this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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Why are there so many graybeards in FOSS? (www.theregister.com)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I would think it's a good thing that there are a lot of greybeards in FOSS? If the claim is true, then it should mean that once you get into FOSS you tend to stay there.

The article seems to be referring to FOSS code contribution more than user adoption, but the same idea holds. The more I learn about my distro and its packages, the less scared I get about something going wrong that I can't fix and the less likely it is I will go back into an OS riddled with ads and spyware.

For code contribution I only ever managed to do a PR for a Kodi plugin, and even then it was only because this amazing guy from their team walked me through the whole thing step by step. It was quite intimidating figuring out how to do that stuff for the first time.

[–] AA5B 16 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

It’s good in some ways, but I read one of the points as a generational turnover. Graybeards are the people who invented a lot of foss and stayed true to the calling. True heroes. But there needs to be a continuation, fresh blood, a bright future, and the graybeards won’t be around forever.

Graybeards are also people who got into foss when it was easy to start. The fear is there are higher expectations now, higher complexity, creating barriers to entry for the next generation