Open Source Burnout Claims Another Project

Skip to main content

← All Posts

Open Source Burnout Claims Another Project

Published

20 May 2026

Location

Edinburgh, Scotland

On 2 Apr, in the<br>nvim-treesitter<br>issue tracker, a user was upset that the changes he wanted to see were not being made.

He angrily took this out on the maintainer, telling him to

shushtain on 2 Apr

go switch to something that doesn't require interacting with people

The maintainer, having already been overwhelmed with issues and complaints from entitled users, replied

clason on 2 Apr

OK

Now, the banner at the top of nvim-treesitter&rsquo;s<br>GitHub page<br>reads:

This repository was archived by the owner on Apr 3, 2026. It is now read-only.

That&rsquo;s the end of nvim-treesitter. At least, for now.

But more importantly, we&rsquo;ve driven away another person whose contributions we should cherish.

This is a regular occurence, as Miranda Heath&rsquo;s report on burnout in Open Source has shown us. We<br>don&rsquo;t know the full story of Christian Clason, the maintainer of nvim-treesitter. But we have stories from people like<br>Ashley Williams:

I was doing nights and weekends, it was wrecking my health and I was just devastated, so after a while, enough<br>issue follow-ups, like, “is this maintained?”, “are you gonna fix my issue?”, I had to say that I had to give it<br>up.

Ashley Williams, p 8 of the

burnout report<br>, and

on YouTube

Explaining these situations by referring to the faults of any individual person would be a mistake, because the problem<br>is systemic.

Users of Open Source don&rsquo;t have enough educational resources to understand how to healthily and sustainably engage with<br>the maintainers they rely on.

And maintainers do not have the know-how, or the direct support, to care for their mental health when they&rsquo;re in the<br>middle of a deluge of issues and PRs.

What Do We Do?

Miranda is working on a follow-up study of mental health among Open Source maintainers, as part of the<br>Software Stewardship Lab, a new non-profit working to make the global Open Source ecosystem more sustainable.

Are you an Open Source maintainer that wants to share their story? Contact Miranda.

If you want to stay up to date with Miranda&rsquo;s work, follow her on<br>Bluesky or<br>Mastodon.

And if you want to see what we&rsquo;re doing at the<br>Software Stewardship Lab, we&rsquo;re on<br>Bluesky and<br>Mastodon,<br>and you can come talk to us<br>on Discord.

← All Posts