The pressure

Summary

I’m doing Open Source primarily because I love it. The social aspects, the for-the-good angle and for the challenge of engineering this to work for everyone. I also do it because it is my full-time job and getting food on the table and provide for my family is not unimportant. It may come as a shock, but I am not in this game for the money or the extravagant life style. I have been working full-time on curl since 2019. For me, this typically means doing 50 hour work weeks, as I spend all days on it and then I top them off with a few more hours every late night – all days of the week, I spend all this time on curl because it is a work of love and it is both my job and my spare time hobby and no one counts my hours anyway. (And no, I do not recommend anyone else to do the same. I’m not suggesting this for others.) I consider my primary work-related mission in life to be to make curl the best transfer library and tool possible and make it qualify as a top project in Open Source, quality, performance and not the least, security. I believe we generally meet these lofty goals. I founded the curl project, I am still a lead developer in the project almost thirty years later. While I always clearly state that curl is not a one-man shop and that curl would absolutely not be what it is without my awesome curl team mates, a large part of the world still thinks of curl as my project and sometimes more or less equals curl with my person. I cannot help to take curl issues personally. When someone critiques curl, it is by extension a complaint on decisions and choices I stand by and behind – and many cases I made the calls. curl is personal to me. curl has formed my life forever. I have two kids. They were both born many years after I started working on curl and they are both adults and independent individuals now. I love them dearly. Life passes by but curl remains. We’ve had slow times and busy times. The decades pass. Later this year the curl project celebrates thirty years. We ...