Drew DeVault shares his philosophy for maintaining free and open source software projects, built around three core principles: treating everyone as a volunteer, valuing patches over bug reports, and empowering contributors to work on things they enjoy. He emphasizes that a maintainer's primary job is facilitating communication, matching contributors to tasks that suit their strengths, and gradually growing their responsibilities. He also notes that much of the unglamorous work (sysadmin, releases, marketing) falls to the maintainer, but that the real productivity multiplier comes from cultivating an engaged contributor base.
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