The Hidden Cost of Free Code: When Contributing Becomes the Problem

As coding becomes increasingly accessible and free, open source communities face a paradox: contributors add more features than maintainers can manage or want. The author frames this as 'Chesterton's gap'—the inverse of the principle cautioning against removing solutions without understanding why they exist. This insight reveals why restraint in software development—knowing when not to build—has become as valuable as technical skill itself.