The xz-utils backdoor situation brought the problem of FLOSS maintained burnout into the daylight. This in turn lead to numerous discussion on how to solve the problem, and the recurring theme was …
Thought this was really insightful and think more people should read this
In my opinion, the biggest source of burnout is actually our dayjobs.
Respectfully and meant humorously, WTF are you talking about then.
Yes money can solve it. It can solve FOSS devs needing a day job, it can solve not having enough people to do deal with FOSS related nonsense.
I’m really annoyed when people say that and somehow have “shame” when it comes to demanding, let’s say, $50 million from FANG to maintain their project. Just ask. And then because of that shame, they think “asking for money” is asking a few fellow FOSS enjoyers for $1-5 a month and then that amounts to like $3.50 and then yeah of course that won’t solve any problems.
Michał addresses his problems with relying on donations later on in the post. Dayjobs are the main source of burnout but devs need it to survive. It’s very difficult for a FOSS project to get enough consistent funding to pay a liveable wage for even one dev without compromising on some aspects to gain funding. And even if they do, the FOSS work now becomes the dayjob and becomes a source of burnout. Ontop of this, donations are extremely unstable and there’s no guarantee a project will be able to pay a dev enough every year.
Respectfully and meant humorously, WTF are you talking about then.
Yes money can solve it. It can solve FOSS devs needing a day job, it can solve not having enough people to do deal with FOSS related nonsense.
I’m really annoyed when people say that and somehow have “shame” when it comes to demanding, let’s say, $50 million from FANG to maintain their project. Just ask. And then because of that shame, they think “asking for money” is asking a few fellow FOSS enjoyers for $1-5 a month and then that amounts to like $3.50 and then yeah of course that won’t solve any problems.
Michał addresses his problems with relying on donations later on in the post. Dayjobs are the main source of burnout but devs need it to survive. It’s very difficult for a FOSS project to get enough consistent funding to pay a liveable wage for even one dev without compromising on some aspects to gain funding. And even if they do, the FOSS work now becomes the dayjob and becomes a source of burnout. Ontop of this, donations are extremely unstable and there’s no guarantee a project will be able to pay a dev enough every year.
So in other words, burnout is absolutely not the problem, capitalism is.
My thoughts exactly