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Why we never thank open source maintainers

windsooon.github.io

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Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#31

Post by naturalgradient »

_jcwu wrote: post #29
naturalgradient wrote: post #5

As the maintainer of a reasonably popular library, I actually get irritated by a lot of 'thanks', because they are in the form of this sentence: 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' Usually from people who have never contributed anything. Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their lazin…

And what is the issue with just telling them that it could take a lot of work, so probably not? Why does it bother you if someone says thanks? It does not put you in any obligation to do anything... I do not understand your point of view. Should we stop saying thanks in our daily life? Because it does not really do anything for anyone.... To me the following two messages give off two totally different vibes: 'Hi, can…

I do tell them i) whether it is on the roadmap ii) what would need to be done.

The reason it bothers me because it sounds like an order to someone who is delivering a service for you, e.g. 'Can I have another drink? Thanks!'? That's not a 'thanks'.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#32

Post by chrisper »

naturalgradient wrote: post #31
_jcwu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what is the issue with just telling them that it could take a lot of work, so probably not? Why does it bother you if someone says thanks? It does not put you in any obligation to do anything... I do not understand your point of view. Should we stop saying thanks in our daily life? Because it does not really do anything for anyone.... To me the following two messages give off two totally different vibes: 'Hi, can…

I do tell them i) whether it is on the roadmap ii) what would need to be done. The reason it bothers me because it sounds like an order to someone who is delivering a service for you, e.g. 'Can I have another drink? Thanks!'? That's not a 'thanks'.

That's a good point. You got me convinced. There are better ways to deliver such a message!

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#33

Post by chrisper »

notzorbo3 wrote: post #6

> It is true that some of you guys can build a tool in a hackathon I've kept some data on how much time I've spent on a somewhat popular open source project (+/-1000 stars on github, if that means anything). Time to implement to scratch my own itch: +/- 24 hours Time to write documentation, package, etc: +/- 70 hours Time to handle bug and feature requests, support: +560 hours So that's an overhead of around 2500%. I…

I'd also say that if you are not paid you approach the work differently. Like you can take your time with certain things maybe. A lot less stress, I'd imagine. (Depends on the project obviously. If you get yelled at by Linus, you probably should be more careful!)

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#34

Post by zimbatm »

naturalgradient wrote: post #5

As the maintainer of a reasonably popular library, I actually get irritated by a lot of 'thanks', because they are in the form of this sentence: 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' Usually from people who have never contributed anything. Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their lazin…

Yeah this is painful. Why do some users feel so entitled? The hard part is not to feel bullied into doing work for free and not to react in a snarky way.

The best remedy I find is to know exactly where I stand. Is it something I am interested to work on? maybe, if enough users show interest. Or maybe not. And then communicate clearly to set the expectations.

Want this feature? Sure, either do it yourself or hire somebody from freelancer.com or something. Or at least help me refine the requirements from your vague "this is not working exactly like I want". But yeah, even that is taking energy away.

Related to that, I wish github had an auto-close issue feature that would be triggered if the user hadn't replied for a month.

EDIT: but I also get a lot of really good and respectful feedback. I don't want to push these people away because of my previous snarky comments.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#35

Post by etimberg »

naturalgradient wrote: post #5

As the maintainer of a reasonably popular library, I actually get irritated by a lot of 'thanks', because they are in the form of this sentence: 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' Usually from people who have never contributed anything. Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their lazin…

Agreed that responses like that are frustrating. Usually when they start getting to me I find it's time to take an evening off.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#36

Post by jwilk »

rsync wrote: post #8

Anytime I find a very useful tool[1] or get help from a maintainer or author I always offer them a lifetime, free rsync.net account. A fair number of them have taken me up on it. [1] Some examples of useful tools include: TextBar for OSX, git-annex assistant ... someone wrote a great encfs tutorial ... etc.

I had to look it up in a dictionary:

to take someone up on something = to accept an offer or invitation from someone

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#37

Post by [deleted] »

naturalgradient wrote: post #5

As the maintainer of a reasonably popular library, I actually get irritated by a lot of 'thanks', because they are in the form of this sentence: 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' Usually from people who have never contributed anything. Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their lazin…

[deleted]

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#38

Post by sheetjs »

inglor wrote: post #16
naturalgradient wrote: post #5

As the maintainer of a reasonably popular library, I actually get irritated by a lot of 'thanks', because they are in the form of this sentence: 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' Usually from people who have never contributed anything. Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their lazin…

Send them quotes back: "I'm glad you liked it, I have X hours to dedicate to project Y this month. If you'd like, I'm willing to work on that feature for you under terms Z". People _pay_. You'd be surprised just how much of Chromium and other open ssource projects is written by consulting companies paid by third parties to solve a use case.

> People _pay_.

From our experience (http://sheetjs.com/, our major open source library is https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx), even with multinational corporations, they move heaven and earth to find another free solution, or spend in-house time to hack together a solution and try to sucker you into helping them, but paying is by and large the last option.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#39

Post by _pmf_ »

zimbatm wrote: post #34
naturalgradient wrote: post #5

As the maintainer of a reasonably popular library, I actually get irritated by a lot of 'thanks', because they are in the form of this sentence: 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' Usually from people who have never contributed anything. Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their lazin…

Yeah this is painful. Why do some users feel so entitled? The hard part is not to feel bullied into doing work for free and not to react in a snarky way. The best remedy I find is to know exactly where I stand. Is it something I am interested to work on? maybe, if enough users show interest. Or maybe not. And then communicate clearly to set the expectations. Want this feature? Sure, either do it yourself or hire some…

> Why do some users feel so entitled?

As a user, I have no longer a way of knowing whether an "open source" project's main developers are doing stuff in their free time or on company time. So, I don't see anything wrong with asking for features. Asking for features is how software evelves, whether closed source or open source. If you have a problem with it, put a disclaimer "unmaintained" in the README.md (because not wanting to tirage requests amounts to not maintaining the software).

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