What are the upsides/outcomes for open source project creators? Because it doesn't seem great...
It can help you market yourself (if you have that disposition) for jobs/gigs. But will you keep up interest?
You can try (and probably not succeed) at starting a company around open source. Then all the baggage that comes with maybe needing to switch to a non-open license to monetize it.
You can really put effort to building a large maintainer base / community and get it into a foundation (ie Apache, PSF, etc).
You can ignore it, but if its successful, be nagged and harassed incessantly to merge PRs
Generally these paths are all hard / different... and it seems the stress of dealing with the passive consumers is either a massive headache, or something you need to try to monetize. I wish we as an industry did a better job supporting creators here.
It can help you market yourself (if you have that disposition) for jobs/gigs. But will you keep up interest?
You can try (and probably not succeed) at starting a company around open source. Then all the baggage that comes with maybe needing to switch to a non-open license to monetize it.
You can really put effort to building a large maintainer base / community and get it into a foundation (ie Apache, PSF, etc).
You can ignore it, but if its successful, be nagged and harassed incessantly to merge PRs
Generally these paths are all hard / different... and it seems the stress of dealing with the passive consumers is either a massive headache, or something you need to try to monetize. I wish we as an industry did a better job supporting creators here.