gladiatr72
8 hours ago
Open source used to be fun (edit: there was a lot less at stake)
You did it because you enjoyed the challenge and the once-in-a-while nerd props you'd get from a mailing list or an irc channel.
How many people went into tech because of a seemingly ingrained nerdly curiosity? Many.
Many more got into it for the money. Absolutely nothing wrong with money, but if you're looking for a log4j or libxz maintainer, you're going to be looking in group A. Compared to group B, group A is tiny.
There is not enough social or economic incentive for most in group B to spend the time to achieve the necessary proficiency or, once attained, actually dedicate the necessary time to a low-visibility/highly-used FOSS project.