A developer's PR to Jellyfin has been waiting over a year despite two approvals, prompting an analysis of why open source backlogs grow so large. Using queuing theory (M/M/1 queue, Little's Law) and Reinertsen's product development flow principles, the author explains how near-100% maintainer utilization causes exponentially growing wait times. With 200 open PRs and ~30 merges/month, the math yields a 6.7-month average cycle time by design. Proposed fixes include capping PR size, gating quality before review, limiting work in progress, prioritizing by value using WSJF, setting a review cadence, building a reviewer tier, and requiring feature proposals — all without needing additional maintainers.
Table of contents
Contents #A year per PR #A common problem #Where the time goes #The queue math #What I think could help #The actual point #Sort: