”Finding a co-maintainer or passing the projects completely to someone else has been in my mind a long time but it’s not a trivial thing to do. For example, someone would need to have the skills, time, and enough long-term interest specifically for this.” - https://www.mail-archive.com/xz-devel@tukaani.org/msg00571.html

As someone who runs a charity almost completely solo because of a lack of volunteers, I feel this so much in my bones. It's one thing to say, "Hey folks, I can't run this on my own, I need help" but it's another to find people who actually have the level of skill, committent, passion and integrity to contribute in a meaningful way. I can get people putting their hands up but I've lost count of the number of people who have then turned around and said, "Oh, actually I realise now I don't have time for this" or start in great and then just ghost me. It also takes more of my own time and energy, on top of what I'm already doing' to onboard and train people and it sucks so hard when I do that and then people disappear shortly after - I constantly have to question whether the time it takes to do that will be worth it vs just continuing the struggle by myself.

When you get consumers being arrogant and demanding, getting angry at you for taking too long to respond to their messages or not work fast enough.... it's soul crushing. Way too many people take volunteer work for granted or assume you're getting paid for your time and can therefore treat you like a working-class pleb or are plain just fucking rude and entitled. :( APPRECIATE YOUR VOLUNTEERS FOLKS! We need more volunteers, and appreciation. Many hands makes light work.

You realise that this comment is exactly part of the problem of why this happened, right? 🤦🏻‍♀️

The Epic Games that ironically has monopolised exclusive titles on their platform? That Epic Games? The same Epic Games done for violating kids privacy rights? Epic Games that makes it hard to get refunds? The Epic Games partly owned by Tencent who are known to be in bed with the CCP? That one? Epic who my be selling user data to the CCP and broke GDPR laws? And the Epic Games CEO who actively shits on Linux gamers? Are we talking about that Epic Games?

Meh, they can go to hell along with Google.

As an ex webdesigner/dev, Squarespace, Weebly and the like killed my income well before ChatGPT did.

"injured rights holders"

🙄🙄🙄🙄🤮

But the hurtful comments leave a bigger mark than the good ones

As a volunteer for a charity, I feel this so much. I work incredibly hard to help people, I get paid nothing for my time. The entitlement and rude demands burns me out way faster. Especially when people seem to put far more effort into complaining and being rude than they do thanking me or showing appreciation for what we do.

Wtf is that screenshot?! When you're talking about user protection, it generally helps to have a relevant screenshot and not something thats going to confuse or put off users.

Can someone explain this for folks whose existence is outside the US

RED FLAGS!! red flaaags. RED FLAAAGS, get your red flags heeeeere folks 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

Google is supposed (SUPPOSED) to serve up closest to what you search for. SEO is the antithesis of this - it games the system to get a given website closer to or in front of your eyeballs even if it's content is less relevant. And Google has allowed this to continue (or more likely encouraged it on the down low because businesses that are SEO obsessed are more likely to be send money Google's way) because Google isn't a search engine anymore - Google is an advertising company with some internet services slapped on. Google 'search' is just a clown face for one of their advertising strategies. It doesn't serve up what's relevant - it serves up as much results that generate it revenue as possible without being so obvious about it that users get pissed off and switch search engines.

Anyone else think that Gigabyte's "Ultra Durable" looks like an ad for condoms? No? Just me?

My spouse has a Gigabyte mobo and makes me laugh and him cringe so often lol.

That's not because suddenly, everyone will realize that the Linux desktop is wonderful. Sorry, folks, if it hasn't happened by now, it never will.

I agree that there will never be a "Year of the Linux desktop" just simply because that's not how consumer switching works. There will never be one single year where a huge swath of people suddenly switch (short of some dystopian Windows virus or something). It will always be a trickle of more and more people slowly over time switching. Valve and Proton have certainly helped boost numbers in more recent years but it's still a trickle. Even if it picks up more momentum, it's still not going to be a tidal wave of users.

Why does it need to be? Plenty of products, systems, habits, customs, etc. have come from obscurity to mainstream over a VERY long period of time. It doesn't have to be a race.