I run https://github.com/camgunz/cmp and I think I'm in the middle of (well, maybe closer to nobody but not nobody) the "nobody" vs. "everybody" extremes. The thing I think I had/have going for me was that there was a clear end to the project: build a MessagePack implementation that doesn't allocate. Could it be better? Could I remove the ancient, not working Travis CI badge? Could I roll it into something bigger? Sure, but I haven't been motivated to do any of that, and it seems like everyone's reached some equilibrium of happy. I've also been lucky enough to get great contributions from people, everything from fixing compiler breakage to making floating point support optional. It hasn't been zero work, but it has been gratifying.
I do question the kind of "open source project takes over the world" model, the GCCs, the Apaches, the Linuxes. Those projects are of great importance, so even if you have a small group of contributors the responsibility is still large and weighty. It's even more so if you've suddenly got a huge community to manage. That kind of thing feels a lot less like a hobby and more like either a job or a lifestyle (e.g. you hang out in an IRC/email window all day and manage the community, and you like it), and I'm not sure how sustainable a lifestyle it is. So maybe I agree with OP here.
I wonder if there's something to like, creating some kind of barrier to interact. Like, if I want to file an OpenBSD bug I have to work pretty hard, so some filtering is happening. Filing a bug on GitHub is very easy, so anyone can jump on there and demand whatever they want.
I do question the kind of "open source project takes over the world" model, the GCCs, the Apaches, the Linuxes. Those projects are of great importance, so even if you have a small group of contributors the responsibility is still large and weighty. It's even more so if you've suddenly got a huge community to manage. That kind of thing feels a lot less like a hobby and more like either a job or a lifestyle (e.g. you hang out in an IRC/email window all day and manage the community, and you like it), and I'm not sure how sustainable a lifestyle it is. So maybe I agree with OP here.
I wonder if there's something to like, creating some kind of barrier to interact. Like, if I want to file an OpenBSD bug I have to work pretty hard, so some filtering is happening. Filing a bug on GitHub is very easy, so anyone can jump on there and demand whatever they want.