Rust is the latest open source project to face burnout
The Register notes the following:
Open source burnout has reared its head once again, this time in relation to the Rust project. However, the issue is not new, nor are the solutions.
A lengthy blog post last week by a senior Rust engineer, Jynn Nelson, documented the problem, saying: "The number of people who have left the Rust project due to burnout is shockingly high.
"The number of people in the project who are close to burnout is also shockingly high."
The Rust project began as a side project at Mozilla and is currently supported by the Rust Foundation. It's an innovative language and, according to 2023's Stack Overflow developer survey, the most admired by developers.
However, it also has an all-too-familiar problem and an all-too-familiar pattern as far as contributors are concerned.
An engineer is keen to work on the project, opens up the issue tracker, and finds something they care about and want to fix. It's tricky, but all the easy issues have been taken. Finding a mentor is problematic since, as Nelson puts it, "all the experienced people are overworked and burned out," so the engineer ends up doing a lot of the work independently.