Do You Even Merge - Welcome To Maintainers Life

Explore the human side of open source maintenance through this conference talk that reveals the often unseen realities faced by maintainers of high-velocity CNCF projects. Discover what it truly means to maintain a CNCF Graduated project beyond the technical aspects, including how maintainers balance project growth, prioritize responsibilities, and leverage governance structures like SIGs to scale their work effectively. Learn from real stories, lessons, and hard truths about the challenges that come with project success, including why issues sometimes go unanswered, how feature decisions are made, and what genuine support looks like in the open source ecosystem. Gain insights into the maintainer perspective that will help you better understand your own role in supporting open source projects and the people who dedicate their time to keeping them thriving.