[greffer]

> you create something not because “I think they might need this,” but because “I find this so fucking interesting.”

This is a fantastic insight.

I also find that it's what often gets overlooked in open source projects that start as somebody doing something on the side as a hobby. Don't create and publish open source projects to please others. Build something that you like to have yourself. When publishing it, do it as an invitation to others to try it out and perhaps give you feedback (crowdsourcing bug triage and extension ideas), not to make others happy. The trap is that others will start feeling entitled, start demanding things, and if you give in, you violate the insight I quoted above. And if you start losing interest, don't cling on to the project, but be open to some other maintainer adopting it. Don't waste your time maintaining something you are not internally interested in.

The same is true also for users of open source projects. Be aware that whoever did this and published it for you to use did so originally because they like it and want to use it themselves. You can't demand things from somebody like that. If you do, you actually make it more likely that they lose interest.