Hi Daniel,
# Daniel Pocock [10.02.2016 @ 21:12]:
14 February is typically a day when people are thinking about their spouse/family, depending upon where they are in life. I've noticed that when people retire from some free software communities or stop maintaining projects, they often cite "family reasons".
What does this mean in practice though?
It would be interesting to look at the relationship between free software, volunteering and the family. E.g. how does it compare to other forms of volunteering that impact family life?
Thanks for your input, Daniel. Sounds interesting, and it seems reasonable to have look into that.
Maybe FSFE could survey this issue and publicize some of the solutions on ILoveFS day 2017 (if this year is too soon)?
For this year this is far too short notice indeed. And I wouldn't even say that we should make this an ILoveFS only issue but build it on a broaded foundation.
E.g. at DebConf this year there were many families who attended. FOSDEM does a city-tour for spouses. Free software developers often don't receive cash for some of the voluntary things they do, but there may be other ways their work could be more formally recognized, allowing them to show some tangible benefit to family members.
As you noted, the first step has to be some kind of hard facts collection. Do you have some rough ideas how to do that? Ask a small peer group for their experiences in detail, or make a broader survey?
And do you, or anyone else, have other ideas how we could tackle this issue? What would FSFE be able to achieve? How could a solution for you personally look like?
Best, Max