The thing killing open-source is the people

Why do so many articles about the Kernel culture assert Linux has a contributor problem? Whenever Greg K-H does his contributor report, it looks like the largest collaborative software project ever shows no signs of slowing down. Are there reports or complaints from the Kernel maintainers that I've overlooked? Are the main barriers to entry no longer the technical skillset, intimidating problem domain and desire to work on kernels? I honestly don't know. If anything I think that the kernels contributor problem is that it's too attractive compared to chopping wood next door in the userland libraries and core processes.

Note: For this post I'm not trying to say anything one way or another about the complaints towards the social environment of the Kernel community, I find this a particularly poor point to use when arguing that message.

I don't think the Linux kernel is a good example here. The vast majority of people who commit to it are paid to do so by their employers, and if you're just getting started then committing to the kernel is probably a bad idea anyway.

There are a tonne of smaller projects who will gratefully accept submissions and not be such a pain. It's easy to view Linux as the centre of the open source community, but in practice it's not.

A much easier way to get involved in open source is just to do so as part of your normal life - when you're using a library and find a bug, submit a fix - if there's a feature you've added and found useful, submit it as a PR. It might not be well received in every case, but it will in many.

Nothing is killing open source. Open source is not dying.

Be careful about taking one open source project and then using it to paint all open source projects. Toxicity exists everywhere. It's just that in open source projects it's a lot more, well, open.

The best open-source projects are the smaller ones, IMO, which are usually the efforts of a few developers who welcome outside help.

I've contributed to large-ish projects like Symfony2 with high standards, but the community was still encouraging.

Point being, I think the overall community and age of the project are the best indicators for determining how hostile contributing would be.

This isn't unique to the Open Source movement - basically, all human mass movements eat themselves with hostility, aggression and downright .. cannibalism, of the metaphorical kind .. sooner or later.

This is why leadership is so important, because without a leader, the human mob maintains a state of semi-cannibalism, feeding on itself. With a leader, they either stop doing that and get on with the project, or .. they eat their leader, and for a little period of time while doing that, forget about their own self-cannibalism long enough to actually get big things done.

In many open source projects, things go awry because the leader is trying to engage in aggressive cannibalization of 'others', and so the goals and purposes of the group are not propelled forward.

One size does not fit all. LKML has evolved to what it is. If everybody played nice nice, we'd be discussing the merits of the new 1.20 kernel about now. It is not a warm inviting place for the uninitiated.

That being said, managing your new project like it was the LKML will probably be a kiss of death.

Sensible projects have a community code of conduct, and are prepared to enforce it. We're not all infantile and rude :)

(edit: but to be clear, yes, toxic communities do exist and are a terrible blight on the wider universe of open source)

How many articles like this do we have to have before we collectively learn to ignore $X is killing open source?

Like the rest of the things in the world, as programming knowledge and competency continues to become democratized and ubiquitous, these tendencies will change.

The incredibly competent men who run the show in authoritarian ways that appeal only to men just like themselves will slowly give way to communities built on negotiation, respect, and compromise -- humans will be humans.

Those who mutter the word feminism only in derisive tones will complain loudly as their world mutates, even as their own standards of normality and fairness change.

This world of computers has been the domain of such men for a long time, for a lot of reasons, but the days of this sort of thing are numbered. Computers are too important.