I thought maintainers did it because they are passionate, not because they are being forced to.
Why we never thank open source maintainers
41–50 of 229 posts
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#42Went to try it and couldn't write at least 300 characters so I filled with line breaks thinking it would be removed when displayed. Sorry if I made the front page a bit messy!
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#43> 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…
What do you do that you charge 200 eur/hr?
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#44Some people, rightly or wrongly, feel that their use of an open source library is endorsement and thanks enough, at least until you meet the maintainer in person or have other cause to be in contact with them.
Yes, I believe it's net positive for a project because I tell other what I am using and they get interested, this helps a project get more mindshare and some of them will eventually contribute.
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#45> 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…
What do you do that you charge 200 eur/hr?
Thats the fee for my part-time freelance consulting. 200 is on the low end.
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
From my experience in the medium business world (maybe 500 people total?), paying is the only option. Open source is evil. Maintaining things is evil. Writing your own code is evil. Just shell out $x,000 for support.
If I could find a way to say "Yeah, we can get 'support' for this open source library for $xxx per month" my life would be much easier.
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#47> 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!)
True, but expectations are sometimes also higher. Documentation etc has to be of good quality. Packaging. Stuff like that. There's really no comparing it with a paid job IMHO. It's more fun i'd say.
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#48[deleted]
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#49As 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…
In the first one the thanks seem insincere because it's asking for something.