@nayafia

Consider the Maintainer@nayafia for linux.conf.au

@nayafia

@nayafia

@nayafia

@nayafia

“Is it alright to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?”

- DFW

@nayafia

“Is it alright to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?”

- DFW

(“Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental?”)

@nayafia

Is it alright if a project struggles or dies because the maintainer can’t keep up

with it anymore?

@nayafia

Is it alright to compromise, or even deliberately ignore, the happiness of maintainers so we that

can enjoy free and open source software?

@nayafia

“The whole animal-cruelty-and-eating issue is not just complex, it’s also

uncomfortable.”- DFW

@nayafia

“My own way of dealing with this conflict has been to avoid thinking

about the whole unpleasant thing.”- DFW

@nayafia

What, exactly, is the problem?

@nayafia

people consuming open source

@nayafia

Netscape browser (1998) lodash (2017)

Downloads in two weeks, 20 years apart

18M180K100x!!!

@nayafia

SourceForge (2001) GitHub (2016)

Total number of registered users

14M208K 70x!!!

@nayafia

Two-thirds of top GitHub projects are maintained by one or two

people

@nayafia2000 2017

Users

Maintainers

@nayafia2000 2017

Users

Maintainers

(NOT A REAL GRAPH)

@nayafia

Why so few maintainers?

@nayafia

Why so few maintainers?

1. Style of production has changed (more smallish projects)

@nayafia

Why so few maintainers?

1. Style of production has changed (more smallish projects)

2. Being a maintainer isn’t glamorous

@nayafia

“Hardly anybody starts as a maintainer, it just creeps up on you.”

Kjella, Wine AppDB

@nayafia

1% of people create the content that 99% consume

@nayafia

1% of people create the content that 99% consume

100% of maintainers are expected to respond to every issue

@nayafia

“Rapid evolution poses the risk of overwhelming the system...thus introducing errors more quickly than the system can fix them.”

Steven Weber,The Success of Open Source

@nayafia

@nayafia

@nayafia

“Every developer (unless they’re lucky) has looked at page after page of open issues and wondered why they’re the only person working on any solutions to them.”

Jonathan Zdziarski,“On the State of Open Source”

@nayafia

@nayafia

@nayafia

“It felt like every day I had a notification waiting to be opened about how badly we had fucked up.”

James Kyle,“Dear JavaScript”

@nayafia

@nayafia

Why aren’t we talking about this?

@nayafia

A trip back in history:

@nayafia

“Our goal should be to spread freedom and then defend it. That is more important than making our software popular, which would just be catering to our egos.”

Richard Stallman,“The GNU GPL is Here to Stay”

@nayafia

Some people create software sometimes.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@nayafia

Debian Social Contract

● Debian will remain 100% free

● We will give back to the free software community

● We will not hide problems

● Our priorities are our users and free software (“We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities.”)

● Works that do not meet our free software standards

@nayafia

“The implication of [the ‘Open Source’] label is that we intend to convince the corporate world to adopt our way for economic, self-interested, non-ideological reasons.”

Eric Raymond,“Open Source Summit”

@nayafia

“The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit...formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community.”

@nayafia

Both free software and open source are oriented around the user, not the

producer.

@nayafia

The four freedoms of free software

● The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose

● The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish

● The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor

● The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others

@nayafia

The four freedoms of open source producers

● The freedom to decide who participates in your community

● The freedom to say no to contributions or requests

● The freedom to define the priorities and policies of the project

● The freedom to step down or move on from a project, temporarily or permanently

@nayafia

Other things maintainers need help with:

1. Community best practices2. Project analytics3. Tools and bots4. Conveying support status5. Finding funding6. Existential qs

@nayafia

History revisited:

@nayafia

“What is clearly missing from [Eric Raymond’s] statement, and is ultimately as important, is how those eyeballs are organized.”

Steven Weber,The Success of Open Source

@nayafia

Open source != Linux

(or any other big project you can think of)

@nayafia

This stuff is confusing!

@nayafia

But it’s worth doing.

@nayafia

END