Problems with Open Source?

[Ensydr]

Have you ever had trouble with open-source code? Like too many open requests, bugs, poor maintenance, or lack of support? How did you handle it? I'm building a new platform - MintyCode.io to fix these problems. I'd love to hear your stories and suggestions. Thanks for your help!

[FooMatic101]

I sometimes find solutions to specific problems on GitHub which are stale. i.e. years since they had any work done on them.

If the underlying code looks solid and useful to me, then I might try to use it. But in most cases, I keep looking for something that is reasonably lively.

The key thing I keep in mind is that open source means that the developers primarily wrote the software to scratch their own itch. In time priorities change and it is unreasonable to expect them to support something they have lost interest in. In most cases, "better" solutions have emerged and thence their loss of interest.

[penaazv]

Inactive open source projects are a huge reason why skepticism arises. The reliability becomes justifiably questionable.

This is exactly where organized open source and commercial open source (COSS) products come into play.

They're supported by an active community, funded by the users (and investors at times), and companies don't run out of resources to maintain and scale what's helping the primary user-base.

[Ensydr]

This is so helpful. Thank you for sharing this with us.

[FloatArtifact]

Helping find individuals who love the same domain space that might contribute to the projects would be a very useful.

I help support open source projects that are leveraged by those with disabilities. Often those individuals can't contribute back as they are focused on there careers/ day-to-day life leveraging the project. So on boarding diversified people outside of that segment an would add valley to the talent pool of the project.

[Kalpeshbhalekar]

There are tons of barriers to Open source in the first place.

The 2 big problems are: 1) Discovery (Knowing the right tools)

2) Friction to use Open source, self host, understanding documentation... - Even trying one tool takes a lot of effort to use the tool.