Burnout epidemic proves there's too much Rust on the gears of open source

Open source burnout has reared its head once again, this time in relation to the Rust project. However, the issue is not new, nor are the solutions. A lengthy blog post last week by a senior Rust engineer, Jynn Nelson, documented the problem, saying: "The number of people who have left the Rust project due to burnout is …

[elsergiovolador]

"Burnout"

It's a neat euphemism to explain that people find it's not fun to work for free and then see your work being used by big corporations to make nice profit.

How these kind of projects still find gullible developers is beyond me.

Governments really should step up and close the loophole that big corporations are using to get free R&D and bypass employment laws and other regulations.

Imagine if a supermarket created a foundation and then asked people to contribute working at the till or unloading the stock for free so they get nice entry in their resume and get experience.

[Brian Miller]

Re: "Burnout"

Nope, burnout is not a euphemism. Burnout happens at for-pay gigs as well. At my last employer I wrote a replacement for a critical API that was running at 10 requests per second on an Amazon C5 Large instance. The code I wrote benchmarked at over 126 times as fast. My manager's manager told me, "We don't need the speed." I quit. They don't want excellence, then they don't need to employ excellent people.

I can see what is happening to the developers. People want to go do something different, it's a volunteer effort, so they go and do something else with their personal time. Government funding won't change that.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: "Burnout"

People want to go do something different, it's a volunteer effort,

If people are not paid fair wages then you end up with privileged people participating in those projects.

Just take a look how "diverse" are Rust contributors - mostly middle aged white males.

You have a lot of talented people from e.g. working class background, but they don't have luxury to commit their time to such projects, because they are not backed by generational wealth or rich parents.

[claimed]

Re: "Burnout"

Also it’s an American project. Remind me where all the English speaking IT people live (English speaking because it’s an American project). Remind me which demographic are going to bury time into building a career vs building something for free vs spending time with family/hookers/golf clubs.

Oh, right, it’s the Middle Aged white male.

Now; correcting for generational wealth from a starting population of middle aged white males… beep, boop, beep, boop

Oh, yea, it’s middle aged white males. Wowza

[sabroni]

Re: "Burnout"

Upovted for "Middle aged white males are the people who are going to bury time into building a career"

That was your premise, the priveliged work harder because thay are successful.

If you're upvoting that you need to work on your critical thinking, it's easy to spot the flaw in this "argument".

[claimed]

Re: "Burnout"

Sorry, I meant young people are going to put time into their career vs doing free stuff, and older people (beyond middle age) are also less likely to still be actively working on side projects (don’t shoot me, I know there are some greys here).

So that gives us middle aged people who are most likely to contribute time to open source. America gives us white people. IT gives us males (of course there are some notable exceptions, but this one I’m pretty confident is correct in general).

So now we’ve narrowed down that it’s middle aged white males that will be doing American open source, I’m dismissing the argument that it’s because they are “privileged”. There are plenty of working class Middle Aged white males in America, in IT. So… just saying that the diversity argument is weak, and pointless, and irrelevant in this case. I expect the diversity of open source to be the same as the diversity of IT in general, corrected for who is at a point in their lives where they can comfortably give away time, and also have built up enough skill to do so effectively. So if we’re saying it’s privileged white males in IT, ok I’m here for that argument, but it’s irrelevant to talk about it for open source as the problem is “upstream”.

I have no data to back up my argument, I’m just clarifying it as I think you (sabroni) misread it. Hopefully that makes more sense now.

[Wellyboot]

Re: "Burnout"

It takes a couple or three decades for the mortgage/sprogs to drop down the outgoings list to the point of allowing most IT types the ability to pick up a time burning hobby!

[rcxb]

Re: "Burnout"

Also it’s an American project. Remind me where all the English speaking IT people live

India, mostly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you say India?

Last FOSS project I can remember marked by a majority of Indian/subcontinent folks was Axis2 which then morphed into California based WSO2. Another one was the ill-famed and still buggy Web Developer Tools eclipse plugin. But that was 20years ago.

I'm not seeing the Indian FOSS community (is there any?) represented in proportion of their fraction of the English native speakers community. Young Indians seem more attracted by the corporate world and looking up at Sundar Pichai or Satya Nadella as their role model.

[ChoHag]

Re: "Burnout"

I too can work out with 100% confidence the age, colour and sex of people from such minimal clues as, for example, "elsergiovolador" and maybe a domain name.

[sabroni]

Re: They don't want excellence

Hmm. Or maybe they want someone who does what they need them to do?

"The code I wrote benchmarked at over 126 times as fast"

Either it's fast enough to do the job or it isn't. Once it is fast enough to do the job stop fucking around and pick up something that NEEDS to be done, don't keep polishing the job you've already finished.

Doesn't sound like burnout to me. Sounds like you decided to do some work that you found interesting. When someone is paying you to do a job you need to do that job, not whatever tickles your intellect.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: They don't want excellence

No idea why you got downvotes for this. If you're paid, then do the job you are paid to do. Not something else/unnecessary and then get all pissy when the boss calls you out on it.

Before Xmas I met a guy who was clearly a class software engineer, way way above average, stratospheric maybe. But unmanageable. I would put money on him only doing stuff that interested him, not the company that employs him and as soon as he was told to get on with the work that he was being paid to do? Off he would go.

Anonymous, just in case.

