Mastodawn

Had fun chatting with @richlitt for the @sustainoss podcast! Listen as we meander from kidney donors to forest floor detritus to death doulas, all while (somehow) keeping it on the topic of open source sustainability and maintainer burnout 🌱 https://podcast.sustainoss.org/285

Miranda Heath on Altruism & Burnout in Open Source

Miranda joins host Richard to dive into altruism, maintainer motivation, and burnout in open source communities.

Sustain

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Lorenz Mar 8

@mirandah @richlitt @sustainoss I just listened to the podcast, after watching the FOSDEM talk a couple weeks ago, sadly I didn't have time to see it in person! I found it super interesting and insightful, and inspired lots of thinking in me 😅. I am always surprised how little burnout gets talked about, even though it is one of *the* basic and inherent problems of open source, and how people don't want to admit it is and that maybe they are burnt out themselves too actually...

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Lorenz Mar 8

@mirandah @richlitt @sustainoss I am active in the Linux Desktop space, and I say that because it is a bit different from average open source. In your talk you mentioned that around 40% of contributors get paid for it. In the desktop space this number is probably massively lower. Its a crazy paradox, even though our software is so immensely popular, and very complex so that you need hundreds of packages and people to build such a product, there is almost no economical incentive in it these days.