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The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

brson.github.io

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Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#31

Post by pm24601 »

Most open-source code is not managed very well (why should it be?)

I always fire off an issue with an offer to patch. If no response, then no patch submitted even if I have a patch.

I don't submit the patch because code moves on. A few commits later by someone else and the patch can no longer be cleanly applied. So I don't do the work on the patch if it will not be accepted.

Also I don't do nit picky code clean up. For example, if someone wants 2 space indentation and I did 4 ... they can accept the patch and use their IDE with their formatting rules to fix such things.

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#32

Post by chipotle_coyote »

ori_b wrote: post #29
joe_the_user wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I could put it another way. September 1993 ended, just not the way some people would have wanted it to. The net has become a medium for everyone, not just a small enough group that this group could become acclimatized to a dominant discourse style (whatever the virtues might be of the Linus Torvalds "I will call you a fucking moron when you fail" school of discussion for a rarefied group). And given that, it is…

Why? For the sake of playing devil's advocate: If I am not nice, maybe the people I don't want to interact with will go away and leave me alone.

That's true. However, maybe the people you do want to interact with--or the people you should interact with in order to advance your project, whether or not you particularly "want" to interact with them--will also go away and leave you alone.

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#33

Post by bhntr3 »

Best blog I've read in a long time! > By consistently exhibiting a few simple behaviors, one can at least look like a kind and decent person. Maybe someday we all actually will be.

The best thing about this is that we will! Mindset follows behavior.

P.S. Am I doing it right? I'm actually terrible at this. But I wish I weren't.

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#34

Post by ori_b »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #32
ori_b wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? For the sake of playing devil's advocate: If I am not nice, maybe the people I don't want to interact with will go away and leave me alone.

That's true. However, maybe the people you do want to interact with--or the people you should interact with in order to advance your project, whether or not you particularly "want" to interact with them--will also go away and leave you alone.

With one side project, I've had people almost leave the project because I was being accomodating to someone who clearly had no idea what they were doing. They were getting frustrated with the constant low quality discussion, and one ended up private messaging me to say that either $IDIOT left or they were going to go. Another probably just dropped of without saying anything. Just showed up less frequently in chat, until one day they were gone.

Being nicer doesn't always help attract people that you want to interact with.

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#35

Post by [deleted] »

crispyambulance wrote: post #4

This is just basic manners like your mother taught you. It is kind of sad that so much "social" advice on the internet consists of stuff people should have learned by the time they turned 12 years of age. In any case, I am glad the OP is making an effort in favor of gentility.

[deleted]

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#36

Post by crispyambulance »

hyperpape wrote: post #5
crispyambulance wrote: post #4

This is just basic manners like your mother taught you. It is kind of sad that so much "social" advice on the internet consists of stuff people should have learned by the time they turned 12 years of age. In any case, I am glad the OP is making an effort in favor of gentility.

I think it's basic manners that when someone writes a long piece about a subject they're struggling with, you shouldn't just respond that it's "stuff people should have learned by the time they turned 12 years of age". It's basic manners, but we all struggle with basic manners sometimes, especially on the Internet.

You're right about that. It was my initial response and half-baked.

I should have elaborated but now it is too late.

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#37

Post by carapace »

joe_the_user wrote: post #25
carapace wrote: post #11

One huge problem is that September never ended... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September ) What I mean is, there are lots of people who are not as smart as they think they are, and they won't STFU and RTFM, etc... Send not to know at whom the Torvalds curses, he curses at thee. Frankly, I think the author's original position was correct: Emphasize credit for authors of RFCs and you'll get fools authoring R…

Maybe I could put it another way. September 1993 ended, just not the way some people would have wanted it to. The net has become a medium for everyone, not just a small enough group that this group could become acclimatized to a dominant discourse style (whatever the virtues might be of the Linus Torvalds "I will call you a fucking moron when you fail" school of discussion for a rarefied group). And given that, it is…

"Being nice is something stupid people do to hedge their bets." ~Rick, fictional smart a-hole.

> Maybe I could put it another way. September 1993 ended, just not the way some people would have wanted it to.

You could put it that way, if you wanted to be a patronizing fool. Try to understand that you are evidently one of the people I'm complaining about. You're not disagreeing with me; you're calling me a fool in a passive aggressive format.

> The net has become a medium for everyone...

I think you mean Facebook. Most humans haven't Clue One when it comes to computers, let alone networked computers. Even wordpress users are digital peasants.

> ...just a small enough group that this group could become acclimatized to a dominant discourse style (whatever the virtues might be of the Linus Torvalds "I will call you a fucking moron when you fail" school of discussion for a rarefied group). And given that, it is now necessary to have the standards of discourse for the net be the standards of discussion for society as a whole.

