Intel Survey Finds Maintainer Burnout & Documentation Top Open-Source Challenges

[bug77]

Another annoyances is having to sign contributor-license agreements (CLA). I just wanted to help out, maybe fix something, maybe something small, and now I have to sign a CLA. Ugh, no thanks.

That's self-contradicting. If you really just want to help out with a fix or something, you'd have no problem with signing a CLA. By not signing a CLA, you're not just helping out, you're embedding yourself forever in that project, so that maintainers have to get in touch with you and get your approval for various things.

[uid313]

That's self-contradicting. If you really just want to help out with a fix or something, you'd have no problem with signing a CLA. By not signing a CLA, you're not just helping out, you're embedding yourself forever in that project, so that maintainers have to get in touch with you and get your approval for various things.

I didn't want to be a core maintainer who stays around and maintains it forever. I just wanted to do a one time contribution, a bug fix or a feature and then leave.

[bug77]

I didn't want to be a core maintainer who stays around and maintains it forever. I just wanted to do a one time contribution, a bug fix or a feature and then leave.

Yes, you want to contribute and then leave. But without a CLA in place, you can't just "leave". You retain ownership of that code and maintainers must get a hold of you if they want to relicense or something. You see how not signing a CLA puts other people involved in the project in a tight spot?
If you truly wanted to be helpful, you'd have no problem signing over ownership of your code.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that everyone should give their code away all the time. Just that in some (many?) cases, a CLA makes sense. Especially if you consider some contributors will eventually fall of the edge of the world.

[uid313]

Yes, you want to contribute and then leave. But without a CLA in place, you can't just "leave". You retain ownership of that code and maintainers must get a hold of you if they want to relicense or something. You see how not signing a CLA puts other people involved in the project in a tight spot?
If you truly wanted to be helpful, you'd have no problem signing over ownership of your code.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that everyone should give their code away all the time. Just that in some (many?) cases, a CLA makes sense. Especially if you consider some contributors will eventually fall of the edge of the world.

Yeah, I see how CLA can be useful, but it also a burden to have to sign it, and its not funny have to surrender personal information. There are some obstacles that make someone not want to contribute to open source. That make it not fun, that make it a chore, that make it dreadful.

[bug77]

Yeah, I see how CLA can be useful, but it also a burden to have to sign it, and its not funny have to surrender personal information. There are some obstacles that make someone not want to contribute to open source. That make it not fun, that make it a chore, that make it dreadful.

Almost as fun as having to sign up with 100 web sites just to be able to report issues. I see where you're coming from. And yes, sharing personal info is not for everyone. Especially in this day and age.

[uid313]

Almost as fun as having to sign up with 100 web sites just to be able to report issues. I see where you're coming from. And yes, sharing personal info is not for everyone. Especially in this day and age.

Oh, yeah that is another one. I prefer to report issues on GitHub where I already have an account. Sometimes I am expected to sign up for an account on some private Gerrit instance just report an issue, I don't like that.

[guglovich]

Strange that there's no QA and UI/UX.

[bug77]

Strange that there's no QA and UI/UX.

QA is mentioned towards the middle of the second table in the article.

[plonoma]

I didn't want to be a core maintainer who stays around and maintains it forever. I just wanted to do a one time contribution, a bug fix or a feature and then leave.

What if you email your contribution in the form of a message describing the problem and fix (including where in the source files to modify things) without including code, only pseudocode clearly marked as pseudocode. Would that be a practical approach for that type of contributions?

[plonoma]

Maintenance burdens or when almost: Everybody wants to start a cool new hip project but nobody wants to maintain existing projects.
All those software projects. Who's going to maintain them? The chickens come home to roost.