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Ask HN: How to handle open source contributors that do “too much”?

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Re: Ask HN: How to handle open source contributors that do “too much”?

#11

Post by KennyFromIT »

It sounds like you're getting frustrated with the process (working with other people on an open source project), but you should really just let the process work _for_ you, not against you.

Work with your community (which might just be this single developer at this point) to collaboratively create a style guide or a set of standards for all future code submissions. This will be an outlet for you to professionally air your grievances and allow them to see where you're coming from. Simultaneously, this might provide you with some additional context that could help you better support them.

Best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: How to handle open source contributors that do “too much”?

#12

Post by porknubbins »

Interesting perspective. I’m actually on the other side, wanting to get started contributing to open source by making a few bug fixes to small single author projects I use, but its essentially one persons baby so I don’t want to annoy them, but also forking to make a tiny change seems like stealing credit when they wrote 99% of the code. One the other hand big projects are complicated and hard to wrap my head around. If you had any thoughts about how to approach a single maintainer respectfully that would be very helpful.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle open source contributors that do “too much”?

#13

Post by dieselgate »

verdverm wrote: post #7
chickin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sharing the repo link here might help us help you better. If you do this, it might embarrass the PR author, and PRs might become inundated with HN comments. I wouldn't share the repo link.

One would hope that the HN crowd is more respectful than this. This is a low traffic story with several offering help

I totally agree with this and also hope the HN crowd would be more respectful than “this”. But… would also not recommend OP making the repo/ICs public

Re: Ask HN: How to handle open source contributors that do “too much”?

#14

Post by xupybd »

verdverm wrote: post #10
xupybd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very true. Learning how to say no in a constructive way is hard. Doing it over text is impossible. The contributor obviously is passionate about your project and that is great. You might be able to channel that to work with your vision. The chances are they'd be grateful for some mentorship if that worked for you both. I suspect it might as you'd get more work done on your project and they'd get to improve as…

Having been one of those people who wanted to help out another project ( https://goa.design ) where the vision did not align, I left to build something on my own ( https://hofstadter.io ) and am having way more fun doing it and there were no hard feelings. It's best to not try to force things when the vision is different, as OP describes it

Yeah that's true. I have a friend that fired all his staff and has never been happier. For him not having to deal with others to get the job done is a much better experience.

Personally I've always loved working along side others. Having my ideas challenged and coming up with something other than my own vision.

Different people have different preferences I guess.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle open source contributors that do “too much”?

#15

Post by kazinator »

verdverm wrote: post #4

Like others, explain the situation clearly, but unlike others are suggesting, don't jump to the fork button. Instead, get on a call with them. In the end, you will have to decide if you want to keep accepting their work. Best to talk it through with a non-text medium, video is best, more than half of your communication is lost by not using it. Also, get over the "I might hurt their feelings" and think more like "I mi…

> don't jump to the fork button

Doesn't PR refer to pull request? That means there is already a de facto fork: a repository from which the changes are supposed to be pulled into the upstream.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle open source contributors that do “too much”?

#16

Post by verdverm »

xupybd wrote: post #14
verdverm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been one of those people who wanted to help out another project ( https://goa.design ) where the vision did not align, I left to build something on my own ( https://hofstadter.io ) and am having way more fun doing it and there were no hard feelings. It's best to not try to force things when the vision is different, as OP describes it

Yeah that's true. I have a friend that fired all his staff and has never been happier. For him not having to deal with others to get the job done is a much better experience. Personally I've always loved working along side others. Having my ideas challenged and coming up with something other than my own vision. Different people have different preferences I guess.

Letting go of one individual does not mean you are abandoning teamwork, often you have to because one bad apple will spoil the bunch. If your happiness and excitement are drained by this person, I'd say the choice is pretty clear.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle open source contributors that do “too much”?

#17

Post by xupybd »

verdverm wrote: post #16
xupybd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's true. I have a friend that fired all his staff and has never been happier. For him not having to deal with others to get the job done is a much better experience. Personally I've always loved working along side others. Having my ideas challenged and coming up with something other than my own vision. Different people have different preferences I guess.

Letting go of one individual does not mean you are abandoning teamwork, often you have to because one bad apple will spoil the bunch. If your happiness and excitement are drained by this person, I'd say the choice is pretty clear.

Also very true and those projects you linked look very cool. I've not really explored code generation in the past but I'll have to have a look. I like idea. Put the magic up front so later when you're maintaining there is no magic.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle open source contributors that do “too much”?

#19

Post by verdverm »

xupybd wrote: post #17
verdverm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Letting go of one individual does not mean you are abandoning teamwork, often you have to because one bad apple will spoil the bunch. If your happiness and excitement are drained by this person, I'd say the choice is pretty clear.

Also very true and those projects you linked look very cool. I've not really explored code generation in the past but I'll have to have a look. I like idea. Put the magic up front so later when you're maintaining there is no magic.

I like the way you describe the magic being upfront, that might end up in the docs somewhere :]

With hof, the magic is at development time, than just once upfront, you can regen code as you designs and data models evolve. I think what you are getting at is that it is not runtime code gen and you can see all the code that makes up your program in files and got.

Re: Ask HN: How to handle open source contributors that do “too much”?

#20

Post by dmfay »

porknubbins wrote: post #12

Interesting perspective. I’m actually on the other side, wanting to get started contributing to open source by making a few bug fixes to small single author projects I use, but its essentially one persons baby so I don’t want to annoy them, but also forking to make a tiny change seems like stealing credit when they wrote 99% of the code. One the other hand big projects are complicated and hard to wrap my head around.…

Ask! Create an issue if there's a tracker or send a short email explaining what you want to do and see if they're open to the idea, have more questions, or aren't interested in supporting it. No need to overthink formalities (although a quick "thanks for xyz" never hurt anyone's feelings), just be polite and concise.
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