Depends. I sort-of understand where he is coming from. Releasing FOSS is generally at least partially ego-driven: we want to write something that people use and love and talk about.

Sure, that's not healthy, but it's also somewhat human nature: we want to be wanted.

And yes, when we are not (either by people not using our libraries, not being able to find a romantic partner, etc.) it hurts. And yes, it could cause burn-out.

So, I disagree that it's "entitlement", or even if it is, I feel it's something a lot of us can understand even outside of programming.

We all want to be wanted. Those that don't are usually quite impressive people.

> we want to write something that people use and love and talk about.

Then start off with something people are already using and improve that rather than to re-invent the wheel in some interesting way and then to be disappointed when nobody uses your particular wheel.

If all people did that, nothing new would get done ever. It's a risk. Developers who embark on wheel-creation know it's a risk. Nevertheless, rejection still hurts. Being ignored doesn't just mean you invested all those hours for nothing, it also means the audience rejects your take on the subject, and by extension your value system.

But telling people to just stick to established open source projects and be content with small contributions is not the solution either: first this would probably not be an interesting activity for those people and second participating in a successful OS project is by no means a protection from this kind of rejection or other kinds of grief. The "solution" here is clearly to "suck it up and move on", but I see how that can be difficult.

I'm afraid the only real advice to give here would be for developers not to get too invested in their pet projects because, like startups, most of them will never be of any interest to anyone. To all the people who are currently doing such projects, I'd say: keep doing it as long as it's fun, but not a second longer. Learn to let go.

This person clearly went on beyond that point.

Agreed that "contribute to existing projects" is not a real solution. If you want to solve a particular problem, or set of problems, there will be a finite set of solutions close to what you need. It's entirely possible that all of them suck at some level from architecture to implementation. Additionally, the current maintainers might resist the change of direction that you need, and maintaining your own fork of a large alien codebase might truly be more work than maintaining your own smaller and more familiar codebase. Many would argue that this was the case with distributed filesystems (my own specialty) from approximately 1995-2005, and perhaps even today. Saying that everybody should work on somebody else's project is like saying that everybody should work for somebody else's company. Nope. Somebody has to start the new thing before others can join.

The trick, as you say, is learning to let go. Accept that you'll have other ideas, and maybe one of them will gain more traction. In the course of a long career, maybe even one of those old projects will come back to life because of a shifting context or because working on other things inspired that one extra twist that makes it ten times more valuable. Setting something aside is not the same as throwing it away, and every good developer I know has dozens of ideas that they've set aside. You never know which one will be useful again some day.

This is an article about burning out and we're discussing on how to do open source right.

That's a bit like giving tips on how to cook a healthy meal to an anorexic who tells you she's really having trouble eating enough.

Yes, we're technically correct. No, it's not really helping anyone.

One problem with this variety of burn-out is that it appears to be for the most part self inflicted. People that are locked in to some job and that are providing that way for their family have a hard situation to fix. If you're contributing to open source and you're burning out on that then you need to recognize that this is a voluntary situation and that simply quitting is the solution. So I think the author got it right by quitting but I think burn-out is a bit too severe a term for this situation.

In that case I'd say it's similar to the fact that people get depressed regardless from their objective situations and how happy they should be relatively to others.

Put another way, I'd say that even a spoiled rich valley girl who tries too hard to be the light of the party at too many social events can suffer from a valid burnout.

I don't have as much sympathy for her as I would for the guy that burns himself out trying to earn enough money to fund his daughter's cancer treatment, but that's another matter entirely ;)

Speaking as the author of a tremendous amount of software noone uses, I found this ridiculous.

Sometimes it does hurt- mainly when you explain why what you're doing is better (or at least attempt to in objective terms) and someone still uses "the big thing". As an ops guy for a big startup, even though I get that it still kinda sucks.

But if it's causing you to feel burnt out you're taking this too seriously.

> Releasing FOSS is generally at least partially ego-driven: we want to write something that people use and love and talk about.

I think this is self regulating. Those projects rarely take off, because there's not enough motivation to be awesome.

The projects that get traction are the ones the author HAS to build to see if it'll even work.

I don't disagree with anything you've said here :)

Entitlement to recognition? Everybody should be entitled to that. IDK if you are in the FOSS community but I talk to people who just want to write software that is used for nothing other than some minor recognition from some geeks that matter to them, who want to suicide.

Everybody is entitled to be recognized and respected.

Your comment made me angry that you missed so clearly the likelihood of this person being in a fragile situation. Hey, I have Aspergers too you know, there is no excuse to tell other people how they think they feel. It makes them feel ignored and under recognized. Basic human dignity: you recognize the efforts of others.

I'd say recognition for minor things is the lifeblood of society without money. Everybody is entitled to recognition.

