Mostly agree, however, at some point the author's DO NEED to do something beyond creating the thing or else face the extinction of that piece of software.
I think most people who have created something will generously bend over backwards to help individuals in the early stages of it's lifecycle. You can see that all the time on github.
The problems come when the project takes off to the point where there isn't enough support for the number of people using it BUT the software isn't mature/popular/fit-enough to be "under the wing" of a larger organization who can afford to pay for it's maintenance and evolution.
Is there a way to bridge the gap between author's-generosity-support and corporate/organizational stewardship? We do have the social networks in place to allow that, they're just focused on different objectives.
Wasn't there a thing recently were an author just gave away one of his node.js libraries, and then it was used maliciously by the requester to attempt to hijack bitcoin wallets?
I think most people who have created something will generously bend over backwards to help individuals in the early stages of it's lifecycle. You can see that all the time on github.
The problems come when the project takes off to the point where there isn't enough support for the number of people using it BUT the software isn't mature/popular/fit-enough to be "under the wing" of a larger organization who can afford to pay for it's maintenance and evolution.
Is there a way to bridge the gap between author's-generosity-support and corporate/organizational stewardship? We do have the social networks in place to allow that, they're just focused on different objectives.