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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

#171

Post by mr_toad »

wolfgke wrote: post #13
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…

> 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' Answer with an estimate based on your hourly rate.

Better make sure you make it clear it's an estimate, otherwise you might end up with an obligation you don't want.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#172

Post by dopeboy »

I try to do what I can but I'll admit I'm not consistent. Ranked in order of how useful the project is to me, I will:

Star their repo

Tweet or email them my thanks

Donate cash

If I make it to the point where I develop strong competency with the project and have something meaningful to contribute, I'll start looking at issues and helping people troubleshoot.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#173

Post by jmcdiesel »

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…

>>> 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' >>> Usually from people who have never contributed anything.

This is a very toxic attitude, honestly.

How dare users request features they can't implement themselves... only experienced developers with domain knowledge should request features!

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#174

Post by jmcdiesel »

Tehnix wrote: post #149
_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…

> 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' and > 'Can you implement ?' Are very differently loaded questions! The first one very much indicates no concern about the implementers time, and is very often seen coming from people that have no idea the complexity of the work involved with the "Thansk!" indicating the implementer would automatically accept it regardless of their own priority, while the second one is way more inno…

Only on hacker news can "Thanks!" be interpreted negatively... jesus...

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#175

Post by jmcdiesel »

_sqhj wrote: post #122

As an author of dozens of open-source projects, I was really surprised how entitled / rude people can be. I was even told f-word just because I used babel for compiling JS. I was like WTF. Some people act as if they are my paying customers when I get zero compensation from my open source projects. I just share my work because I think they can be useful for some. I don't have any obligations to solve their problems.

Keep in mind, the entitlement works both ways...

This isnt just for you, more of a general thing. Ive seen it a lot in this thread alone.

Creating an OSS project doesn't entitle you to be treated a certain way either. Nothing does. Being entitled at ALL is bad, so expecting good or bad is just a waste.

I try to live more by the "give everything you can, expect nothing in return, be grateful if something comes" mentality. Shitty people are going to be shitty people, and most of them are shitty for a reason - so feel bad for them, not angry or annoyed at them. Nobody WANTS to be an asshole...

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#177

Post by singold »

nulagrithom wrote: post #46
sheetjs wrote: post #38

Earlier 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.

This. A lot.

I work at a company with less than 500 people and for IT open source is evil.

I've seen people been told by IT to find another software that does the same thing but paid, and we have a law that mandates us to prefer FLOSS when possible...

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#178

Post by cstrahan »

celdon25 wrote: post #121
icebraining wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reporting the bug is reasonable. Bugging (no pun intended) them is not. even say one can do it 'better' Then offer to take up the maintainer role. Debian has institutions to deal with unresponsive maintainers.

Clearly this is evidence that those institutions are in need of improvement, no? Perhaps too few people know about them, for starters.

Or go with a distribution that makes it trivial to make drive-by contributions, like NixOS for example. Updating a package is a simple as bumping two lines and sending a pull request here: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs

For reference, I’m the (co)maintainer of over 80 packages in Nixpkgs. IIRC, I submitted my first PR within roughly a month of using NixOS. Before NixOS, I had used Ubuntu for 4 years. How many packages did I maintain there? Zero. It’s just too difficult to track down the right project, figure out the arcane build/packaging setup, contact the maintainers, etc.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#179

Post by Clubber »

jmcdiesel wrote: post #175
_sqhj wrote: post #122

As an author of dozens of open-source projects, I was really surprised how entitled / rude people can be. I was even told f-word just because I used babel for compiling JS. I was like WTF. Some people act as if they are my paying customers when I get zero compensation from my open source projects. I just share my work because I think they can be useful for some. I don't have any obligations to solve their problems.

Keep in mind, the entitlement works both ways... This isnt just for you, more of a general thing. Ive seen it a lot in this thread alone. Creating an OSS project doesn't entitle you to be treated a certain way either. Nothing does. Being entitled at ALL is bad, so expecting good or bad is just a waste. I try to live more by the "give everything you can, expect nothing in return, be grateful if something comes" mental…

I would say if you are giving a gift to someone who wants / needs it, you are entitled to a little courtesy.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#180

Post by Clubber »

wzsddtc wrote: post #167
sheetjs wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you give a mouse a cookie, the mouse will ask for a glass of milk"

In Chinese it's give people an inch and they would want a foot.

I like the possibly unintended double meaning of "foot."
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