[doublelayer]

Re: They don't want excellence

Maybe because you're both assuming that the speedup was both completely unnecessary and wasting time. Neither is proven, and if we believe their statements, both are false. Even if we don't believe them, both could easily be false.

Why write a replacement for an API at all if it's already fine? It sounds like some speedup was necessary. If you're writing a replacement from scratch, then doing it efficiently the first time is the best policy as long as it doesn't result in taking a really long time. If you write it to be faster, just enough to meet the number they provided, then that number will eventually increase and you'll have to write it again. If you significantly exceed that number, you may never have to do that. There is a possibility that this did result in wasting time, but if the manager said "we don't need the speed" rather than "you didn't need to spend so much time", it doesn't sound like that was their complaint.

[claimed]

Re: They don't want excellence

Not downvoted, but “need” and “ask” can be different things. If the job is: write code the business needs, then just because boss says they don’t need it doesn’t mean it’s true. Maybe they will need it once boss pulls a finger out and brings on more clients, and then they’re ahead of the game and not delivering a shit service that loses customers because they didn’t need the performance last week.

Otherwise I agree, don’t waste time performance tuning if it isn’t a bottleneck.

[Brian Miller]

Re: They don't want excellence

Either it's fast enough to do the job or it isn't.

And it wasn't fast enough to do the job. The minimum set by the marketing team was 20 requests per second. They wanted to build a gobal world-class API for their product, which at scale would mean millions to billions of requests per second. 20, let alone 10, requests per second doesn't cut it. I was assigned to improve it, it was my job to write better code. And I did do that.

The code to "improve" was a mess. Incoming JSON was checked with regular expressions. Numbers were converted to strings, said strings were used as binary with "1" and "0", and converted back to numbers. The language library functions were avoided wherever possible. There was a functions with inscrutable names, like "compute" and "randomhexprependlastbyte" (which did do something with random hex and bytes). Code from GitHub and elsewhere was patched in almost randomly, with no attribution. Of course there weren't any comments.

There are no little magical tweaks that improve code. You have to start with a good and competent design, implement it well, and test it to ensure its functionality and performance.

I got burnt out from working with a hostile manager, an indifferent middle manager, and an incompetent coworker.

No, burnout comes from a bad environment. It comes from dealing with crap code and crap management. We live in a distopia, and there are plenty of people enforcing that. Just like you claiming "Doesn't sound like burnout to me." What you wrote seems like trite trolling to me. I have no idea what you actually produce, but it doesn't seem like you write code.

[garwhale]

Re: "Burnout"

Stupid manager's manager - unless there was some other downside, efficiency (speed) translates directly into $$ i.e. less CPUs for the same work.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: "Burnout"

It does, but the cost of refactoring the code may be substantially more than the CPU cost for the functionality lifespan, particularly if the system has other workloads.

'Fast enough' is usually the best aim

[LybsterRoy]

Re: "Burnout"

That sounds more like disgruntlement than burnout

[cornetman]

Re: "Burnout"

> It's a neat euphemism to explain that people find it's not fun to work for free..

That has to be the strangest take I have ever seen and obviously a weird way to sneak in something that seems to be important to you that has nothing to do with the problems of developer burnout at all.

A lot of developers do tend to get obsessive about their work and many are working on their own or with just a small number of others tackling software systems that are often very complex, poorly documented, and possibly in areas where they are directly in conflict with large companies deliberately making their efforts difficult through DRM or obfuscation. They may also feel a lot of pressure if that system is high-profile.

I don't know why you think that getting paid would make a difference to that or the fact that others are using the software to make money.

As an open source contributor myself, seeing others successfully use my work is one of my prime motivations for doing it and I'm sure that's true for many, many others.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: "Burnout"

As an open source contributor myself, seeing others successfully use my work is one of my prime motivations for doing it and I'm sure that's true for many, many others.

So you are enjoying the privilege and uneven playing field. Not sure if you are aware, but in the UK it's actually illegal to volunteer at for profit business without receiving at least a minimum wage.

This is to ensure people from disadvantaged backgrounds have fair chance at getting work experience they need. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to sustain themselves by working for free.

While you think what you do is noble and generous, it is actually harmful for wider population and mostly benefit big corporations.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Burnout"

Please go glue yourself to a POS keyboard somewhere. You're sounding like the "Just Stop Volunteering" guy.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: "Burnout"

Nobody stops you from volunteering at a charity. They actually need competent tech people to help with various things.

It is certainly much better than using your time to line the already stuffed pockets of big corporations.

[keithpeter]

Re: "Burnout"

A non-rhetorical question: aren't most large open source projects connected with a charity of some kind?

I'm thinking of Debian and SPI.

Icon: me and money are like oil and water.

[doublelayer]

Re: "Burnout"

You have demonstrated that you don't know what open source is (it's not for profit, for example), nor why people do it. People have the right to decide to do things for free. Some people choose to. Others may not have the freedom to spend their time doing it, but the same is true of literally anything that takes time; if you already have what you need, it is easier to have the time to spend on hobbies whether those hobbies are writing open source software, baking, painting, or walking outdoors. What you're saying effectively boils down to "you have free time and someone else doesn't, and that's a problem", but open source is not special in that regard.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: "Burnout"

You seem to be quite defensive. Big corporations promote Open Source, because it saves them money on R&D. Simple as that and other than that it promotes inequality.

People have the right to decide to do things for free.

