Burnout in Open Source Communities

Burnout is a common problem in open-source communities that can ultimately cause anxiety, fatigue and stress to the contributors that we rely on to support the software, documentation, and outreach efforts. When left unchecked, it can also lead to contributions being ignored, missed roadmap deadlines, dropped projects, and, at its worst, key contributors leaving the community. In this talk, we’ll look at open-source burnout, using real data from the Evergreen community; review how contributors can deal with their own burnout; and, more importantly, how libraries and vendors can encourage contributions and make other key decisions to help existing contributors.