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What they don't tell you about maintaining an open source project

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2025-11-25 · 9 min read

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.

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