Open Source Must Be Fun (Or It Will Die)

Open Source Must Be Fun (Or It Will Die)

26 July 2026

I used to be on a name with a bunch of individuals concerned in different outstanding open supply tasks just a few weeks in the past.
The organiser jokingly requested us to lift our fingers if the earlier six months had been higher than what got here earlier than.
I raised my hand.
No one else did.
Why?
I’ve maintained Homebrew, the bundle supervisor for in every single place, for practically 17 years.
I’ve labored on it the overwhelming majority of weeks in that point and I’ve by no means burned out.
I’m having extra enjoyable than ever.

The present narrative round open supply is miserable.
Apparently it’s “dying”.

AI drive-by points, pull requests and safety experiences are overwhelming maintainers.
Rising safety expectations (thanks Mythos) require maintainers to do much more work.
Open supply funding is difficult to safe and inadequate.

Some of that is taking place, however I’m positive as hell not seeing it in Homebrew.
Another Homebrew maintainer informed me:

I’m having extra enjoyable than ever earlier than.

💎 The Scarcest Resource

As I’ve written earlier than, the scarcest useful resource in open supply isn’t cash however the motivation of the maintainers.
Sending Homebrew $1000 right now doesn’t magically create any extra maintainer time (however please donate if you can afford it to fund Homebrew’s infrastructure, stipends, grants and meetups).
We all have jobs that aren’t sustaining Homebrew.
We obtain small quantities of cash ($300/month) if we’re actively sustaining Homebrew.
This isn’t a “market hourly rate”.
Many kids delivering newspapers get a better hourly charge.

There is a threshold impact: funding solely creates extra time if it lets a maintainer scale back their paid hours or stop their job.
Work no maintainer needs to do is an efficient candidate for a paid contract.
If you may’t fund it: don’t do it.

Why do any of it then?
Fun.

Not every thing is enjoyable all the time, however it must be “utilitarian net fun”: extra enjoyable than not, general.
This is primarily about volunteer-run open supply, however that’s most of it.
If you could have a paid open supply job and hate it: you need to stop that too.

It’s a Sunday afternoon.
I took the youngsters most of yesterday so I’ve a little bit of “me” time right now.
I’ve spent a bunch of that point on Homebrew.
Not as a result of I “had” to; nothing pressing is coming in.
Not due to the “supply chain”.
Not due to the cash.
Because I wished to.
Because it was enjoyable.

🥳 Fun Is Social

My first actual expertise of OSS was with a profitable, established undertaking whose tradition I might observe.
It was KDE, the neighborhood behind a desktop atmosphere for Linux.
In 2009, I attended Akademy (the KDE contributor convention) and GUADEC (the GNOME contributor convention), which had been co-located within the Canary Islands.

Firstly, this was bizarre as a result of, should you learn the discourse on-line, you had been sometimes within the camp of “KDE SUCKS, GNOME ROCKS” or “GNOME SUCKS, KDE ROCKS”.
And but: you had each teams working collectively.
Not simply working collectively however consuming, consuming, socialising and constructing new friendships.

Secondly, I might inform that, for a lot of within the KDE camp, these had been their individuals and this was the spotlight of their 12 months.
They got here again re-energised and motivated to work on KDE.
Most individuals weren’t being paid to repair, preserve or write KDE’s code.
They didn’t appear to be doing it for his or her customers both.
They did it as a result of they had been having enjoyable, each individually writing the code and serving to their mates construct one thing they cared about.

For the previous few years, Homebrew maintainers have met yearly on the “Homebrew AGM” co-located with FOSDEM in Brussels.
We meet, eat, drink, socialise and make plans for Homebrew.
Afterwards, we come again re-energised.
Since we began doing this, I’ve additionally seen individuals doing extra for different maintainers than straight for customers.
Open supply transcends nationwide boundaries: most of us don’t care what nation one other maintainer is from or what nationality they’re, solely that we’re mates constructing one thing we discover enjoyable collectively.
These relationships matter as a result of, with out the maintainers, the undertaking is lifeless.

