The Few, the Tired, the Open Source Coders



Sometimes open source coders simply walk away: Let someone else deal with this crap. Studies suggest that about 9.5 percent of all open source code is abandoned, and a quarter is probably close to being so. This can be dangerous: If code isn't regularly updated, it risks causing havoc if someone later relies on it. Worse, abandoned code can be hijacked for ill use. Two years ago, the pseudonymous coder right9ctrl took over a piece of open source code that was used by bitcoin firms—and then rewrote it to try to steal cryptocurrency.
No one's quite sure what to do about open source burnout, but some think finding money for the coders might help. Programmer Ashley Williams is a member of the team creating the open source language Rust, and they're trying to set up a foundation to support core contributors, or get firms to keep contributors on staff. (Some of the largest open source projects thrive in precisely this fashion; firms like Facebook or Google pay some employees to work full-time on open source code.) Eghbal thinks subscriptions could offer new ways to pay for the work. Others worry that injecting pay can deform how and why the work is done in the first place.
But we need to rethink the very idea of what crowdsourcing is capable of—and understand that it is perhaps more limited than promised. The open source revolution has been carried on the backs of some very weary people.
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