[tc] Campaign Question: Treating the Problem, not just the symptoms- Burnout, No Polling, etc

Jeremy Stanley fungi at yuggoth.org
Sat Sep 7 12:51:36 UTC 2019


On 2019-09-07 11:49:57 +0200 (+0200), Antonio Ojea wrote:
[...]
> I think that the reality is that not everybody can "chose" his
> job.

That's a fair point. I've had the luxury of turning down much
higher-paying jobs to accept one at a non-profit organization
aligned with my ideals. I definitely understand that not everyone
can afford to do that. On the other hand, I wonder how many folks
who work on OpenStack because their employer tells them they have
to, not because they're inspired by the project's goals, are
compelled (through the sense of community Chris mentioned in his
post) to spend extra unpaid time helping with commons tasks and
assisting others... to the point that they're burned out on these
activities and decide to go work on something else instead. I don't
doubt that there are at least some, but perhaps no more than those
who took their jobs because they wanted to help the cause.

I do feel for the part-time/volunteer contributors in our community,
particularly since I've spent much of my life as a
part-time/volunteer contributor in a number of other free/libre
open-source communities myself. I continue trying to find ways to
make such "casual" contribution easier, and to see it eventually
play a much more influential role in the future of OpenStack. On the
other hand, OpenStack is *very* large (the third-most-active
open-source project of all time, depending on how you measure that),
and whether we like it or not, full-time contributors are
responsible for the bulk of what we've built so far. That reality
creates processes and bureaucratic structure to streamline
efficiency for high-volume contribution, with a trade-off of making
"casual" contribution more challenging.

> Maybe the foundation can start to employ people to take care of
> the projects with the money received from the sponsors, I'm sure
> that a lot of folks will step in, not having to take time from his
> family life and able to dedicate their full time to the project.

The OSF *does* employ people to help take care of projects with the
money received from corporate memberships. If you think the
proportion of its funds spent on staff to handle project commons
tasks which otherwise go untended is insufficient, please find time
to discuss it with your elected Individual Member representatives on
the board of directors and convince them to argue for a different
balance in the OSF budget. The total budget of the OSF could,
however, be compared to that of one small/medium-sized department at
a typical member company, so it lacks the capacity to do much on its
own and the staff dedicated to this are already spread quite thin as
a result.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley
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