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Linux file system developer: we're severely under-resourced (lore.kernel.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've said this previously, and I'll say it again: we're severely under-resourced. Not just XFS, the whole fsdevel community. As a developer and later a maintainer, I've learnt the hard way that there is a very large amount of non-coding work is necessary to build a good filesystem. There's enough not-really-coding work for several people. Instead, we lean hard on maintainers to do all that work. That might've worked acceptably for the first 20 years, but it doesn't now.

[…]

Dave and I are both burned out. I'm not sure Dave ever got past the 2017 burnout that lead to his resignation. Remarkably, he's still around. Is this (extended burnout) where I want to be in 2024? 2030? Hell no.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The "open" management of bigger open source problems is a kafkaesque nightmare. If you want to help make something better and change it somehow, you have to go on week-long journeys trying to figure out who is in control of that part of the project, who you can ask for guidance, who knows anything at all...

E.g. once I wanted to help package a new version of a software for a big linux distribution... and literally all the (~10) mantainers apparently wen't missing a few years ago. I managed to find one of the mantainers private reddit account and contacted them there, and they just made me a mantainer. And I still couldn't do shit because there is another dependecy which also needs to be updated, but it's mantainers are also all dead.

The effort of even getting to the point where you could contribute something meaningful, is like 100 times more than the effort of the actual contribution. It's completely rotten.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately that's the nature of volunteer work, people just lose interest in some topics. It's worse the more niche a topic is. Sometimes your only option is to fork