I want to share a post Written by Patrick Brouwers about how an excellent open source product can become to a project that is not align with the purpose defined at the beginning.
The post is about a Laravel library but essentially is the same idea with all the open source projects.
Excellent read thanks geekroot!
Brouwers motivation remark here struck me especially:
“I started caring more about the needs of others than our own needs.”
Indeed that precisely is the dilemma and peril of open source initiatives - when ‘consumers’ fail to recognize and respect that their support only happens thanks to motivated ‘producer’ volunteers.
Open source needs to be supported by good “structures”. Doing open source as a solo / freelance developer is not sustainable. Open source needs companies and foundations to be active economic actors to support developers. That is our goal with the foundation too!