On 1/9/22 09:27, George N. White III wrote:
On Sun, 9 Jan 2022 at 07:24, Igor Raits <igor.raits@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
Personally, I'd love to have more people working on packaging (and
most importantly keeping up-to-date) Rust crates / apps but I think
this is not so realistic :)

Growth in the numbers of users of open source software.has outpaced
the numbers working on development, documentation, and packaging.
I suspect many users are blindly following recipes found on the internet
or using code written but someone who is no longer with the organisation.
In economics this falls under the class of "free-rider" problems where
people want public services but aren't willing to fund them.   Maybe
we need compulsory public service where youngsters are put to work
in the conventional ways (military, hospitals, etc.) or software projects.
During the Vietnam war I was in grad school in the US and shared an
office with a couple veterans.  One had worked on software development
projects for the Air Force, who I assume were paying for grad school.

And the Amish in our area were putting in their 2 years, typically working in the local hospitals.

Heinlein had a lot to say about compulsory service for voting rights.

But it comes down, a lot, to colleges/Unis to put their students to work at least in their Masters program.  A few prof colleagues of mine in Sweden and Finland do so.  But there it is actually funded by gov education grants.