That's a daft take and you can't actually decide to work for free at for profit organisation (with some exceptions). It's illegal. You have to be paid at least paid minimum wage. This is designed to prevent exploitation and ensure that work opportunities are accessible to individuals from all economic backgrounds.

"you have free time and someone else doesn't, and that's a problem"

Open source communities are dominated by middle-class, white men. This is not just a coincidence but a reflection of broader socio-economic dynamics. Individuals from more privileged backgrounds are more likely to have the resources (such as time, money, and access to education) that enable them to participate in open source projects. This leads to a lack of diversity in these communities, which can perpetuate existing biases and inequalities in the development of technology. Experience in open source projects is often valued in the tech industry. However, if only certain groups have the luxury to contribute, this creates an unequal playing field. Those who cannot afford to work for free miss out on important opportunities to gain experience, build a portfolio, and network within the tech community, which can impact their career progression.

[doublelayer]

Re: "Burnout"

"you can't actually decide to work for free at for profit organisation (with some exceptions). It's illegal."

Which you will not stop saying until you eventually recognize that open source work is not for profit. Someone might take it and make some profit of their own, but my work is not for them. It is for me, or the group of developers (not an organization at all, let alone a for profit one), or for the organization that organizes to write it (probably a recognized nonprofit organization). Someone else making money does not mean I am working for them. If they tell me to do something and I don't want to do it, I don't do it, which is a pretty different situation from a working environment.

The types of people who work in open source are the result of a lot of different factors, some of which are important to do something about, but none of which will be fixed if you keep telling us how the entire concept is or should be illegal for incorrect reasons. Your reason, which is not the only one, is that some people have more money, and therefore more free time, to spend on their choice of activity. Of the various reasons why imbalances exist, this is one of the least important. Differences between who gets related education and cultural problems in some projects resulting in people feeling unwelcome are both more important problems and, crucially, problems we can actually try to fix without causing more damage than we avoid.

[sabroni]

Re: open source work is not for profit

No of course it isn't.

If that was the case loads of massive corporations would be making tons of money by using open source code in their proprietary software.

I think we'd have noticed if that was happening.

[keithpeter]

Re: "Burnout"

@elsergiovolador

dominated: this word choice implies something about the decision making process in projects that requires some evidence I think.

A more general point: In the last half century or so I've noticed a huge change in access to information about what we might describe as IT. It was quite hard to get information in (say) the mid-80s unless you were associated with a university department or you were working for a large organisation, a company or the military or the communications utilities.

Now any kid with a hand-me-down laptop can run powerful software similar to the systems used by the largest corporations and can access full information about the software, often several layers of information even down to the source code.

Seems likely to increase equality in some sense by removing barriers.

[werdsmith]

Re: "Burnout"

You have demonstrated that you don't know what open source is (it's not for profit, for example),

MySQL was purchased for $1 billion by Sun. Sun which amounted to MySQL and Java was purchased for $5.6 billion by Oracle. Oracle is now miking both of those projects because Oracle didn’t buy Sun because Larry was feeling benevolent.

People know what Open Source is, but they also understand how the world actually works and how idealism is just a nice idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Burnout"

Dunno if you noticed, but MySQL has been replaced by MariaDB (developed by a nonprofit foundation) because of that.

[doublelayer]

Re: "Burnout"

And Java was not open source and still isn't. There are some open source versions like OpenJDK, but the Oracle and Sun versions are not. There are lots of open source language tools. GCC, for example. How much to buy that? Or databases, how much would it cost me to buy PostgreSQL? There are companies that make a product that you can see the source of, and they can be for-profit companies, but most projects are not run like that and, even if they are, my choice to contribute to those projects is not the same as getting hired by those companies with a salary of $0.

[cornetman]

Re: "Burnout"

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"

"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I am very glad to hear it."

[excession]

Re: "Burnout"

“it’s illegal to volunteer for a for-profit company in the UK”

Absolute, unqualified nonsense.

https://legalvision.co.uk/employment/volunteers-workplace/

[werdsmith]

Re: "Burnout"

Absolute, unqualified nonsense.

https://legalvision.co.uk/employment/volunteers-workplace/

It is internships which require payment by a for profit employer. Internships being slightly different from volunteering.

The idea of working for a profit business for no pay if the business is making good money does qualify under fucking stupid though.

[garwhale]

Re: "Burnout"

Money is not the only thing that can be received in exchange for working. For example, working part time as a volunteer at a hospital after retiring may be fulfilling- it's also better for society as a whole, even if the hospital is nominally profit making, as most hospitals are subsidized in some way.

Software engineers may feel satisfaction in problem solving and seeing their work being useful.

In the distant future, money may not exist anyway.

[Caver_Dave]

Re: "Burnout"

"stupid" maybe, but it is required in many professions.

Try getting a job in a Zoo, with your 1st with Honours Degree in Zoology, without having volunteered at a Zoo for at least 18 months.

My daughter, after her 18 months, was taken on as an apprentice at another Zoo, and now 4 Zoos later is actually a Keeper.

(I've had discussions with her regarding redundancy when the whole population of some species of small fish are in one room under her care! But at least in multiple tanks, and supplied with water from different mixes and generator backed up electricity. And yes, they have run out of fuel for the generators when needed!!!)

[VicMortimer]

Re: "Burnout"

Are there for-profit zoos?

