Live data from Hacker News

Actix project postmortem

github.com

21–30 of 408 posts

Re: Actix project postmortem

#21
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're right, it was unprofessional... but since the maintainer is not being paid this is not a professional project. It's a personal project. And this seems like a perfectly personal thing to do with something that's preventing happiness.

Well, it's easy to get confused when you look at the professional looking website with a well crafted logo, a promo list of features and a copyright notice from the "The Actix Team". The community page even says "We're a welcoming community so don't be afraid to engage.". Ouch!

The easy way to tell is to remember if you're paying them or not.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#22

People should really learn to ignore the emotional channel of the comments they receive. Just try to figure out if the message contains any useful information with a quick glance, extract it if it does and ignore the rest. People have to shit - that's physiologically inevitable, and there are people who do it in the streets and there are people who shit in comments/messages. Why take them serious?

Easy to say, not so easy to do.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#23

"Ok... So that was unprofessional. If you don't want to maintain a project anymore, you give it to someone else and link to that repo in your README. This just screwed me over big time." https://github.com/actix/actix-web/issues/1#issuecomment-575... These kind of entitled attitude is probably exactly why the guy just removed everything. More details / discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/ac…

> These kind of entitled attitude

If you offer code to the public – and present it as an active, dependable project – professional behavior is exactly what you implicitly promise and signed up for. If you can’t offer that (at any time, and for any reason), then you should immediately make that clear, front-and-center, to any current and future users.

It isn’t “entitlement” on part of the users – the users are making reasonable expectations based on promises implicitly made by the the project as it is presented.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#24

"Ok... So that was unprofessional. If you don't want to maintain a project anymore, you give it to someone else and link to that repo in your README. This just screwed me over big time." https://github.com/actix/actix-web/issues/1#issuecomment-575... These kind of entitled attitude is probably exactly why the guy just removed everything. More details / discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/ac…

They're right, it was unprofessional... but since the maintainer is not being paid this is not a professional project. It's a personal project. And this seems like a perfectly personal thing to do with something that's preventing happiness.

Exactly. It can be argued it's unprofessional to become dependent on third-party software without any background recherche regarding the maintainer's motivation, team size, financial standing, etc., especially when said third-party software isn't a replaceable, standards-based component such as, say, Java Servlet containers and other web components used to be.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#25
What he created and did was and is amazing.

He wouldn't have had the attention or the criticism that he got if it hadn't been so impressive. I think when something's good enough, people may actually criticize more freely. Some of that is because the project becomes worth the scrutiny. But some of it is also a status thing. If your work is good enough to give you a high enough status, you change categories a bit in peoples minds. They start to criticize you in the way that they'd criticize other entities that seem strong enough that they don't need to be protected any more.

I hope that the actix ecosystem can stick around and keep moving forward. But even if not, I think fafhrd91 made impressive contributions and I'm glad to have used and learned from his work.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#26
post #10
post #4

Asking for a friend - could someone explain what happened there? The README doc is quite vague - it is more of a personal justification than a rationale (to me).

The issue was triggered by someone executing a benchmark on http crates and opening an issue on github, that was then deleted after some heated back and forth. https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epoloy/ive_smoketeste... From the maintainer point of view, it seemed to have been the straw that broke the camel back, but I don't know the whole background. Still seems like a sad story

Wow. Talk about a bad response though. No matter how abused you may feel as the sole maintainer you should still not throw a tantrum. Censoring an issue title, body, and comments is a gross overreaction. If you want to throw in the towel then just throw in the towel.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#27
post #22

People should really learn to ignore the emotional channel of the comments they receive. Just try to figure out if the message contains any useful information with a quick glance, extract it if it does and ignore the rest. People have to shit - that's physiologically inevitable, and there are people who do it in the streets and there are people who shit in comments/messages. Why take them serious?

Easy to say, not so easy to do.

Quite easy to do once you realize you can, adjust the mindset and have some practice. There probably is a lot of garbage in your spam folder - do you take it seriously?

I used to do tech support and some people (not too many) wrote right out rude or nonsensical (like concluding I hate their religion just from the fact our service failed to suit their specific needs). I would just answer such sort of robotically (if their message contained a question which made any logical sense) or ignore them (despite I generally am extremely compassionate and always do my best to help).

Have you ever looked at a glass of a window rather than at an object behind it? Just don't focus on the idea there is a person hating you (there are much more people loving you, by the way, even if they don't write you), instead focus on the fact you are viewing a string which only contains garbage data.

Go to an anonymous image board and look at people writing things which would be unimaginable to see here. Write some yourself perhaps. That can make a nice practice quickly.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#28
post #23

"Ok... So that was unprofessional. If you don't want to maintain a project anymore, you give it to someone else and link to that repo in your README. This just screwed me over big time." https://github.com/actix/actix-web/issues/1#issuecomment-575... These kind of entitled attitude is probably exactly why the guy just removed everything. More details / discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/ac…

> These kind of entitled attitude If you offer code to the public – and present it as an active, dependable project – professional behavior is exactly what you implicitly promise and signed up for . If you can’t offer that (at any time, and for any reason), then you should immediately make that clear, front-and-center, to any current and future users. It isn’t “entitlement” on part of the users – the users are making…

I've never heard of "implicit promises". For me a promise is by definition explicit. Anything else are assumptions, in this case false assumptions.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#29
post #23

"Ok... So that was unprofessional. If you don't want to maintain a project anymore, you give it to someone else and link to that repo in your README. This just screwed me over big time." https://github.com/actix/actix-web/issues/1#issuecomment-575... These kind of entitled attitude is probably exactly why the guy just removed everything. More details / discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/ac…

> These kind of entitled attitude If you offer code to the public – and present it as an active, dependable project – professional behavior is exactly what you implicitly promise and signed up for . If you can’t offer that (at any time, and for any reason), then you should immediately make that clear, front-and-center, to any current and future users. It isn’t “entitlement” on part of the users – the users are making…

Or to put it another way:

As an open source maintainer, you're perfectly entitled to just walk away. Hit that archive button on github so nothing new can come from the repo, and enjoy your life. Nobody could fault on you that. People would prefer you work out a clean transition to a new maintainer, but you have no obligation to do so.

Deleting the repos is the equivalent of setting the house on fire on the way out (especially when they're under their own org). Unlike in reality, it turns out it's totally permitted, but people will still view it as a dick move.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#30

"Ok... So that was unprofessional. If you don't want to maintain a project anymore, you give it to someone else and link to that repo in your README. This just screwed me over big time." https://github.com/actix/actix-web/issues/1#issuecomment-575... These kind of entitled attitude is probably exactly why the guy just removed everything. More details / discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/ac…

They're right, it was unprofessional... but since the maintainer is not being paid this is not a professional project. It's a personal project. And this seems like a perfectly personal thing to do with something that's preventing happiness.

I absolutely agree with this. The author has spent an insane amount of time to build all this stuff and instead of getting recognition and/or being payed adequately he is getting shitstorm after shitstrom.

As an outsider I have to say that I think what the Rust community has technically achieved is remarkable. But on the social side it is not so bright, avid Rust users constantly spam forums of other programming languages with toxic comments. But this incident shows that the situation is even worse than expected, the Rust community even treats its own peers like sh..

Post reply on HN