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

Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 63 posts

Re: Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers

#31

Post by KirinDave »

craftyguy wrote: post #28
KirinDave wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so rather than claim that everyone is wrong I didn't. This is your inability to tolerate a different viewpoint. I didn't say you had a bad experience, just that I can't relate to the good ones. I qualified every statement with _I_, _my experience_, and _feel_ and you're still willing to stand up and argue with me about it. And that is, in fact, a toxic attitude. You're arguing that I'm neither allowed to have nor r…

Stop interpretting everything as a personal attack. It makes it seem like you were the bad apple, by immediately conflating contradictory statements and experiences into personal attacks. I would not want to work with such a person, in an open source project or otherwise. I merely suggested that your bad experiences might have been because of the projects you worked with, so a general statement of "open source bad" m…

> Not all open source projects have shitty leaders, but some do, and it's not always obvious which ones those are until you've invested some non-zero amount of time/effort into it.

If this was your intent, then I apologize for misreading it. But being very clear: this is not how the original text of your post read.

Re: Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers

#33

Post by jolmg »

vjeux wrote: post #9

As a core contributor of some very popular github projects, I get a ton of emails from researchers wanting me to fill out surveys. It would be nice if it was somehow centralized instead of a lot of independent people trying to do the same work over and over.

There is the plus that, if they all arrive at the same results, that gives greater confidence in the conclusion. Redundancy also has its good side.

Re: Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers

#34

Post by TAForObvReasons »

erikb wrote: post #32

Saying FLOSS instead of "open source" is like saying "LBQTXRSABCFGHKWPÖ" instead of "queer". Putting more letters doesn't make it more inclusive or anything, it just makes you look less serious.

To be fair, "open source" is a very broad term and everyone has a different sense for what it means. I don't believe the restrictions of AGPL make it an open source license in spirit ("source-available" is probably the better term), but FSF seems to think it is.

Re: Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers

#35

Post by AsyncAwait »

erikb wrote: post #32

Saying FLOSS instead of "open source" is like saying "LBQTXRSABCFGHKWPÖ" instead of "queer". Putting more letters doesn't make it more inclusive or anything, it just makes you look less serious.

Open-source does not convey the same idea as free software.

Re: Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers

#36

Post by fundamental »

vjeux wrote: post #9

As a core contributor of some very popular github projects, I get a ton of emails from researchers wanting me to fill out surveys. It would be nice if it was somehow centralized instead of a lot of independent people trying to do the same work over and over.

With respect to community surveys, I think they can be a good thing, but they're annoying when it looks like the author is on a fishing trip rather than trying to identify the answers to a few new specific questions.

Usually my off-the-cuff response is "What are you trying to understand which isn't already discussed heavily?". New areas of research and some small amount of redundant work is fine, but too often everyone covers the same base without aiming to take a deeper dive on something new.

Re: Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers

#37

Post by jolmg »

blattimwind wrote: post #4

I think the converse would be very interesting as well: Why do people dis-engage?

The paper also addresses that at section 3, Barriers[1]:

    - Large and complex project
    - Lack of time of the project leaders
    - Non-clear, complex or buggy codebase
    - Lack of time of the own contributor
    - Inappropriate design or architecture
    - etc.
[1] https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1803.05741/#S3.SS3

Re: Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers

#38

Post by teddyh »

KirinDave wrote: post #27
teddyh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you don’t give verifiable links to examples so we can judge for ourselves, and your reported experiences don’t match the majority’s, the rest of us are more or less forced to believe the simplest explanation: There’s a known principle that goes “If you think that everyone around you is an asshole, they’re not the assholes, you are .”. This would be the simplest explanation in this case, since we don’t know anyt…

Nothing I can do can change the outcome either way, teddyh. I suspect you've already decided how you feel about me. People are seeing a candid discussion of subjective experience as an indictment of theirs. This is another action I regret. I thought perhaps a related but dissenting viewpoint would have value to the conversation, but I guess not. This conversation itself is an example of the kind of negative experienc…

> Nothing I can do can change the outcome either way, teddyh.

On the contrary, I told you exactly how to change my mind (and that of others): Point to examples that we can read for ourselves and decide that yes, you really were treated badly in all these cases. That really would change minds.

> I suspect you've already decided how you feel about me.

Again, you are mistaken. You are just some random anonymous person on the internet; you could very well be an asshole; what do I know? But if that is the most likely explanation of your reported experience, then sure, why not. I can easily use that as a working hypotheses, because I have no vested interest in having a good opinion about you; I don’t care about you at all; I don’t even know you, so I have no strong opinion about you. I do care about people reading your description and (even though you were careful enough to not do so yourself) generalizing your experiences to the whole of the community, and being discouraged thereby.

You must understand that when you write something along the lines of “I had only bad experiences doing X, and I wish I could travel back in time to tell myself to not ever do X.”, it will be taken as a generalized advice to everyone, and be more or less rightly criticized as if it were such.

If you instead had written about the same experiences using words like “People can have bad experiences too; I only had bad experiences doing X, and therefore I gave it up. Was I just unlucky?”, I believe that people would be much more open to either agree or disagree. But that is not how you presented it.

> I'm sorry my post offended you. It wasn't my intent.

Not offended. Just worried that people might draw unlikely conclusions from your limited sample of experiences (especially when the submitted article is an actual scientific paper about this very issue).

Re: Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers

#39

Post by fundamental »

KirinDave wrote: post #10

I've never understood it. I've only had horrific experiences with my open source efforts. From the simplest cases like being ignored on PRs and tickets to mockery in social circles for algorithmic mistakes to finding out my work was enabling bad people to finding out people were misrepresenting my employment status while using my work in violation of the license, I don't think I've ever once had a positive experience…

> From the simplest cases like being ignored on PRs and tickets

Yeah, this can be irksome when trying to lend a hand. As a maintainer of a few projects I try to put in a big effort to make PRs easy as you do have someone interested in rather directly helping the project.

PRs also open up some opportunities to help guide new contributors which can be fun within itself (everyone has to start somewhere). In the best case scenario being friendly with PRs can result in a single drive-by patch turning into a more long term collaboration.

I do also try to address other tickets, though I do admit that some just fall through the cracks. Many times the first submission will contain incomplete or inaccurate information and it takes a lot of work from both parties to document what the problem is and how to resolve it (even before touching any code). I do think it's great to see people trying to out a project by documenting issues in tickets, but sometimes it just takes too much energy at the end of the day to 'properly' address them when a project has many users, but few devs/contributors.

> I've only had horrific experiences with my open source efforts.

It's a shame that's been your experience. In an ideal world open source communities help people learn, build cool stuff, and scratch an itch, but it doesn't always work out.

Re: Why We Engage in FLOSS: Answers from Core Developers

#40

Post by khc »

KirinDave wrote: post #16
andreyv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like you were forcing yourself to contribute for whatever reason. The best results are when you are genuinely interested in your work and in the process of making software better.

Some of the projects were in fact my original work. I was genuinely interested. I get similar negative feedback for writing, often. I don't write issue reports on github because I'm tired of people being angry at me for reporting problems or being derisive because I don't have the workarounds they didn't write down.

Could you provide some links so we can all see exactly what behaviors to avoid?
Post reply on HN