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Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project?

#21

Post by logicrime »

This sure smells fishy...

If you're running an open source project and users are pouring into the cracks to say that they don't like something, it's an obvious sign of what they want. Open-source is supposed to be about the community, maybe you should try listening harder to them.

Users aren't just sheep that use your product, they're an integral part of the entire process, equal in value to the developers.

edit: Who woulda thought that HN devs didn't give a shit about users? As if we didn't know that already...

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project?

#22

Post by walterbell »

pvinis wrote: post #12
ExpiredLink wrote: post #7

If it's a hobbyist project you can ignore the "social media pressure". If you have commercial interests it's probably better to set up your own issue/feature/bug-tracking system independent of GitHub.

what are some nice ones?

Cloud-hosted JIRA is free for OSS projects.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project?

#23

Post by tomjen3 »

mpdehaan2 wrote: post #14

This was basically my life with building Ansible for three years. Given, I loved many aspects of it, but it was really hard and it took a major toll. (clarification: this has post has absolutely nothing to do why I am not working on it anymore) I've been considering a bit of a blog post on this (particularly the unknown parts of wide scale OSS projects), but basically open source projects get harder as you have more…

I didn't know you wrote Ansible, but I just want to say that it is really great. Love that it can be bootstrapped from nothing and that you can bring up another machine that is identical to what you currently have with just a few lines of code.

To not derail this entirely they say that there are two kinds of languages, those nobody use and those people complain about - that is also true of projects in general, so while it may not feel that way people complain because they care (maybe too much and maybe about the wrong things).

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project?

#24

Post by Heliosmaster »

logicrime wrote: post #21

This sure smells fishy... If you're running an open source project and users are pouring into the cracks to say that they don't like something, it's an obvious sign of what they want. Open-source is supposed to be about the community, maybe you should try listening harder to them. Users aren't just sheep that use your product, they're an integral part of the entire process, equal in value to the developers. edit: Who…

On the other hand, forking is completely legit. It happened already in the past and will happen in the future, for major disagreements. Open source mantainers don't owe it to the community, if the community ultimately does not behave.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project?

#25

Post by detaro »

logicrime wrote: post #21

This sure smells fishy... If you're running an open source project and users are pouring into the cracks to say that they don't like something, it's an obvious sign of what they want. Open-source is supposed to be about the community, maybe you should try listening harder to them. Users aren't just sheep that use your product, they're an integral part of the entire process, equal in value to the developers. edit: Who…

Users are often valuable, unless they try to do something that doesn't align with the general goals of the project. People that don't use your project and still feel the need to butt in, even less so.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project?

#26

Post by fuckhncensors »

mpdehaan2 wrote: post #14

This was basically my life with building Ansible for three years. Given, I loved many aspects of it, but it was really hard and it took a major toll. (clarification: this has post has absolutely nothing to do why I am not working on it anymore) I've been considering a bit of a blog post on this (particularly the unknown parts of wide scale OSS projects), but basically open source projects get harder as you have more…

so it seems that hn blocks on ip after a posting the hive mind disagrees with - maybe stuff like "down with chairman pao" or "fuck the femtards" - but anyway, we just find new ip addresses! we are legion, we are the commentators!

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project?

#27

Post by ams6110 »

logicrime wrote: post #21

This sure smells fishy... If you're running an open source project and users are pouring into the cracks to say that they don't like something, it's an obvious sign of what they want. Open-source is supposed to be about the community, maybe you should try listening harder to them. Users aren't just sheep that use your product, they're an integral part of the entire process, equal in value to the developers. edit: Who…

Open source is about whatever the developers want it to be about. They can be building it for themselves, for users, or for some weighted combination of both.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project?

#28

Post by ams6110 »

mpdehaan2 wrote: post #14

This was basically my life with building Ansible for three years. Given, I loved many aspects of it, but it was really hard and it took a major toll. (clarification: this has post has absolutely nothing to do why I am not working on it anymore) I've been considering a bit of a blog post on this (particularly the unknown parts of wide scale OSS projects), but basically open source projects get harder as you have more…

> I think part of my problem was the barrier to contribution was really low

Interesting. I was just the other day wondering if a github mirror of the OpenBSD ports tree existed. In my searching, I found this thread[1] in which Ted Unangst sort of alluded to the same idea:

github is all about social coding and they have a point. But many of the things they enable are considered antisocial in the OpenBSD development process.

[1] http://openbsd-archive.7691.n7.nabble.com/OpenBSD-on-GitHub-...

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project?

#29

Post by stray »

logicrime wrote: post #21

This sure smells fishy... If you're running an open source project and users are pouring into the cracks to say that they don't like something, it's an obvious sign of what they want. Open-source is supposed to be about the community, maybe you should try listening harder to them. Users aren't just sheep that use your product, they're an integral part of the entire process, equal in value to the developers. edit: Who…

Open source is about the idea that information should be free -- That wondrous things can be built when we are free to build upon the work of others.

Users are people who benefit from the fact that we've generously offered the results of our work without expectation of pay.

It has been my experience that those customers/clients who pay the most are the least demanding. Which is the primary reason that I generally only work on proprietary systems now.

Because as renumeration approaches zero, hassle approaches infinity.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with social media pressure on your GitHub project?

#30

Post by scrollaway »

pvinis wrote: post #12
ExpiredLink wrote: post #7

If it's a hobbyist project you can ignore the "social media pressure". If you have commercial interests it's probably better to set up your own issue/feature/bug-tracking system independent of GitHub.

what are some nice ones?

Gitlab is an excellent self-hostable alternative to github.

https://about.gitlab.com/

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