Why we never thank open source maintainers • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#211

Post by jmcdiesel » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 3:58 AM UTC

yesenadam wrote: post #210

jmcdiesel wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because being annoyed doesn't affect them, only you. Choosing to experience negative emotion because someone does something is self-harm. When you are entitled to something, you expect it, and you can't expect something and be truly appreciative of it at the same time. When you don't expect good though, the bad doesn't upset you, and the good, you actually genuinely appreciate.

"Choosing to experience negative emotion because someone does something is self-harm." Hi :-) Fascinating comment. Do you really live that, or just it's something you read/heard and aspire to? Trying to unpack that a little: Calling experiencing negative emotion (i.e. feeling bad) "choosing to experience negative emotion" seems psychobabble. Do you choose all your feelings? I doubt it. So, you will never feel bad bec…

You dont chose your emotions, you chose which emotions to react to.

There is an entire philosophy built around that concept, buddhism.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#212

Post by jmcdiesel » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 3:59 AM UTC

resu_nimda wrote: post #204

joonhocho wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't expect anything, but your comments still let me down, and I find you annoying.

What he's talking about is putting yourself in a mindset of very low expectations to maximize your own happiness. For example, if your baseline "expectation" of people is that they will be rude and shitty, then you won't become annoyed when someone is rude and shitty to you. And when someone is nice to you, they have exceeded your expectations and it makes you happy. So what you perhaps "expected" is that people gene…

Its not about low expectations. Its about no expectations.

Buddhism, Daoism, etc... its the same idea. Don't have expectations, good or bad, simply be in the moment.

[edited for spelling]

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#213

Post by hinkley » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 4:46 AM UTC

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…

I’m sure I know the sort you’re talking about, but there’s another quarter being heard from here too.

There isn’t space for an infinite number of libraries in a niche. So if you show up you are occupying space that someone else can’t. Sort of like if your friends throw a party and you decide to throw one on the same day. Kind of a dick move if you don’t have a really really good reason (like it’s your birthday).

Additionally is nearly impossible to sell a library now. It wasn’t always that way, but that’s the world we live in now, in large part because of FOSS. Writing it in-house or using FOSS are pretty much my only two options. So FOSS has to be some significant fraction of the quality of a commercial alternative because we can’t have those anymore. Without any attempt at sufficiency, FOSS effectively makes the world a worse place.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#214

Post by benoror » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 4:54 AM UTC

I recently did just that: https://github.com/mhgbrown/cached_resource/issues/36

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#215

Post by agibsonccc » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 5:35 AM UTC

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…

I feel conflicted here. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt by educating them a bit and explaining up front what funds the project as well as what the scope is.

As a maintainer, seeing it every does tend to annoy me a bit. I always try to remind myself people dont usually mean ill though. All bets are off if people continue to disregard the framework for engagement though.

Most people are a bit surprised I do this but are generally receptive after the initial explanation.

My main philosophy in these interactions is just to treat people professionally while being stern on things out of scope.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#216

Post by agibsonccc » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 5:38 AM UTC

_pmf_ wrote: post #39

zimbatm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

I largely agree here. I usually get annoyed when people start demanding things though. There are a surprising amount of people that do this. That is where burn out comes from .

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#217

Post by gcb0 » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 7:08 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #78

gcb0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> chromium just like several dev over the years implemented privacy conscious options to restric the referer(sic) header just to have google employees silently remove them later on? well, I guess it can work if the feature you are paying for is not to improve privacy at the expense of google's Ad business.

Do you have a link? I'd figure Google would want to restrict the Referer link, as they were accused in the move to HTTPS (which did break it for a lot of sites linked from Search).

you will have to search. its hidden in unrelated commits. but features that were removed at different points in time are: no referrer/only first party referrer in settings. no referrer in their about:config equivalent at the time (its a moving target). command line option to disable referrer.

all added and vanished at random points in time.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#218

Post by hutzlibu » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 7:12 AM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #187

hutzlibu wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you go more into your problems, because as far as I know, it is actually not that complicated. Unless of course, you say you are non profit - then they have to accept that, complicated, yes. But if you want small donation money for a webpage, it is very easy. You register a small company for it (cost 20-30€, time 20 minutes at the finance agency. and you can use that company for many other similar things). And th…

> But if you want small donation money for a webpage, it is very easy. You register a small company for it (cost 20-30€, time 20 minutes at the finance agency. and you can use that company for many other similar things). Which makes the tax declaration much more complicated. Additionally this can easily cause lots of trouble with the employment contract.

But when you make money from a website, it is a buisness. And if it is small money, it is a small buisness - where I found the buerocratic hurdles to be very small.

I mean sure, since I am a libertarian, I prefer there to be no hurdles and no taxes at all, but the majority of people think different. And you are not even a libertarian I suppose? So you just want a excemption from taxes/buerocracy for you? Or just for small things like donation? Yeah well, this is the case right now, but they need to somehow verify that it is indeed small. I found the current situation reasonable. A bit more effort with tax declaration, but not really much, having a small business.

"Additionally this can easily cause lots of trouble with the employment contract."

And this is a problem with your contract then, which you negotiated and nothing for which the state is responsible.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#219

Post by flukus » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 7:23 AM UTC

oldgregg wrote: post #197

notzorbo3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It would be nice if github made it easy for people to assign a $ bounty to every issue and when it's marked complete payouts are automatic. There are a bunch of issues in various open source projects where I would easily drop $100 on a bounty.

I'd be worried that this might create an expectation to work on issues people were willing to pay for, whether that makes sense or not. I've seen a lot of this in commercial software, if a paying client want a feature then it get's added no matter how much sense it makes. Then every other customer has to deal with the feature bloat whether they want it or not.

It's also the root cause of a lot of technical debt, "we added this misfeature years ago because 1 client wanted it, so now we have to support it". It's important there is a proper funnel for what features should be added.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#220

Post by naturalgradient » Fri, Nov 24, 2017, 8:50 AM UTC

iforgotpassword wrote: post #115

no_one_ever wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeesh, that wasn't what he was saying at all

No it was exactly what he said. First he complained about those feature requests with a meaningless "thanks in advance" attached (OK fine with me so far) but then with the phrase I quoted he made it clear that he doesn't like to be thanked in any shape or form.

Well that is actually true.

A 'thanks' does not do anything for me. I don't write a library for other people's appreciation, I write it because I want to, because I can, and because I have my own interests for it.

Insofar I am interacting with other people on the project, the only thing that does anything for me is if they contribute something.

Appreciation is not worth anything to me but I am also deeply introvert and not very social, I simply do not care. I can appreciate most people feel different (by observation) but I build technology because I want it to exist and do things, not to be thanked.