Farewell
I think an important facet of open source is portraying the right expectations.<p>I feel like I have an inverse problem to the one the author describes. Personally I work on projects for a really long time in private, not having to worry about dealing with other people since everything is done by me only, and wonder how I should eventually portray the project to the public. My motivation to do things shifts wildly from week to week, and I can spend months at a time on one single project and suddenly just stop cold one day as if it never happened. I keep wondering how that&#x27;s compatible with involving yourself with the community, if they&#x27;ll wonder where I&#x27;m at a month from now. In my case the project is specifically meant for contribution for other people or it won&#x27;t take off (a mod system) so it feels inevitable I&#x27;d have to do it some day. But I don&#x27;t know if I can keep it up after it&#x27;s announced without getting burnt out by interacting with people, and delivering on the things I want to accomplish. I&#x27;m reminded of the author of uBlock Origin specifically refusing donations for this reason, to ensure he feels no sense of responsibility to &quot;make good&quot; on what people give him. He also mentions the same motivation issue.<p>I have at one point been in a spot where I&#x27;ve worked on something with a similar amount of zeal for months on end, literally <i>every single day</i>, then dropped it out of nowhere, then had someone come up to me and ask me to finish it with them, and then literally being <i>unable</i> to get myself to write more code. Like, I was sitting at the screen, doing <i>nothing at all</i> for <i>hours</i>, unable to bring myself to care. Even though this person reached out to me personally over one of my projects, which had never happened before in my life, and I liked their company! Part of me still wanted it to be finished too. But I just didn&#x27;t feel like it anymore. I feel a lot of guilt over that, still. So I know I have been in that spot before.<p>I keep working at my current projects though, regardless of the amount of progress. It&#x27;s just an interesting hobby right now, if a somewhat obsessive one. I&#x27;m always reminded of the portrayal of Robert Graysmith in the film <i>Zodiac</i>, where he explains he does so much investigation into the titular case &quot;because nobody else will.&quot; That&#x27;s exactly how I feel with my long-term projects. Perhaps byuu felt the same at some point. Maybe that attitude is what got me this far all along.<p>Still, so many times I feel like I&#x27;m just grasping at straws or not making the progress I want. But giving it to the community leaves a sense of obligation if I have these goals that are still left unfulfilled, which I easily end up imagining worst-case leading into whatever drama of &quot;such and such project not doing what it envisions.&quot; And of course I will never <i>expect</i> someone to pick up the torch, tempting as it feels. They <i>could</i>, but in the end it&#x27;s their choice, and I have no right to obligate them.<p>This thought bothers me a lot. What reminded me of this in relation to the article specifically was the author&#x27;s mention of wishing he could just code in peace without all the extra baggage surrounding the project and other things in his life he describes. Currently I would describe myself as &quot;coding in peace,&quot; it being closed-source at the moment, and I&#x27;m wondering if I&#x27;ll end up getting myself into all that someday. Then again, the alternative feels like wandering aimlessly in this solitary coding marathon for months on end at a glacial rate of progress, not quite knowing if my designs or implementations are the &quot;right&quot; way to advance the project, which feels equally troublesome. I don&#x27;t feel smart (or perhaps arrogant) enough to believe that outright. And also, wasn&#x27;t I supposed to use this thing if it <i>does</i> get finished? Otherwise why spend so long coding it up at all?<p>After a while this cycle of thinking wears me out. I can totally understand the author&#x27;s feelings, even if they aren&#x27;t quite caused by the same reasons. It&#x27;s a lot of time spent on a small amount of things, in the pursuit of these potentially lofty goals. I guess it&#x27;s necessary to step back every once in a while and reframe things.<p>That doesn&#x27;t even go into careers, which is a different boat entirely.<p>All that might have been a random tangent. It&#x27;s just a thought I&#x27;ve been mulling over.<p>Anyway, I should say this: Thanks, byuu, for all your contributions to the emulation scene over the years. Give yourself a good block of vacation and go explore Tokyo sometime. You deserve it.