dotJS 2012 - Fat - What Is Open Source & Why Do I Feel So Guilty?
dotconferences2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2013–2016
talk · general · evergreen · 2013–2016 on HN
A dotJS 2012 conference talk by Fat (of Twitter Bootstrap fame) on what open source really means and why maintainers feel guilty about it. It covers the obligations, expectations and burnout that come with releasing popular open source software, delivered wit…
HN commenters cite it as a funny and candid first-hand account of the guilt and burnout of a prolific open source developer.
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3 comments from Hacker News
Maybe relevant to watch this video for a first hand report of burnout from a coding rockstar: ▶ this video From personal experience think that programming pretty much crashes and destroys your personal life when you really, really want to go above the rest. Everything changes, except you and your computer. That's how I feel anyways. Don't sleep much and pass every waking hour on and off solving some coding problem. I remember when there was no computers. Existed more beer, fun and happiness. But at the same time didn't felt as happy as getting something epic solved. Maybe one day it looks as it is all worth. Maybe. Enjoy your life OP, you only get one.
I was there. Jeremy's talk was very inspiring. Among the top three of the day, easily. Fat's talk ( ▶ this video ) was the funniest and Mathias Bynen's ( link ) was the most instructive.
It's scary, but even if you release something as open source, for free and free for people to modify as they please, you're still in a weird relationship with the people that use your software. You haven't exactly promised to do anything for them, and the code as-is is in itself a great gift... but on the other hand, there's an implicit acknowledgement that "yes, you can build on this". (Both the open letter and the response from Tom Dale seem to acknowledge that there's two sides to this issue, which is refreshing. Usually you get these really boorish "dude, it's open source, just fix it yourself will ya" responses.) It makes me wary of pushing any of my projects. I still open source pretty much everything I do, but usually with a big fat "for your edification, don't expect any support or ongoing development" disclaimer. (Also see fat's "What Is Open Source & Why Do I Feel So Guilty? at ▶ this video )