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Comment by bennyhill | Hacker News Reader

This is certainly a good idea for the individual who is running a FOSS project.. But I think the projects with maintainers who bend over backwards for people are more often the ones that end up chosen and kept as dependencies when there are for example hundreds of compression libraries to choose from.

The distribution game is kind of stacked for the most likely to burn out to be the most likely to be important in the stack and in desperate need of help.

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It makes sense that this could have been an easy mistake to make in the past. Responsive people seem more interested and engaged. But I wonder if it would be best seen as imprudent now? If highly responsive maintainers are susceptible to burnout, then maybe people should consider those other algorithms.

Especially considering the responsiveness here is responsiveness to the peanut gallery.

It would probably be good for the maintainers too. If being responsive is seen as a way to have a bigger impact, people might be inclined to become more responsive and burn out.

But I think the projects with maintainers who bend over backwards for people are more often the ones that end up chosen and kept as dependencies when there are for example hundreds of compression libraries to choose from.

You're not wrong, and that's the first mistake: the individual running a FOSS project wants to see their project succeed and willingly bends over backwards to make it so.

The more you care about popularity, or even acceptance, the more vulnerable you are.

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