Well, or functions not -- sadly. It seems possible that the reason Mr Volpiatto ceased development was because the burnout he had close brushes with before finally caught up with him.
My impression is that most open source projects that do not habitually burn their creators are either strategic assets to a handful of multi billion dollar companies, in which case at least core contributors get a normal life and see some actual upside for their work; or part time labors of love of talented individuals who have either not hit the scale where they would need to engage with a large number of users or who are very good at saying No.
Even the rare super-elite developers like Zig's Andrew Kelley who manage to get full-time funding for their work via patreon/github don't seem to pull in more than a fraction of what they'd make in normal employment as a single person for their whole project.
Open source started out as asymmetrical warfare against The Man (personified to Microsoft) but by now has been mostly co-opted into a form of voluntary self-exploitation to enrich mega-corps.
My impression is that most open source projects that do not habitually burn their creators are either strategic assets to a handful of multi billion dollar companies, in which case at least core contributors get a normal life and see some actual upside for their work; or part time labors of love of talented individuals who have either not hit the scale where they would need to engage with a large number of users or who are very good at saying No.
Even the rare super-elite developers like Zig's Andrew Kelley who manage to get full-time funding for their work via patreon/github don't seem to pull in more than a fraction of what they'd make in normal employment as a single person for their whole project.
Open source started out as asymmetrical warfare against The Man (personified to Microsoft) but by now has been mostly co-opted into a form of voluntary self-exploitation to enrich mega-corps.
I wonder if there is a way out of that.