But I'm not talking about the "normals" and their precious discussion, I'm talking about the art, craft, and-- yes --science of computer programming, the thing I've dedicated my life to, and that suffers from a huge influx of fools who think that they know what they're doing when they just don't. It pisses me off.

Getting software right is important. I estimate that about 9 out of 10 people getting paid to write software today shouldn't be. You do realize that today, in 2017, most of the needful software has already been written don't you? Think about it.

So, my premises are: Most new software is unecessary. Most people writing software are not qualified.

If we're talking about software development (not "the standards of discussion for society as a whole") whether FOSS or closed "being nice" is waaaaay down the list of priorities for for what needs to happen globally in the software industry (IMHO).

We should establish strict standards and ensure that pro coders meet them. (like y'know engineers do)

Software is machinery. There's not a lot of scope for touchy-feely in software: you can usually make arguments with math and numbers and these do not care about people's feelings

Certainly I'm not arguing in favor of unbridled assholism, but if someone doesn't have the emotional maturity to deal with, e.g. Linus Torvalds being cranky and calling names (over email!) then that's probably a fine reason for that person to go do something else and quit wasting his time. (I've read some of his ranty responses and generally the folks he's popping off at are being thick and stubborn about it. I've got no sympathy at all for that sort of thing.)

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#38

Post by Karrot_Kream »

kibwen wrote: post #20
readams wrote: post #3

The worst maintainers are the ones who refuse to say no when they mean no or want to say no. I've seen maintainers waste weeks or months of a contributors time on work that they never intend to accept because they're trying to avoid confrontation up front.

I'd say that's a distinct skill that requires a different approach. Big projects have this problem less, because they have so many conflicting stakeholders and they get so much more practice rejecting random patches. But for little projects with one or few maintainers it's easy to look at every random contribution and be flattered that someone would bother to take the time to try and give back, which at the same time…

Working with the DCSS maintainers is great though. I recently contributed some code to put FreeBSD support into DCSS, and it was great working with them!

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#39

Post by carapace »

kibwen wrote: post #12
carapace wrote: post #11

One huge problem is that September never ended... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September ) What I mean is, there are lots of people who are not as smart as they think they are, and they won't STFU and RTFM, etc... Send not to know at whom the Torvalds curses, he curses at thee. Frankly, I think the author's original position was correct: Emphasize credit for authors of RFCs and you'll get fools authoring R…

I agree that perverse incentives are possible, but I think that stance is a bit pessimistic. Being the author of an RFC grants you no social capital unless that RFC is good enough to get accepted (and if it's good enough to get accepted, then it's a good thing someone took the time to write it!). Additionally, the amount of social capital one receives from being known as the author of an RFC is very minor (especially…

I agree with you. I'm erring on the side of exaggeration.

The thing is there's a large, quiet, ad hoc network of people and it "computes": Who's paying attention? Who's doing the work?

Keeping the normals from gumming up that network is very important, and calling [the wrong kind of] attention to it won't help...

Cf. Tao Te Ching, chp. 3

Re: The Minimally-Nice Open Source Software Maintainer

#40

Post by kazinator »

All those things are basically like a software job, except for the part that you aren't paid.

The skills to handle it are the same.

In commercial development, you ideally have some layers between you and the customers. That depends on how large of an outfit you are and so on.

How it works at Reasonably Big Co. is that all those requests from the end users don't go to you directly but to some customer support people (who are actually technical: they develop solutions and fix issues by actual coding; do not think "Microsoft customer support" here). You, in turn, support these people: but your manager should be coordinating that. If you are asked anything that would require significant development, you redirect to your manager; other than that, you help as much as you can without derailing your official work schedule.

Secondly, if customers have some major request like for a major feature, support may defer them to "product management" to have that work put on the road-map for the next release or whatever.

Product management doesn't bug you directly to develop anything. They negotiate with your managers to hammer out what is in scope, and from there a schedule is devised and so on. You end up with some tasks out of that schedule.

Similar principles can be applied to your OSS project: you (and possibly the handful of other contributors) just have to wear all these hats yourselves.

Here is the thing: those aforementioned support people independently produce solutions to problems. They check them into their own repos and they release that stuff to customers. Then later, customers want all that stuff carried forward in the software. So there is a tension: there are all these wild and wooly patches whipped up by support, of varying quality and they (or equivalent solutions in their place) have to be somehow integrated. The support people tend to say yes to customers to make them happy which isn't always best for the product.

That is quite similar like when in OSS you are receiving complete patches from highly technical users who can code.

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