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by emodendroket 3733 days ago
The "weekend" people mean here is a period of time when you do not do work at all
1 comments

Is it uncommon to do some free software work in your spare time? I usually have a bunch of things I want to fix and spend an hour or two during the weekend when I would normally be just watching YouTube.
> Is it uncommon to do some free software work in your spare time?

No. But life for many people consists of more things than just software development.

Yeah but... how does GitHub streak encourage people who don't want to do open source/for fun projects to do it?

Seems like it only encourages people who want to do programming outside of work.

We've already concluded that no one cares about your streak except yourself.

It's clearly encouraging that and it creates subtle pressure to do it when all your peers are.
If it's "work work" (tasks you're being employed to do) then it's illegal in most of the EU to work every day — see the Working Time Directive¹, which requires at least 24 hours of non-work time every week, for most occupations.

I'm paid to work on free software. In the last year, my Github profile shows a single commit on a weekend, when I made a pull request on a browser extension I use. I'd rather spend my weekend time away from computers :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Time_Directive

It's illegal for your employer to require you to work. That's not quite the same thing.
Are you sure? I'm not a lawyer,but the British law seems pretty clear that this isn't negotiable: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/1833/regulation/11/m...

(The worker can ignore the 48 hour limit, but not the 24 hour break limit.)

From the link you provided:

> an adult worker is entitled to an uninterrupted rest period of not less than 24 hours in each seven-day period

The key word is "entitled", meaning that an employer cannot force them to work (or fire them if they don't work). The worker can choose to do whatever they want with their time, so long as they retain the right to exercise their legally permitted break.

It would be a very weird law to not allow a worker to do any work related to their job during their free time. Would that mean that a musician couldn't play music during their free time?

"Free time" is when you do it, sure. The point is that you are not a machine and probably should not be working on code every single day.