[Themaintainers] How do you make maintainance less boring? (was: Thanks and McKinsey Maintenance Report)

[Bastien]

lee vinsel <lee at themaintainers.org> writes:

> I think Andy's take was the report was "on point but a
> bit boring."

Isn't this the very definition of "maintainance"? :)

If I may use this tangent to open a new discussion: how can we change
the overall perception of maintainance as "boring"?

I guess it really depends on the fields.

I have recently discovered the "Technical Debt Quadrant", from reading
this interesting blog post:

https://somehowmanage.com/2020/10/19/manifestations-of-technical-debt/

I think each part of the quadrant nicely captures what it means to
maintain a software (not the service it runs, the software itself):
the only quadrant you want to find yourself in is the "prudent" one,
where you only have to "deal with the consequences" (here again, a
nice periphrase for "maintainance".)

That said, "dealing with the consequences" still sounds negative and
quasi punitive.  You spontaneously represent yourself dealing with
things retroactively, paying a debt.

BUT, my experience with software maintainance is a bit different.

1. It is more about PEOPLE than "things": a user reports a bug and you
   fix it, it will help this user, that's motivating.  Maintainance in
   Free software is also all about helping others help you, which is a
   difficult but interesting skill to nurture.

2. FLOSS maintainance is more about investing than reimbursing.  Of
   course, you may have to literally suffer when you need to do some
   boring refactoring and dependencies management... but sometimes you
   are excited by the challenge of redoing things in a better way, and
   seeing this move as an investment to find yourself in the "prudent"
   quadrant again.

That's the way I would argue that free software maintainance is NOT
boring.

What would be yours in your field?

I strongly believe that we need to tell a different *story* about
maintainance - and actually a million ones.

-- 
 Bastien