Because as far as I know virtually all if not all zoos are nonprofit.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: "Burnout"

I expect they pay peanuts. Fortunately for Zoos, that probably turns out to not be such a bad thing.

[MaeIstrom]

Re: "Burnout"

Imagine being so full of hate and bile that an individual choosing to give you something for free is your enemy. When racism, sexism and ageism aren't enough on their own to give you a high so you need to combine them into one coherent theory of hate.

Programming used to be exclusive when an OS cost hundreds and a compiler thousands but now all you need is some combination of talent and hard work but but both those concepts are anathema to someone like you aren't they? I'll bet my next minimum wage pay cheque you've never provided a good or service to someone in your life. Please read and reread your final paragraph until you realise who those words best apply to.

[sabroni]

Re: "Burnout"

Do you think Nestle had children's interests at heart when they promoted their baby milk over mother's milk? Using the free samples helps to dry up the mothers milk so she has to keep using the product.

Imagine being so full of hate and bile that an individual choosing to give you something for free is your enemy.

Imagine being so naive that you think people giving you stuff never have an ulterior motive.

[garwhale]

Re: "Burnout"

Hopefully you don't ascribe nefarious motives to contributers to open source software (paid or unpaid), volunteers at schools, hospitals and care homes and elsewhere, or friends and relatives giving you presents.

[Plest]

Re: "Burnout"

How about some "reductio ad absurdum"...

If I take a meal to my aged neighbour I'm depriving a council worker of a job delivering meals on wheels.

If I take photos of trees for fun, I'm depriving a local forest ranger of a job cataloging trees.

If I make a sandwich, I'm depriving a cafe owner of making a living.

If I teach my 2 year kid not to shit their pants, I'm depriving a nursery teacher of a job!

I can keep going but no matter what you do there is always someone going to be paid to do that same thing, at some point in some place. Oddly enough as a professional IT person i don't get the urge to be a prat just 'cos someone I know is learning to write some basic code, if anything I'm willing to double-down on giving my time freely in order to help them take a step up, that applies to anything I can do!

Shut up and get off your soap box, you're just making an arse of yourself.

[werdsmith]

Re: "Burnout"

If I create an army of straw men, am I depriving a military commander of his job?

Absolutely ridiculous naive bollocks.

[garwhale]

Re: "Burnout"

Even straw men need a commander - so you are creating jobs, including the straw men assemblers.

[garwhale]

Re: "Burnout"

Might be true for other jobs, but doubt very much that software engineers have difficulty finding jobs, regardless of their backgrounds. If there was no free software, everything would be more expensive, and people with little money would be able to afford less. We would also be much more dependant on Microsoft et al.

[lostinspace]

Re: "Burnout"

Why all the downvotes? It's true, if the route into a career or industry requires a lot of unpaid internship you are automatically excluding the people that can't afford to do that.

Companies should pay for work done for them, not expect to freeload on people that can afford to work for free, while preventing those who can't from getting a look in.

[doublelayer]

Re: "Burnout"

Part of it is defining all open source work as an unpaid internship. It's not, and we all know it's not. I've been employed full time for quite a while now. I'm no longer doing internships, but I still contribute to open source. If every line of open source was being written by people who had no other experience, the quality of it would be a lot worse.

The other problem is trying to pretend that open source work is a requirement to get a job. Yes, it can help to prove experience, and people will take that into account, but other types of experience work as well. I was not required to show open source contributions to get my first jobs in programming. Since I had less experience, it took more work to prove that I knew what I was talking about and I got more rejections, but I and many like me still managed to do it.

Two incorrect statements about what open source is and how it works don't help make a point, especially when the point is unclear and slightly insulting. As far as I can tell, the problem the rant is trying to point out is that open source software is written primarily by people who have the time to do it well, and those people generally already have money so they can afford to spend the time, and I'm not sure what the solution to that was supposed to be. Yet, by not doing whatever we were supposed to do, working on open source is propping up some system of racism and sexism by corporate proxy. It's a garbled complaint that relies on incorrect assertions.

[Yankee Doodle Doofus]

Re: "Burnout"

The downvotes are because people aren't doing open-source work for companies. Companies sometimes use open-source projects, but the projects do not exist for them, and they cannot dictate what the developers do or do not include in the project, or how it is implemented.

Open-source is not the same as an internship. I'm not sure why this is so hard for some to grasp.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Burnout"

> That has to be the strangest take I have ever seen and obviously a weird way to sneak in something that seems to be important to you

Some people who have an agenda or axe to grind can- and do- use any excuse to turn even the most tangentially-related discussion into an opportunity to grandstand or rant on that subject.

This is far from the most contrived attempt to do so.

[tinpinion]

Re: "Burnout"

1.) Burnout also applies to paid development work: for me, it usually starts when I'm introduced to a Project Mangler. (How long will it take to implement this feature? Depends on how poorly-designed the data structure is when the seven other teams you're managing are done messing it up. It'll probably take about two hours to program and several weeks of trying to figure out good ways to tie loosely-related records together because you won't let the competent people sit together and discuss requirements and plans.)

2.) The open-source ecosystem benefits from corporate contributions in the exact same way that the free-software ecosystem does not. The GPL family of licenses hack copyright in a way that is often unacceptable to corporate greed. (Red Hat's core clientele are businesses, and, while I am disheartened by their strategy of penalizing customers who exercise their GPL-provided rights, I feel that their actions are (legally) justified as long as Red Hat fulfills their obligations.)

