Jesus Michał "Le Sigh" 🏔 (he)Mar 7

New on #blog: "Money isn’t going to solve the #burnout problem"

"""
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 funding maintenance work.

While I’m definitely not opposed to giving people money for their FLOSS work, if you think that throwing some bucks will actually solve the problem, and especially if you think that you can just throw them once and then forget, I have bad news for you: it won’t. Surely, money is a big part of the problem, but it’s not the only reason people are getting burned out. It’s a systemic problem, and it’s in need of systemic solution, and that’s involves a lot of hard work to undo everything that’s happened in the last, say, 20 years.

But let’s start at the beginning and ask the important question: why do people make free software?
"""

https://blogs.gentoo.org/mgorny/2026/03/07/money-isnt-going-to-solve-the-burnout-problem/

#FreeSoftware #OpenSource #AI #NoAI #LLM #NoLLM #Gentoo

Money isn’t going to solve the burnout problem

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 …

Michał Górny
Show threadCassandrichMar 7
@mgorny So much all of this. I could use more money and appreciation, but really the worst part is all the charlatans and sellouts trying to burn down everything we've created, harvest and enclose it, apply the things they built on our backs to do evil, etm etm etm. Or even just trying to replace things that work with shiny new things that don't. Pressures to constantly update, adopt new languages and tooling, adopt the latest snakeoil "security" someone is selling, generally move fast and break things. Pushing back against rotten values in our industry & communities feels like a full time job in itself before even dealing with any code. And then you have a global fascist meltdown on top of that, tied in with lots of the same bad actors.
Show threadmirabilosMar 7

@mgorny @dalias

Pressures to constantly update

I hadn’t realised, but, yes, this also contributes to burnout. Also, pressure to follow what others constantly update that has a chance to break your things. (CMake 4.0 did it and 4.2 did it again, I just want to build Mu͒seScore…) (And other happenings inside e.g. Debian that mean more work for me and/or loss.)

Show threadmirabilosMar 7

@mgorny @dalias and then the whole b/s with calling something that hasn’t had more than one release in the last twelvemonth "legacy", "obsolete" or "unmaintained".

we used to call it well-hung software ("gut abgehangen", unsure if this translates well), robust and something you’d want to build things with.

Show threadLisPiMar 7

@mirabilos @mgorny @dalias Stable software that doesn't need constant churning or that is, indeed, finished/complete is underrated.

Source-based distribution helps, as it also means one doesn't need some silly CI tooling just to add the newer runtime bugfixes or whatnot.

Show threadReid Mar 7
@lispi314 @dalias @mgorny @mirabilos There's absolutely no technical reason for software to be constantly changing, instead it's all just a byproduct of economic conditions. If your code is "finished", then there's no more need for you in the company, which means you get fired and fuck you for wanting to afford surviving. Or, on the flip side, if a company sells software, they need constant changes to justify charging for it over and over again with new editions (as was the case in the past) or SaaS subscriptions (as is mostly the case now), as well as to have "innovation" to show to investors so they keep pouring money in. Does software sometimes need to change for technical reasons? Sure, but not constantly like we're seeing, especially from corporate software.
Show threadLisPiMar 7

@reiddragon @dalias @mgorny @mirabilos I have Python (lol) programs I finished and which stopped working.

Some of them because of stdlib changes. Some of which happened on minor version changes.

Show threadCassandrichMar 7
@lispi314 @reiddragon @mgorny @mirabilos Yeah but that's Python imposing gratuitous breakage most likely. Not something fundamental.
Show threadReid Mar 7
@dalias @lispi314 @mgorny @mirabilos actually, some of the changes are quite fundamental, but even if they weren't, they shouldn't have happened on minor releases. The whole point of minor releases is that interfaces don't break
Show threadLisPi
@reiddragon @dalias @mgorny @mirabilos Yeah that's why I mentioned it. It's not supposed to have ever happened.
Mar 7 at 11:13pmWeb