"most" is a bit strong. Many open source projects never get users or any kind of traction, they're just a passion project for the author. The lucky few fill a need and take off. Review the package usage count on npm or the GitHub stars for projects - there's a tiny fraction that make it big.

[–] mech@feddit.org 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Considering that making it big just means a lot of responsibility, angry messages, AI-driven bug reports and still no pay, I wouldn't call them lucky.

[–] stephen01king@piefed.zip 3 points 19 hours ago

I would, sarcastically.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

To be fair, you can also somewhat steer whether it will take off as a dev, by how you promote it and how much time you take to make it easily usable by others. Many devs really don't care to have their passion projects take off, because it means you'll likely spend less time doing your passion thing, more time doing user support.