alt Hacker NewsI find the term "burnout" in context of FOSS quite infuriating, as it is usually being used to invalidate a real problem.
Instead of talking about concrete misbehavior by concrete individuals or institutions, "oh that poor guy is suffering from foss burnout" is thrown in, and instantly, any thought or action that might change anything about the situation is stopped and discarded.
It depersonalizes a problem that is _very_ personal. Diffusing responsibility to no one, while at the same time reframing valid logical callouts as emotionally driven nonsense that can be ignored.
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In essence, "FOSS Burnout" is this hybrid between victim blaming and blaming the universe, while in reality it's a real person at that very moment doing something unethical to another human being.
We need to stop talking about useless higher-level concepts and start talking about concrete bad behavior that could be instantly stopped.
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If you've read "it diffuses responsibility to no one" and thought "oh, hey! corporate! Asscovering!", then yes. You got it. That's why this trope keeps coming up.
It's no grassroots thing. It's engineered to keep the meat grinder running. Nothing else.
And the worst part is that it shows up even without corporate involvement, because it seeped into the defaults people apply without thinking.
I think you are doing the post injustice by hijacking it. FOSS maintainers can get a burnout even without toxic users - hard deadlines and the understanding that people really rely on your project can do that to you.
e.g.: About 25 years I had developed some blogging software in the style of usemod (single executable, data stored in ./data) for coordination of and reporting about protests on throwaway VMs. This initially was a weekend project but spiraled out of control when it made its way through Europe and people called me for setups or features for other actions. My burnout was the result of trying to help grass root organizations while also being politically active myself and having a full time job. The solution was basically what the article says:
* invited more maintainers by dumbing down the implementation so that one does not need a black belt in perl to hack on it
* created minimal docs
* I found hoster in the scene who was competent and willing to do pro bono hosting in exchange for me being available in case of problems (he never called me).