🍺 Keeping Homebrew Fun

This is why I’ve all the time been eager for Homebrew to be a enjoyable undertaking.
Dealing with entitled behaviour isn’t enjoyable.
Setting SLAs isn’t enjoyable.
Maintaining indefinite backwards compatibility isn’t enjoyable.

Homebrew has been profitable as a result of enjoyable, automation, neighborhood and placing maintainers first have been priorities from early on.
Concretely, we automated overview feedback so robots are the pedants and people can deal with empathy.
Our guardrails embrace CI, linting, typing and exams to catch routine errors earlier than a maintainer has to level them out.
Feature flags and staged rollouts allow us to experiment with out breaking issues for everybody.
This means maintainers spend much less time on repetitive corrections and extra on work they discover attention-grabbing.

AI is sweet at boring work like writing CI workflows, linters and documentation.
These practices assist each AI and human contributors.
Maintainers can use or keep away from AI, whichever higher preserves their motivation.

If your eyes glaze over whereas studying low-effort AI-generated content material: shut it with out remark or justification and block repeat offenders who don’t be taught or enhance.
At Homebrew, our pull request templates ask contributors to reveal AI utilization and CI jobs
routinely shut pull requests with incomplete templates.
Issues or PRs opened via the API with out our templates typically counsel AI utilization with inadequate human involvement.

🛑 Stop, Pay or Quit

Homebrew is thriving, not dying.
It has 28 active maintainers.
Of the 29 maintainers it had a year ago, 26 stay.
Under our governance rules, we take away maintainers after they miss an exercise threshold for 2 consecutive quarters.

If your undertaking is dying, possibly it’s as a result of it’s not enjoyable any extra.
You ought to stop.
You don’t owe anybody something.
Homebrew maintainers are encouraged to leave without guilt or explanation.

If you don’t wish to stop (or should you’re on a undertaking the place you don’t need others to stop) and issues are going badly: change one thing.
Don’t simply ask for extra money or sponsors or donations.
That is not going to magically make issues enjoyable once more.
Getting extra money isn’t in your locus of management.

Instead: cease doing the components of your undertaking that aren’t enjoyable.
Maybe that’s secure releases.
Maybe that’s launch notes.
Maybe that’s backwards compatibility.
Whatever it’s: once more, you don’t owe anybody something.
You can do OSS nonetheless the hell you wish to do it.

People operating soup kitchens don’t get fixed complaints that the soup tastes like shit.
They aren’t critiqued for not offering the optimum macronutrient stability.
They do what they will.
How unhappy is it, then, that some very well-compensated open supply customers with tech jobs deal with volunteers so poorly?

⏭️ OK, What Now?

Are you a maintainer?
If so, take into account what retains sustaining your undertaking enjoyable or what would make it enjoyable once more.
If it isn’t enjoyable and you may’t make it enjoyable once more: stop.

Are you a contributor?
Ensure that you just’re having enjoyable contributing however not in a method that makes it much less enjoyable for the maintainers.
If you’re submitting AI-generated content material, rigorously overview and check it.
Speak to the human maintainers as an alternative of deferring to your LLM.

Are you a person?
If you’re submitting a bug report, take your time and supply all of the requested data.
Most importantly: be glad about the present of open supply you’re getting at no cost.
Keep your rants for the pub or espresso store and off the web.
Drive-by negativity kills open supply.

Are you an organization consuming open supply?
Allow your staff to take part in Open Source Friday.
Alternatively, look the opposite method once they take part within the Open Source Resistance.
Sponsor some tasks you depend on.

Keep having enjoyable and the open supply neighborhood will outlive us all.

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Thanks to John Peebles, Graeme Arthur, Patrick Linnane, Andrew Nesbitt and Lindsay McQuaid for reviewing this publish and offering useful suggestions.

Written by me, not an AI. I solicit AI recommendations and apply solely after I agree (typically I do not).