Last month, a library I depend on for my trading bot went unmaintained. The creator announced he's "taking a break" — which, reading between the lines, means he's burned out and done.
I get it. I've been on both sides of open source. And it's not the utopia people think it is.
The Thankless Grind
Maintaining an open source project is like having a second job that pays nothing, demands everything, and gives you constant criticism.
I maintained a small Python utility for 2 years. It got popular — 50k downloads/month. Sounds great, right?
Here's what it actually meant:
- 20-30 GitHub notifications per day
- Issues with titles like "This is broken, fix it" (no details)
- Pull requests that broke things but the submitter got angry when I didn't merge immediately
- People demanding I add features they wanted for their specific use case
- Emails at 2 AM asking why something wasn't working
The Money Problem
My popular utility? I made $47 total from GitHub Sponsors over 2 years. Meanwhile, companies using it in production made millions.
I calculated my hourly rate once. It was negative — I was paying for CI/CD, domain, and time, and getting nothing back.
That's the dirty secret of open source. The people creating value get scraps. The people extracting value get rich.
Why They Really Burn Out
It's not the code. Maintainers love coding. It's everything else:
- Entitlement: Users treating you like a free employee
- Conflict: Endless debates about minor features
- Security: Worrying about vulnerabilities and responsible disclosure
- Pressure: Knowing companies depend on your unpaid labor
I burned out after 2 years. Small project. I can't imagine what it's like for maintainers of major projects like Linux, Python, or React.
What Happens When They Quit
The library I mentioned? No one's taken it over. 200+ projects depend on it. It has a critical bug. The maintainer is gone.
This is happening more and more. The "tragedy of the commons" — everyone uses it, no one maintains it.
What You Can Do
If you use open source (and you do):
- Sponsor maintainers. Even $5/month helps
- File good bug reports. Details matter
- Don't demand. Ask politely, accept no
- Contribute back. Code, docs, or just answering questions
The ecosystem depends on people not burning out. We're all complicit in the problem. We can all be part of the solution.