Don't you start whining too. It is entitlement, not a desire for recognition. No one is disrespecting this guy (so far as we know) they are just ignoring him, just like everyone else in the world spends most of their lives after early childhood, being ignored. If no one uses this guy's software it may be that it is just of no use to them.

And if you write FOSS just to hear the roar of the appreciative crowd then that is your problem all long. Remember the adage to "scratch an itch" whether OR NOT anyone else finds it useful.

Sometimes it's not even about minor recognition. Sometimes it's about believing that there's really something fundamentally better about the way your app/library solves the problem at hand. It's frustrating to see people continue doing things the "broken" way when a better way has actually been demonstrated and made easily available.

Is everyone who believes that correct? Certainly not, but that's not the point. The point is that sometimes it's about idealism, not ego. People like Jacques might deny others the privilege of reinventing the wheel (even as they gained their own notoriety by exercising that privilege themselves) but that's really how every superior alternative has to start. Linux, HTML/HTTP, every database (SQL or otherwise) of the last twenty years, Hadoop - all are or contain reinvented wheels, and IMO at least one of those suffers by comparison to "reinvented" alternatives. The literal wheel itself has been reinvented a couple of times, from rolling logs to axles and bearings and differentials and aerodynamic shapes designed in wind tunnels.

One man's reinvention is another's creative destruction, and it often has nothing to do with ego. It's not entitlement to feel pain from banging your mind against some mad buggers' walls.

I'm fine with people re-inventing the wheel. I just don't get why the world should be expected to use your wheel. I've re-invented the wheel more often than not (all but once or so), yet if the world doesn't use whatever I make that doesn't upset me because I recognize that was my own choice rather than that the world now owes me.

Why should the world be expected to use your wheel?

Because it's better. That belief might be incorrect the vast majority of the time and/or in this specific case, but I for one am reluctant to quash that kind of enthusiasm. It's the fuel of progress, even if some (most?) of it is wasted. The disappointment and frustration of seeing "inferior" alternatives prevail are inseparable from the drive to create a better one. It's not about "owing" anything. For many people, it's about wanting to make the (technical) world a better place, being thwarted, and seeing the community as a whole diminished as a result.

Maybe some people don't feel that kind of passion themselves. Maybe they think emotion and idealism have no place in computing, though if that were the case I doubt we'd see so many flame wars. Maybe they've never had an idea worth getting that attached to, though I doubt that's a common factor in a forum for entrepreneurs. Maybe some people are in it for the ego boost themselves, and can't imagine others being in it for another reason. Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that some people do get invested in an idea for reasons besides ego, and it's good for them to do so.

Easier beats better, cheaper beats better, sharper looking beats better and so on. Better only matters if all other things are equal and if the perception of all other things is (at least) equal. It's pretty rare to see better be the major reason for adoption for some chunk of open source.

Community, documentation are other metrics that matter a lot when choosing an open source solution.

If it weren't for that then everybody would be using Haskell or Clojure, those are so much better (at least, so I keep hearing) and yet the reality is different.

"Easier beats better, cheaper beats better, sharper looking beats better and so on."

Beside the point. If your goal is to "beat" others (revealing choice of words) and either make more money or gain more recognition then sure, but not every piece of software is motivated by those goals. Somebody has to make the "better" even if they're not the ones to benefit, and many are fine with that. That's particularly true in open source.

Assuming a particular motivation for the OP, and then insulting them based on that assumption, is just wrong. In fact, I think some might even see it as hitting someone when they're down - i.e. bullying. People who've gained some prominence in the community should try to do better.

I don't think I've insulted anybody. As for bullying, you're doing just fine.

If your motivation is to improve the world the world does not owe you anything.

I sympathize with the OP and don't mean to be derisive, but really there is so much open source software to be done, so many niches and gaps and itches to scratch (I currently am writing three projects for which I see little to no "competitors"). And yet his major projects are a plugin system and a static blog generator. I might be coming from node.js here, don't know the status quo in Python, but even as JS is a much younger cohesive community, there are a TON of people doing their own versions of what the poster is doing, in fact they might be among the most reinvented applications out there. And there are clearly many winners already. I love doing developer tools too, many of my itches revolve around them, being a developer, yet I see many problems that aren't seeing as much competition. A good execution on an area open source lacks would not go unappreciated.

What do you see as the holes? Care to link out to your three projects?

You're absolutely right. If being an entrepreneur is creating a product for a need, being a good open source contributor isn't any different (only you're working strictly for the notoriety).

I would suggest to OP to try to find a job where he is encouraged to release things he builds for that product FOSS, so that even if he doesn't find success in the popularity of it, hell, at least it means a lot at his day job and he has some skrill to show for it.

Holding your self to unattainably high standards is a common factor in developing a burn-out, so I'd guess that's what's happening here.