x x x x x x

Who?

Github: freakboy3742

Project: Django

Date: August 2015, May 2019

Why?

Russell Keith-Magee cited multiple reasons which led them and their peers to disengage from open source projects. They paused most of their contributions from mid-2018 to mid-2019, but have since resumed activity in open source.

The first reason was a lack of support from their peers, which forced them to take on more responsibilties than he preferred. This made the Django community something Keith didn’t want to be a part of.

“Nobody was enthusiastic enough to volunteer their time to address some gap or make the most of some opportunity.” (PyCon 2019, 51:17)

Keith believed their peers had other priorities in life and not enough time to dedicate to open source projects. This felt especially unfair to them because Keith also had outside responsibilties that became overwhelming due to their peers’ negligence.

“I’ve got a stressful job; I volunteer with Django; I’ve got side projects; I also have a son with learning difficulties and a daughter and a wife; And over the last few years the combination of these stressors really started to take its toll on my temper.” (PyCon AU 2015, 9:40)

Although Keith claimed they fully understood their peers’ reasons for neglecting open source, it still made their work more difficult as a maintainer. Keith faced issues with the community policy, more specifically the code of conduct (PyCon 2019, 59:37). This caused extreme burnout which, along with other developments in their life, which caused them to suffer from extreme self-doubt and depression.

“I was diagnosed as being in the middle of a major depressive episode and there were a number of contributing factors but one of the big ones was the pressures imposed by my volunteer work dealing with the Django community.” (PyCon 2019, 59:23)

“I found myself getting frustrated both with myself and with others I found myself doubting my own abilities not just imposter syndrome level stuff either, a genuine belief that I was incompetent.” (PyCon AU 2015, 9:51)

In addition to struggling with their mental health, Keith also faced physical health problems.

“I had some intermittent health problems especially with my back and shoulder it wasn’t constant and it wasn’t a continuous decline I had good days I had bad days I had good weeks I had bad weeks but this pattern has been going on for about mid-march.” (PyCon AU 2015, 10:12)

For reference:

PyCon AU 2015:

PyCon 2019: