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by yason 2763 days ago
Open source developers can’t ‘just’ choose what they work on, anyway.

Oh yes they can.

However, if the developers choose to chase popularity, then it's a different game and they must recognise that the stakes will be higher then. Yet that has no relevance to open source itself.

You can very well chase popularity, satisfy rude customers to the world's end, and eventually burn out writing a closed-source shareware application, too.

I tried to convey they point that the fact that there are burned out open source developers is not an inherent trait of open source itself.

You don't need to open your source to get rude customers, endless demands, and gigantic requirements. If you choose to deal with all that then that is always your own choice and you must face the consequences. But it's the same class of problems whether you write open source or start a pizza restaurant. Some customers are just net-negative. In any business or hobby where you provide something you must learn to set limits to how high the customer's bang-for-buck must be for you to come meet in the middle.

I would tend to think there are more open source projects that are abandoned rather than with burned out developers, but I obviously don't have data on that.
1 comments
tonyedgecombe 2763 days ago
You don't need to open your source to get rude customers, endless demands, and gigantic requirements.

In my experience the less you charge the more of that stuff you get. There is something about the very bottom of the pricing scale that is toxic.

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lsc 2761 days ago
It is... really weird. I think it might be related to how the boss will be more respectful to you after you successfully negotiate a raise.

Like normal people are somehow wired to treat more expensive people better than less expensive people. The immediate explanation is that normal people are kind of jerks?

I mean, I'll put up with more shit for a lot more money... but that's not how it works. As I've gotten paid better, every step of the way, I got treated better in other ways, too. And that expectation is built in everywhere.

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