3.) What good could any government do? I'm seriously looking for answers, because the extremes of what government intervention can do are pretty bleak: prevent companies from contributing to free/open source software, prevent them from using it (won't somebody please think of the servers?!), require software developers to obtain a government license to practice their craft, levy hefty fines against free/open-source developers for contributing insecure code to organizations who don't audit what they consume...

4.) Imagine if a guy called Greg created a foundation which aimed to make retail workers' lives easier by rewarding patrons for keeping stores tidy. It's an incredibly bad analogy for the topic being discussed, but it sure would be funny if Greg actually managed to pull it off.

[Throatwarbler Mangrove]

Re: "Burnout"

#teamgreg

[elsergiovolador]

Re: "Burnout"

1) I referred to burnout in the context of open source, which in fairness the author touched the issue of pay slightly.

2) This is just a proof big corporations use open source as a free R&D and everyone should clap if they commit their employees to tailor it more to their needs. LOL

3) To ensure fair compensation for contributors to open source projects, additional licensing model could be adopted. While open source software remains freely accessible for personal use, educational purposes, and non-profit organisations, a different model should be applied to commercial entities. Corporations that leverage open source software for profit-making activities should be required to pay a licensing fee, regardless of the actual licence of the given project. This fee structure would acknowledge the value that these contributions bring to the commercial sector.

The collected fees would then be distributed among the contributors of the open source project, providing a tangible recognition of their efforts and skills. Such a model would strike a balance between maintaining the open and collaborative spirit of open source software, while also ensuring that those who contribute their time and expertise are fairly compensated, especially when their work becomes integral to commercial success and people who don't need the money, they could donate it to charity. This could involve the creation of a governing body or the use of existing open source foundations that oversee the fair allocation of funds to contributors based on their level of contribution and the impact of their work.

[cornetman]

Re: "Burnout"

> contribute their time and expertise are fairly compensated

My compensation is the joy of doing the work and knowing that others benefit from it. I'm sorry that you don't seem to understand that.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: "Burnout"

That's what I am talking about - privilege.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Burnout"

Sure but you are not obliged to use what they do and therefore avoid contributing to their “privilege”

Open source works because it is useful - a tour of GitHub will tell you that >95% of what is open source is copies of other stuff, unfinished or unstarted good (or bad) ideas, or just dross.

The “privilege”, which has been well expounded here, is being able to have the time to contribute to something that other people find useful… otherwise you’re in the >95% and on your own.

Is it a privilege to want to do something for others that they find useful ?

Is it a privilege because we can do something for others ?

Should we begrudge people who have the skill and the time to do so ?

[werdsmith]

Re: "Burnout"

My compensation is the joy of doing the work and knowing that others benefit from it. I'm sorry that you don't seem to understand that.

I'm so pleased for you that you are in a position to do that. Not everybody is, I'm sorry that you don't seem to understand that.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: "Burnout"

Sadly they enjoy the gatekeeping they engage in, keeping others who don't have the luxury of being able to work for free, away.

[cornetman]

Re: "Burnout"

Both you and sabroni seem to have a very narrow view about free software which seems strange to me, but let me perhaps explain my position so that we can possibly understand each other a little better. I don't mean that in a patronising way, I just think that we are looking at the free software realm very differently.

Privilege: the up and coming generation seem to have a bit of a complex when it comes to the idea of privilege. I think the term is very overused. In terms of not being a wage slave and having *some* free time, I would say that the *vast* majority of people in the relatively affluent western world are in this camp. The bulk of the population in the US, Canada and Europe have a built a civilisation that benefits the most people. Sure, there are people at the bottom (who have little) and people at the very top (that have a lot) but over 99% of people are in the working class: they have a job that doesn't absolutely consume them and they have some amount of time that is available for their leisure. That time might be dedicated to family (if they have kids) or a hobby or perhaps they do charity work or somesuch, all of those are valid and worthwhile. In a general sense, we are all privileged to live in such a time and in a place where history has taught us that being in a perpetual state of war is anathema to the best possible life, so we stopped doing it. There are many places in the world that have not realised that yet. They will catch us up at some point (hopefully). In such a place and time though, it seems strange to suggest that those members of the society that occupy the 99% middle ground are somehow privileged. Those people are just, for the most part, like everyone else. It is the norm. It is neither privileged nor unprivileged. It just is. What we might think about the good use of that time is something that we could discuss, however, and we would differ on what is worthwhile and what is not.

Software: software as a good or activity occupies a peculiar niche. It has a large up-front cost, but the cost of replication and dissemination is almost nothing and the Internet has amplified that. Software has effectively become a commodity. It need be written once, and then it can exist forever. In terms of how it sits in a capitalistic economy, it is a bit of an oddball. In order to guarantee making money from its sale we need copyright because it is not like chairs and tables in which each require materials and effort to manufacture. Because of this, free software has been the great democratiser. Whatever I write and give to the world can be used by the poor, the middle class and the rich alike. From the large corporation selling infrastructure to the school kid in their bedroom with a cheap laptop that they got from the thrift store, all can participate. You talk about the poor and the underprivileged: free software is the *only* way for these kids to get a leg up and out of the grasp of corporate overreach.

