Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why we never thank open source maintainers

windsooon.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–229 of 229 posts

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#221

Post by brillout »

notzorbo3 wrote: post #11
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…

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'm curious; What are your open source projects? (And thanks for your comments, very interesting and resourceful.)

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#222

Post by wolfgke »

hutzlibu wrote: post #218
wolfgke wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> So you just want a excemption from taxes/buerocracy for you?

I am not against taxes per se, but I am a deep hater of bureacracy.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#223

Post by j_s »

lkbm wrote: post #206
oldgregg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 believe this is what bountysource.com is for. I haven't tried it, though, and I'm not sure how completion is evaluated. Seems problematic to let the bounty-poster decide if something is completed, but also to put it on a third party to put in the time to verify for various pieces of software they might not be familiar with (and worse to put it on the second party who implements).

Three days ago:

BountySource suspended from GitHub | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747328

Useful discussion on the concept there; they were temporarily suspended for not supporting opt-out.

Whisper Systems supports auto-Bitcoin for suspended pull requests. https://signal.org/blog/bithub/

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#225

Post by hutzlibu »

wolfgke wrote: post #222
hutzlibu wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> So you just want a excemption from taxes/buerocracy for you? I am not against taxes per se, but I am a deep hater of bureacracy.

So how would you do it then? How would you make the process simpler, than it allready is?

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#226

Post by davidjnelson »

oblib wrote: post #162

I have to admit I haven't sent a personal note to all of them that I should, not even close, but I have to a few. I have asked a few for help or clarification too and thanked those who responded. And I have bought a few a beer or beverage of their choice when I could by donating, but that's really not much at all for what I got. I have never asked anyone to add a feature or fix a bug, but I've not run into to many. I…

Right on! I’m also super grateful for all the amazing open source available these days. It’s indeed truly fantastic.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#227

Post by davidjnelson »

celeritascelery wrote: post #91
throwaway0071 wrote: post #40

Let's not forget companies that provide free services to open source projects.

Such as?

Jetbrains offers free intellij licenses for open source. Sauce Labs and Browserstack offer free selenium vm’s for open source too.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#228

Post by hutzlibu »

hutzlibu wrote: post #225
wolfgke wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you just want a excemption from taxes/buerocracy for you? I am not against taxes per se, but I am a deep hater of bureacracy.

So how would you do it then? How would you make the process simpler, than it allready is?

Like I thought, you are a typical german who likes to complain, but with no idea how to improve things.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#229

Post by iagooar »

eitland wrote: post #152
iagooar wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fun expression, first time I hear it! In Polish, you would say "you give a finger, and they'll take the whole hand".

Same in Norwegian :-)

Languages and cultures are such a fascinating thing. How can Polish and Norwegian come up with the same expression, without a shared, common ancestry and the countries not being direct neighbours.
Post reply on HN