuff over my work disappeared.&lt;p&gt;I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self it was all a waste of time and I shouldn&amp;#x27;t do it. Maybe then I could be more positive about it now that I&amp;#x27;m better at writing software.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fundamental</author><text>&amp;gt; From the simplest cases like being ignored on PRs and tickets&lt;p&gt;Yeah, this can be irksome when trying to lend a hand. As a maintainer of a few projects I try to put in a big effort to make PRs easy as you do have someone interested in rather directly helping the project.&lt;p&gt;PRs also open up some opportunities to help guide new contributors which can be fun within itself (everyone has to start somewhere). In the best case scenario being friendly with PRs can result in a single drive-by patch turning into a more long term collaboration.&lt;p&gt;I do also try to address other tickets, though I do admit that some just fall through the cracks. Many times the first submission will contain incomplete or inaccurate information and it takes a lot of work from both parties to document what the problem is and how to resolve it (even before touching any code). I do think it&amp;#x27;s great to see people trying to out a project by documenting issues in tickets, but sometimes it just takes too much energy at the end of the day to &amp;#x27;properly&amp;#x27; address them when a project has many users, but few devs&amp;#x2F;contributors.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I&amp;#x27;ve only had horrific experiences with my open source efforts.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a shame that&amp;#x27;s been your experience. In an ideal world open source communities help people learn, build cool stuff, and scratch an itch, but it doesn&amp;#x27;t always work out.</text></comment>