My boundaries as an open source developer
So much this. I&#x27;m glad he put this out there. I&#x27;ll start linking to it too.<p>There seems to be a common misconception about open source. When I release software as open source, it does not mean I work for you for free, need to provide you with anything, even need to be nice to you. I may. Or I may not.<p>When I release software under an open source license, then we have a very specific deal. You are entitled to do certain things with the software, for example use it free of charge, or change it, or redistribute it, and I&#x27;m entitled to certain things in return, for example you keep attribution, you publish changes that you made under the same license, etc. Nothing more, nothing less. I could be an individual that hacked something in their free time, or I&#x27;m a multi-national mega-corp. Does not matter. It just means we have a deal.<p>It&#x27;s nice if a community emerges, and if I feel like it, I may participate in it. And accept pull requests or help with troubleshooting or implement new features. But I don&#x27;t have to and I don&#x27;t have to feel any obligation whatsoever. Anybody who thinks otherwise has misunderstood the concept or is maliciously misusing it.<p>That&#x27;s it.<p>This is misunderstood not just by users, but even by creators themselves. They feel pressure, they feel bad if they don&#x27;t respond in time, or implement new requested features, or accept pull requests. They shouldn&#x27;t. Open source just means I published it once with a very specific deal. I may continue to do so if it makes sense to me, but I can also just stop doing so. I implement features when I have a reason for it, for example I like to have them in the software so I can use them myself, or maybe because I&#x27;m a corp that sees a business need. But implementing them for free just because somebody asked for it, that&#x27;s just asking for trouble. If you do that regularly, and not mostly because you think it&#x27;s fun, but because you want to &quot;support the community&quot; or whatnot, you are taking steps towards burnout, and ultimately are not just hurting yourself but even the larger community, because you are fostering the expectation that that&#x27;s what open source devs should do. No, they shouldn&#x27;t. That&#x27;s not what open source is about.<p>It&#x27;s about a specific deal. Nothing more, nothing less.