I love the open source community, especially the React ecosystem. Most of the folks there are supernice and helping each other. But sometimes something goes wrong.
I value my time and even more I value my mental health. I want to continue contributing to open source and avoid burnout. I try to be nice and helpful to every user of my projects. But sometimes it’s hard.
Every time I see or feel that someone is complaining about my project or my actions, or any unhealthy behavior towards me or other users, I immediately lock the conversation, or even block the user. I see it as the only way to continue working on open source.
There are many ways you can make folks in the open source community happier:
- new feature specs (better than just ideas because they’re often not actionable);
- detailed easily reproducible bug reports;
- any maintenance help, like answering questions on GitHub, Stack Overflow or Twitter.
- bugfixes;
- new features;
- docs improvements.
Other people are experiencing similar issues:
- The Dark Side of Open Source by Karolina Szczur
- Dear JavaScript by James Kyle
- The Reality of Developer Burnout by Kenneth Reitz
Let’s keep this community healthy and friendly!