I mean, that’s exactly the same set of problems faced by closed source software. I guess one potential difference is that you can hire new devs to take over if it’s successful enough. But both crappy documentation and team burnout have killed lots and lots of internal projects at places I’ve worked.
I’d say the documentation problem is even worse in closed source internal stuff at companies. You often only have internal users (ie your colleagues) so instead of properly documenting, often people just tell stuff mouth-to-mouth (tribal knowledge basically).
Also, you rarely gain any points for writing good documentation at jobs because you have to spend time doing it making the coding itself slower. And some people deliberately don’t write docs cause they think it’ll provide better job security.
There’s the horror of scientific software written by researchers I’ll share here.
They are firedThe contract expires every 2 years and users keep using the code if it’s successful. Some projects are closed source, even…
That is interesting because writing documentation and onboarding users is something people without coding skills can do and for me it (still) feels like I need to know how to code to help with projects. Nice.
You should absolutely know the basics if you’re going to help write documentation but you certainly don’t need to be a veteran. I am a pretty mediocre programmer but I help FOSS projects with documentation all the time.
Checks kbin and kbin app status. Sad, but the burnout part is true at least.
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At the end of last year Intel hosted a survey of open-source developers to collect their feeback on various open-source software issues.
Intel’s 2023 Open Source Community Survey is all wrapped up, the data tallied up, and the results emailed out today to participants.
I haven’t seen Intel post this data on any public web page yet, but per the email, below are all of the results collected from their open-source survey for 2023.
The license was followed by maintainer responsiveness, activity volume, welcoming community, and then the established policies and documentation.
Of those participating in the survey, Intel found the top open-source challenge faced was maintainer burnout at 45%… That was followed by documentation/onboarding at 41% and then maintaining sustainability at 37%.
Another result of little surprise was finding the open-source project of greatest interest being Linux itself.
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