On Being a Free Software Maintainer • Hacker News Board

Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer

#41

Post by inapis » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 12:37 PM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #26

iamgopal wrote: post #19

What is the latest, state of the art way to earn money this way ?

Completely not proven yet, but I'm convinced: ask for it. Make it easy for people to pay you. Find a way (and reason) for people to invoice you for payment. Tell people that you expect payment even if they don't legally have to pay. Make it part of the "community ethos" that payment is a natural and good part of working with the community. Free as in freedom, not beer. Ask for beer and give freedom in return. I have…

While this is how it should be I find reality to be a lot different. The cultural shift required is so massive that I don’t think it will happen anytime soon, if at all. People have become accustomed to open source software. Critical infrastructure which is free. This is again drilled as a point, that software should be free, by the consumer software. Google and App Store have destroyed any resemblance of rationality in pricing software products. People expect stuff to be free (ads and stuff is fine, the really obnoxious people will block even those) or if not free, they expect a rock bottom price. People argue for software which costs 5 USD and some irrationally expect it to be cross platform, high polish and the dev should respond within minutes. Trying to sell software these days has become a harder argument especially if you are not able to quickly deflect these massive hoards of price-complainers.

This is the case for consumer software. I am not even trying to imagine how harsh it would be for an open source maintainer - who has absolutely no leverage given the source is already out there. What’s happening with docker, elasticsearch, Redis, MongoDB et al is not giving me hope either.

Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer

#42

Post by silvestrov » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 12:37 PM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #29

dingallero wrote: post #4

This has been discussed before and it has been true for me as well. I don't have a large, super-popular package I maintain, but several lesser known ones, some of which I wrote, and several of which I just adopted and passively became a maintainer over time. At some point the pressure from the community made me pass the magical threshold between fun/useful/rewarding and downright chore. It has permanently changed my…

> useless code of conduct #Code of Conduct This is not a community project. This is my project. I know that will disappoint some people, but I do this for fun in my own spare time. If it stops being fun, I will stop working on it, which will pretty much kill the project. There are millions of projects in the world and the only reason they continue (if they actually do) is because the maintainers stubbornly stick at i…

Things I don't find fun: Drama and entitlement. You are not entitled to other people implementing whatever features you want.

Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer

#43

Post by peterkelly » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 12:44 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #12

One of the things I've started to wrap my head around lately is the essential inhumanity of technology. It's a near-daily occurrence of mine to having to deal with something that's just plain dumb, and just have no way at all to fix it. I can't make the system better, I can't make any kind of suggestion to anyone so that my situation won't come up again. There's nothing to do but to just accept it, put whatever worka…

This reminds me of the author of libcurl saying that he gets a ton of emails from people asking about their cars infotainment system, because when they try to find an email address to contact for support, the closest thing they can find is his address in the libcurl license text:

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/11/14/i-have-toyota-corola/

Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer

#44

Post by qaq » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 12:56 PM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #35

qaq wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you OK with other people using this ? This looks to be the perfect #Code of Conduct

Feel free :-) I warn you that the only way I had the courage to write it was that I drank a considerable amount of nihonshu (Japanese sake). It was pink. The label said that the pink colour was a natural result of the kouji (aspergillus oryzae). I'm skeptical :-) But, in all seriousness, I've been thinking about it a lot and really the main thing, I think, is for everyone (even the maintainer) to avoid drama. If you…

Thank you! I think if you put this code of conduct in it's own repo you'll get thousands of stars :)

Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer

#45

Post by franciscop » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 1:04 PM UTC

The way I have learned to deal with it is switching to a mostly read-only software publishing. The default of my answers to issues is some sort of "No", which might be "good idea, but not now", "good, but not planned, PR open", "not within the project's objectives", "bad idea, there's a better way", etc.

This is not great, I'd love to be able to do OSS fulltime and help hundreds of people out there. But the reality is that, with a fulltime job, it is either not helping 90+% individuals or risking burning out, which would be even worse (especially for me). Also, the fact that my software is used by millions of people per year (directly and indirectly) and I've received $10 in donations in total (~5 years of OSS) hints me that it's a very non-sustainable market.

Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer

#46

Post by igi3ql » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 1:11 PM UTC

You need a thick skin to maintain free software, and that's not something that you can grow... either you have it or not. It's not for everybody.

The biggest mistake some software maintainers make is showing empathy for abusive and unreasonable users. Most of them simply deserve to have the door slammed in their faces. If you can't do that, then you'll lose your time and stress yourself.

Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer

#47

Post by ozim » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

siwatanejo wrote: post #3

StavrosK wrote: post #2

This has not been my experience. I maintain various popular and not-so-popular projects (although maybe not to the level of gnome calendar) and I just work as much as I want. If I don't feel like handling an issue right then, I say I won't have time soon and that PRs are appreciated. The vast majority of people are understanding, I don't remember anyone making a fuss about it.

Maybe because the consumers of your work are developers? GNOME Calendar (the OP's project) is an app for end users.

Why would you imply that "normies" are worse than "techies"?

Just look at some places where you get couple of guys that think they are next Linus Torvalds. Other thing to search for, are holy crusaders for something like tabs or spaces.

Where I would say real "normies" would not care and be "oh it just does not work, meh". There is probably the same amount of crazy people that would go full length to find you to fix their problem and do it for free.

Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer

#48

Post by StavrosK » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 1:24 PM UTC

zimbatm wrote: post #30

StavrosK wrote: post #2

This has not been my experience. I maintain various popular and not-so-popular projects (although maybe not to the level of gnome calendar) and I just work as much as I want. If I don't feel like handling an issue right then, I say I won't have time soon and that PRs are appreciated. The vast majority of people are understanding, I don't remember anyone making a fuss about it.

Do you ever have a problem saying no to people? Some times I am wrangling internally and that has an emotional cost. I find that being super crystal clear on where I stand is absolutely necessary to be able to say no.

I never have a problem saying no. I have a problem saying no in a way that will make the other person happy, but I'm working on it and I think I manage well enough lately, but the "no" gets said regardless.

It's a very important skill, as people are donating their time to helping you out, even if they're complaining about something. Especially for collaborators, I want them to feel like I listened to them and that I have concrete reasons for rejecting their proposal, even if the reason is "I don't believe this is in scope for this project, but maybe it could be implemented a layer above or as a plug-in".

You aren't doing anyone any favors if you say yes to everything.

Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer

#49

Post by treetis » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #36

vinceguidry wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bible. Wish I could offer something more accessible. But a better read on the nature of hells, belief, faith, false gods, and how to find a true path to salvation can't be found. Haven't picked mine up in awhile. Should probably fix that. I spend my time these days writing rather than reading. Chasing my own muse. Quora is my usual outlet, though I'll occasionally feel compelled to comment on HN.

Having wasted a significant portion of my youth on said book I would not recommend it. The whole thing boils down to devoting yourself to a (IMO) demanding, bigoted, homophobic, and imaginary being. Whatever crumbs of truth (treat others like you want to be treated, life is short, etc.) included are better expressed elsewhere and without all the baggage.

Using those words, it sounds like you're angry at God.

Re: On Being a Free Software Maintainer

#50

Post by StavrosK » Sun, Mar 31, 2019, 1:26 PM UTC

karussell wrote: post #39

zimbatm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever have a problem saying no to people? Some times I am wrangling internally and that has an emotional cost. I find that being super crystal clear on where I stand is absolutely necessary to be able to say no.

Yes, exactly. Saying 'no' is a very important skill you should have. Of course you can learn it too (like I did :)) Also it is very important to reverse the emotional costs. I mean, usually people come to your repo and demand/ask for a feature. Instead of feeling overwhelmed from this request, say that you welcome contributions and without this this feature won't happen and the feature request will be closed (after 1…

I usually say something like "I find this very useful and will work on it", "I think this is good but will probably not have time, so feel free to issue a PR for me to review if you want it", "I will accept a PR but not really expend effort to make this myself", or "I will not accept PRs for this as I don't think it's in scope, but feel free to import my library into your extension if you want".