My contribution: I won't be specific, but what I contribute to the free software realm relates to the support of older, commodity hardware. Large corporations want us to keep churning over our devices because it feeds their greed, while simultaneously filling landfills and wasting vast hordes of material. I have no axe to grind against business or manufacturers but corporatism had built a system that generates tons and tons of waste for no other reason than to keep selling us the same stuff over and over again for fashion and due to built-in obsolescence. It is pretty messed up. Witness the likes of Canon and the number of "new models" that they release every year: devices that print and scan just like the old ones did, whereas the old ones no longer work because the latest Windows doesn't support them. The poor and those on limited income can not afford to walk on that treadmill: to do so would keep them in perpetual poverty. It is disgusting and again I will say that it is anathema to a *healthy* capitalist society. So I, and others, help them by keeping their perfectly functional hardware working, and provide a pathway for the under-privileged in our society to participate.

You talk about privilege as though it is a bad thing. It is surely the best kind of privilege to be able to give a helping hand to our brothers and sisters poor and non-poor alike.

It is clear that classical liberalism together with capitalism (yes, with all of its potential flaws) have given us they best life and civilisation that has ever existed.

I am no communist or socialist. I'm just not an arsehole. I make no apology for that.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: "Burnout"

but over 99% of people are in the working class: they have a job that doesn't absolutely consume them and they have some amount of time that is available for their leisure.

That's the problem right here. You simply don't see it when you live in a bubble. The reality is that most people have to at least have a side job to make ends meet and absolutely have to grind every single day. You don't know how bad it is nowadays.

You talk about the poor and the underprivileged: free software is the *only* way for these kids to get a leg up and out of the grasp of corporate overreach.

This is your ego speaking. You are probably feeling good that you write this software so that "the poor" can use it. But you are missing the point. Because you are in privileged position to give away your work for free, there is no incentive for corporations to pay people for their work, because they can always get it from people like you. This means people who cannot afford to work for free never get to participate on the development side. They can only afford to consume it. This is how you create inequality.

I won't be specific, but what I contribute to the free software realm relates to the support of older, commodity hardware. Large corporations want us to keep churning over our devices because it feeds their greed, while simultaneously filling landfills and wasting vast hordes of material.

This is a wrong way. If you give your work for free, corporations wont have incentive to do it themselves and there is no reason for them to employ people to keep legacy devices alive. This also means there is fewer opportunities for people who would love to do this, but can't as their family needs food on the table.

You are doing exactly what big corporations want. I'd suggest you should put effort into lobbying government to change regulations so that corporations support legacy products for longer, rather than feeding the beast with your free code.

[cornetman]

Re: "Burnout"

> The reality is that most people have to at least have a side job to make ends meet and absolutely have to grind every single day.

I'm afraid that you are the one in the bubble.

That is complete twaddle.

There are indeed people in that situation. They are very much the minority.

> This is a wrong way. If you give your work for free, corporations wont have incentive to do it themselves and there is no reason for them to employ people to keep legacy devices alive.

Those corporations of which you speak have absolutely no intention of doing what you want. It is not in their interests to serve the public good.

Your worship of the corporation is quite frankly baffling. They have no conscience of the poor or of the lower classes in society. They are not even on their radar.

They will offer them neither employment nor aid. You are the embodiment of everything that is wrong in American society: naked corporatism, which is capitalism without conscience. There is clearly nothing that I can say that will reach your humanity.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: "Burnout"

and gaslighting started...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Burnout"

A few friendly tips:

- Not everything is about financial compensation, as others have pointed out. Some folks just like to make things and see that they are useful for others. Nothing wrong with that at all.

- Dragging inequality into discussions like this complete misses the point.

- Despite what some might say, 'white male' is not synonymous with privilege or rich upbringing or the ability to volunteer for something. That's gross oversimplification that leads to real problems (and people in need!) potentially being overlooked.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: "Burnout"

- Not everything is about financial compensation

In this case it is. Because people are doing work for big corporations without being paid. That's not right. Everyone should be compensated, even if they don't need the money.

[garwhale]

Re: "Burnout"

I suspect that most people contributing to open source have a job which pays well or are retired. Take the Linux OS for example, the product is free to use or copy, within the license restrictions. It's used by big corporations, non-profit organisations and individuals.

If corporations were forced to pay for open source development, they might just decide to use closed source development instead. In fact, they support open source development with donations and paid code.

If you help an elderly person across the road, would you ask for payment depending on their wealth? Nah.

You are free to start an open source model with a license that prohibits commercial use without payment for the coding hours at some rate. Not sure about the minimum wage thing though, not all jurisdictions have a minimum wage.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Burnout"

I've looked after the IT needs of a charity for over 30 years for no monetary gain - indeed I am still paying for some of the things they need.

I grew up in a household with very little money as my parents were too proud to claim all the things they could of.

When I was 14 I put a hole in my single pair of school trousers within the first month of the year. My mother converted them into shorts and I had to wear them for the rest of the year (including the winter). That would have made me an easy target for the bullies, had I not already been in their target for years.

Inequality does not have a place in this discussion, other than to fatten a chip on someone's shoulder.

[werdsmith]

Re: "Burnout"

A charity doesn’t have a place in this discussion. This is about corporation profit making.

[TheMeerkat]

Re: "Burnout"

If you chose to work for free, don’t expect to be paid. And don’t expect the State to make the users pay.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: "Burnout"

Governments really should step up and close the loophole that big corporations are using to get free R&D and bypass employment laws and other regulations.

By making open sources licences illegal, you mean? How else would you prevent someone from using work in a way the author explicitly chooses to allow?

