As a committer on a couple of medium-popularity projects I couldn't agree more with this:
"Maintaining a successful open source project is Good Will Hunting in reverse. You start out as a respected genius, and end up being a janitor who gets into fights."
— Byrne Hobart (@ByrneHobart@twitter.com)
@jxf That explains the phenomenon of DJ Bernstein being this grandee of the programming world. He has not actually done much maintaining.
@jxf oh my god, sadly so accurate in so many cases. It turns out that grumpy stubborn people are the ones willing to keep on slogging to keep the thing alive, which also contributes to the grumpiness. This brings to mind the tension between the #volunteer-driven nature so many great #FreeSoftware projects, and the need to earn a living in order to do a good job of maintenance. This is a key point where projects should be funded by orgs like Linux Foundation, OTF, https://sovereigntechfund.de, etc
@jxf “How about them Apples?”
@jxf, I wonder what the hostile fork analogy is in Good Will Hunting...