[marc_abonce]

> “only I can do” Sorry, friends, but this is incorrect. You are not the only one capable of maintaining this project.

Technically true and a good thing to tell people who are burning out, but like always, different people need different pieces of advice at different times.

In my case, I mostly stopped my (sporadic) contributions to free software partly because I felt a sort of bystander effect where I assumed that other people would step forward and implement the features and bug fixes that I wanted.

However, in most cases this has not been the case and I think we've all seen issues that affect us that have been reported but unsolved for over a decade, if not forever.

So, in my case it is far more motivating to think that I have to step forward and do the work, because otherwise nobody else will.

Again, this is specifically for people in the opposite extreme of the open source contributor (de)motivation pipeline, so I'm not even disagreeing with OP, just hoping that other people do not get demotivated with this bystander effect.

[xuanwo]

Thank you for the comments. I agree with you as well. That's why I always show great appreciation for the heroes who stepped up to fix the bugs. I want to motivate people to do the same, but with an established baseline: don't burn out, don't overwork, and prioritize self-care.