[doublerot13]

Re: "Burnout"

@elsergiovolador I think you've "triggered" them :D

I know exactly what you mean... big corps - even frigging Microsoft - have learned how to make a huge profit from it

[doublelayer]

Re: "Burnout"

And that you could do so was obvious from the start. If I or anyone else with an open source project want to make it impossible to make money from it, we can manage it. We don't want to prevent that. My measure of success in my open source code is not "I'm sure nobody can make a profit using this". If someone manages it, that's fine with me.

[IGotOut]

It happens in both worlds.

Not a developer, but high level support in a multinational as part of a team of two....yes two, providing between us providing not only 8 hour days, but rota 24/7/365 cover. Sure the work wasn't overly demanding, but going to bed not knowing if you'll get a call at 2am or Christmas day, or doing that essential upgrade at 1am when it's quietest...it takes its toll.

The worst part about burnout, is you are usually the last to notice, or you notice when it's far to late.

I had a breakdown and did some dumb ass life changing things, but ultimately I quit the game, changed my life style and learned to live with less money.

At the end of the day, as much as people don't like to admit it, you are the most important person in your life. You can put others first, but ultimately if that is killing you, everyone ends up worse off.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It happens in both worlds.

The worst part about burnout, is you are usually the last to notice, or you notice when it's far to late.

This, absolutely this - if you've never experienced it, well done on getting this far but never let your guard down because until it happened I never could have fathomed how brutally destructive such a thing could be (and how long the after effects linger on, double digit years ago and I can still remember the feeling at the exact moment the last twig holding it all together snapped - relief for a split second as all the pressure was let go just like that and then... oh my).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It happens in both worlds.

> The worst part about burnout, is you are usually the last to notice, or you notice when it's far to late.

Light pressure on ears, indicating *very* high blood pressure. Funny twitching of the big muscles, mostly when showering. Ignored both... Broke down spectacularly. Dr. said something to the effect "Congratulations, your are just 30, with 40 you would not have survived this." That I keep in mind for the rest of my life.

I have to add, that this was nothing from doing my open source things, rather idiotic mismanagement in the place I worked for. I literally worked for three, the two persons I replaced on top of my role had both left because of constant overload.

Another warning signal: being angry about work matters way after work (Sundays, anyone?), also a feeling of dread anticipating work; if that happens *RUN*.

AC, because...

[F Seiler]

I'm partial to rust. I think the borrowing is a good addition to the memory model and stepping back on class hierarchies (inheritance) are very nice aspects, and i would like to see them in whatever general purpose high performance language id like to use in long term. But the two issues i have with rust today are

a) if you want a personal problem - *if* a language is so obviously inspired by c/c++ syntax, why so deliberately introduce some constructs that seem just alien to that style (if b is solved i guess i can get used to it over time, but reading doc today for a prospective language to get used to, there seemed to be far more WTH are you thinking aspects that eg java and c# introduced over a long time)

b) (actually somewhat on topic) no way i'm voluntarly investing in such a moving target as rust appears today. The projects i care about are measured in decades. At job i maintain pre c99 code, c++ that kinda compiles on semi modern visual studio but was written for vs2003, and a project from ground up written in std c++14 as cutting edge. Some used libraries were ported from the 1970 or maybe even earlier. Now that's the job, but my hobby project is also largely in that dimension, its' mostly c++ today and i rewrite some algos from 10 years ago, but introducing a new language to take over even parts of what modern c++ can do well today required some confidence in there being real benefits (the private project is RAII, make_shared and stack variables; you could say HPC, afaict no memory violations in lots of allocations - no idea about numbers, running even a desktop ryzen at full tilt today rips through terabyes of memory in no time) and language stability. In some parts i feel c++ is dragging, in other parts i also think the standard is moving rather fast. Now for rust, once there is a proper versioned standard (written down as standard, preferably ISO, but IETF, IEEE, EMCA etc ok fine) where you can expect to still be able in 2035 to compile a large code base wtitten in standard rust version 2024, yes let's go. absolutely.

But while people are committing to a language that in a way still tastes like some ephemeral move fast break things before the first coffee in the morning github project. Well. Not surprised.

[martinusher]

Its a project management issue

Burnout happens typically when people underestimate the project's size and overestimate their own capabilities. "Clever" people typically suffer from it more because they're so good at things that they don't see the edge of their understanding until they fall off it. One of the tricks to surviving in technology is understanding where that edge is and steering well clear of it but unfortunately this is a skill that's acquired with experience (and usually by a few near misses or actual falling off the edge).

A contributing factor is trying to code your way out of an inherently bad design. Software isn't the only place you see this but because of simulation software you don't get the little Eiffel Towers of desperation as people try to tack just one more component on to keep the thing stable. One of the jobs of the team leader, project manager or whoever isn't to go around dumping work randomly on people (and then barking at them when they fall behind) but to make sure that what someone is trying to do is within their capabilities and is actually possible. (Sometimes you've just got to admit you're up a blind alley and back off to retry, eating the schedule hit.)

There's no magic to this. It comes from a basic understanding that "a dead engineer doesn't write very good code". To be productive a person has to be alive, healthy and happy and its management's role to make sure that happens.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Its a project management issue

Quote: "...inherently bad design..."

Quote: "...try to tack just one more component on..."

Ah....you may have heard of "The Agile Manifesto".

