Let's not forget companies that provide free services to open source projects.
Such as?
Why we never thank open source maintainers
91–100 of 229 posts
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#92As 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…
I wonder if it's due to how open source software is sometimes marketed to users? If you have a professional-looking website saying it's easy to use and better than the rest, and people try it out and it's not completely wonderful, they're going to complain, because it didn't meet expectations.
Perhaps deliberately modest marketing would work better at attracting the right kind of users?
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
You can in many cases.
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#94As 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…
Ways I deal with this as an open source maintainer of various projects: 1. Severely restrict the scope of the project (i.e. do one thing and do it well) 2. Don't feel guilty about saying "no" 3. Realize that people have no malicious intent or are lazy when they request . It's just like a normal customer in a business: they often have no idea of the cost and difficulties in implementing things. That's okay, it's my du…
I agree. Sometimes, I explain that the feature request can be implemented, but not for free. I flag such issues with the "needs sponsoring" tag.
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' Answer with an estimate based on your hourly rate.
Honestly, this exudes arrogance, even if the intention is completely free of ill will. It's better to say a clear NO ("I will not add this feature" or "I cannot implement this at this time"), and let them figure if they want to pay/use something else on their own, than to talk down to users.
It's going to depend on how the response is worded.
I wouldn't want to assume that someone asking for a feature is willing to pay for it. I also wouldn't want to make an offer unless I'm serious about doing it if they say yes.
But, if you are doing contract work, letting people know it's an option seems like a good thing?
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#96As 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…
Ways I deal with this as an open source maintainer of various projects: 1. Severely restrict the scope of the project (i.e. do one thing and do it well) 2. Don't feel guilty about saying "no" 3. Realize that people have no malicious intent or are lazy when they request . It's just like a normal customer in a business: they often have no idea of the cost and difficulties in implementing things. That's okay, it's my du…
I run a support forum for an open source project.
The maintainer does something similar and it can annoy some people to get no for an answer but it keeps things sane. The software has been going well for 8+ years now (with one change of maintainer in that time).
We also implemented a Feature Request forum and people generally use it. Plus 'Issues' are turned off on GitHub. So things generally funnel very well through the forum/mailing list and you know that a post in the Feature Request forum will request a feature, so you can mentally prepare for it.
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
> conference invites and job offers. Don't we all get spammed by these, regardless of where we work? Also, conference invites usually cost money rather than return money.
Conference speaking invites usually cover the hotel and flight fares (in all honesty, I couldn't really afford attending otherwise). Some conferences also offer to do paid workshops which are a big factor too.
Both you and the parent are right. A lot of conferences will cover your main travel costs for a speaking invite. But there are often other travel-associated costs so it's usually not really free if it's out of your own pocket.
Conference speaking is often worth it if it's effectively part of your job that someone else is paying for or (selectively) if the exposure for marketing yourself is worth it.
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#98Earlier 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'.
I do think that kind of non-thanks is very different from what the article is talking about though. One is asking you to do something, and the other isn't. The only thing they have in common is the literal word "Thanks".
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Honestly, this exudes arrogance, even if the intention is completely free of ill will. I would rather say that asking to "implement " for free exudes several more magnitudes of arrogance.
I get what you're saying, but even without the requested feature, the existing code also took time, mental effort and opportunity costs to come into existence — the user sees it and naturally imagines, "there's more where this came from". Not all users are at the same level of experience as you (a maintainer); this doesn't make them lesser people or even lesser developers (sometimes they're just good in a different p…
> Don't offload your annoyance on the requester — sometimes they don't know that their request is significantly harder than they think.
I give/gave an estimate based on my hourly rate so that this misconception is cleared of as directly as possible. If you want it for free, you better convince me that it is worth the opportunity cost for me to implement it.
Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Asking users to pay you isn't talking down to them. It's what sensible businesses do. If I walk into McDonald's and say "Hey give me a cheeseburger" it's not rude for them to ask for the $0.99 in exchange.
I'm not against offering to work on the problem in exchange for money. I'm against outright responding to a feature request with an estimate. If you don't want to work on the feature (i.e. you're uninterested ), it's better to be honest about it. If you do want to work on it, but your time would be better spent on anything else, and you're willing to work on it for money, first ask if the requester is interested in p…
> If you don't want to work on the feature (i.e. you're uninterested), it's better to be honest about it.
Being uninterested to do it for free: Yes. But when I am interested to do it for money, giving an upfront estimate based on the hourly rate is the most honest way imaginable to me.