What They Don't Tell You About Maintaining an Open Source Project

Summary

the beginning building kaneo was fun. a clean, minimal kanban board. self-hosted. open source. no tracking, no subscriptions, no bullshit. i shipped v1, posted it on reddit, got some stars on github. people actually used it. that feeling when someone tells you they're using something you built? incredible. then i learned that shipping is just the beginning. the documentation challenge i spent hours writing documentation. setup guides, configuration examples, troubleshooting sections. tried to make it clear and comprehensive. but here's the thing: people come from different backgrounds. what's obvious to me after building the thing isn't obvious to someone installing it for the first time. someone opens an issue: "how do i install this?" my first reaction was frustration. it's in the readme! but then i realized - maybe the readme assumes too much. maybe they're new to docker. maybe they're coming from windows and linux is foreign. so i improved the docs: added more examples created a troubleshooting guide made a video walkthrough added a "common issues" section it's a constant process. documentation is never "done." support is product development maintaining kaneo means helping people debug their setups. and honestly? it's taught me more than i expected. people run kaneo on setups i never imagined: behind corporate proxies on raspberry pi clusters in kubernetes with custom networking on nas devices with limited resources each support request reveals an assumption i made. each "it doesn't work" issue (even the ones without details) points to a failure mode i didn't consider. the challenge is balancing time. i want to help everyone. but i also have a day job. and new features to build. and bugs to fix. i'm still learning how to set boundaries while being helpful. feature requests are humbling people want kaneo to do more. and that's amazing! it means they're actually using it. they care enough to imagine what it could be. but every feature request is a decision: does t...