Just saying.....

[ChoHag]

Third time's the charm?

> But at what cost?

A salary.

[Filippo]

Burnout isn't exclusive to open source, or to software development. It happens in health and care, in school teaching... anywhere where there's a culture of work as a "mission" of sorts, where things must get done or you feel a sense of personal failure - and there are managers who know this and exploit this, whether consciously or not.

The only possible fix is to start disbelieving the chain of cause-and-effect that would tell you that if you could save the project by working harder, and you don't, and the project fails, therefore it's your fault. It isn't. If a project can only be saved by overworking, it's management's fault. Not yours. By overworking to save the project you are, in fact, exacerbating the underlying problem.

Let things crash and burn, until the tiers above you, the ones who were supposed to organize work properly, get the message and actually start doing their job. If you just get it done anyway, what message do you think they'll get? Your reward will just be more work.

[Plest]

Bascially what we all say when we get pissed off, "I don't get paid enough for this shit, the managers do so let them worry about it!". Ha ha!

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

It's about resource, it is not about money

Having burned out at least three times for both paid and unpaid projects (not programming related, but this is a human question, not a technical one) I think I can definitely offer a perspective on this

For the most part burnout occurs because you're given too much to do for your capabilities, available energy, and insufficient recovery time

Some people will therefore be more able to cope than others, and for different types of projects

Burn out is not linear, so if burn out is starting there needs to be an immediate, substantial, and ongoing reduction in demand

Once burnout has actually occurred, helping is largely a case of bolting the stable door. At that point you need to immediately stop working on the project. You may never be able to go back.

There are things that can help, unfortunately a lot of them don't match well to open source :

Gather more volunteers. For commercial companies, employ more. Spread load and enforce time off to prevent burnout

Thank contributors. In companies, an above inflation pay rise is also a fundamental necessity to know you're being appreciated.

Actively include contributors in the associated community/company. Manage any criticism that comes their way.

If criticism is necessary, be constructive, and offer assistance.

If someone specifically says they are burning out, listen to them, but if this hasn't been noticed previously someone isn't doing their job.

Be realistic in your requirements.

As a sub note on criticism and requirements : don't cause drama either through human interaction, or making changes that generate substantial work, without consideration and communication first.

If someone has to step away due to burn out, do not criticise them for doing so, even if this means higher pressure on other people.

There's a problem here, because support roles that exist in companies may not exist to the same degree (or at all) in open source projects. People are also less likely to volunteer for roles which have no visible end product.

I've seen a lot of people burn out, and in difference to the stupid guff at the beginning of these comments it spread across the spectrum of social class, gender, age, sexuality, and race.

For non paid projects, it's worth considering if there is a natural life span for volunteering. Few people carry on volunteering forever, some areas have an average time people contribute before moving on. Actually a lot of that applies to paid jobs too!

If you're not receiving sufficient community involvement/enhancement/thanks to your life for contributing it is only a matter of time before burn out occurs. Plan your retirement and step away when you can.

Volunteers are human yet users of non commercial offerings often have unrealistic expectations. This cannot be overstated. I've repeatedly seen small teams burn out from organising events due to a lack of resource and extensive requirements. Unless expectations are managed or volunteers increase, this will eventually destroy a community.

[Bump in the night]

Rust and Mozilla

I'm clueless about the current relationship Rust has with Mozilla, but I appreciate all the hard work that went into Firefox and Thunderbird. If Rust helped with that effort I can understand a situation like that. No doubt that would contribute to an under siege work environment.

[doublelayer]

Re: Rust and Mozilla

It is at least partially the other way around: Mozilla wanted to have better tools, so they made one. Others then took it over. It's embodied the successful aspect of open source, because people improving Rust also improve a tool that Mozilla relies on. Unfortunately, it doesn't make the negative aspects of a lot of people burning out go away.

[Ray Foulkes]

Abstractiohn

I think that the root of the "rant" is that the writer believes that people contributing to open source "abstract" jobs from large companies. I.e. if the companies did not have access to the open source software they would pay someone to do the work in place of the open source. Hence "priveleged people are abstracting potential money from the unprivileged".

This of course also applies to people volunteering to do more or less anything in a corporate environment e.g. societies who run caffes in hostpitals, teams who tidy up railway stations and install flower beds, people who volunteer to help the down-and-outs. Software is one of the least likely candidates to abstract jobs since, in general, rather high skill levels are required.

It is based on the presumtion that 'there is work which must be done and it is either done by volunteers or paid for by "rich" corporations'. I find such a premise hard to swallow. The vast majority of Open source software is of little interest to corporations. That which IS of interest is often supported by companies providing staff to enhance or bug-fix problems in the open source software. As an example have a quick look at INTEL : https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/topic-technology/open/project-catalog.html

Arguments will never be won against people who decide that ever person must be categorised as "an oppressor" or "the opressed". If you have spare time, you are an opressor - full stop, even is all you do is to make railway stations a little more attractive.

[halfstackdev]

Ah burnout …

Why is it that the Rust project is burning through developers, but other similar open source projects are not ?

What’s the big difference?

Compare to, say Zig / Odin / Bun / Elixir etc

Those projects are smashing it out of park in comparison, and do not have a consistent burnout problem.

All I can think of is that as a contributor to Rust, you have no say in the direction of the project, and have to deal with non-programmers who make all the big calls about priorities. That would be enough to burn anyone out.