In my conversations with maintainers, I heard them express a genuine conflict between wanting to encourage newcomers to participate in open source and feeling unable to personally take on that work. Maintainers simply don’t have the energy to onboard every person who shows passing interest. Many told me they were frustrated by prior attempts to cater to a revolving door of contributors—sometimes hundreds of them—who didn’t stick around. Maintainers recounted how those who’d expressed interest sometimes disappeared before they’d even submitted their first contribution.
