Actix project postmortem • Hacker News Board

Re: Actix project postmortem

#111

Post by toyg » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

j-pb wrote: post #32

shirshak55 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now due to that comment actix maintainer has disabled issue too. I don't know why people show such attitude as if they are paying him to do opensource.

In open source you give and take. The actix author almost certainly (unless they deploy their own kernel) has profited immensely from other peoples work. This is because as a community we have realized that we don't sell libraries, we sell stuff build with them, so we all win when we share. It is your choice to use open source software without open sourcing your own work or without contributing. But by engaging in op…

> The actix author almost certainly (unless they deploy their own kernel)

... or use Windows / MacOS / Solaris / any other commercial OS he paid for...

> by engaging in open source you engage in a social contract

You heck. You simply allow other people to use your work as they see fit. That's it. The only contract is the license, and the license is very explicit in denying the existence of any other tie, explicit or implicit.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#112

Post by geofft » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

buzzkillington wrote: post #21

dsego wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely not. You can get professional (but not necessarily timely) support from me for multiple projects I maintain on GitHub, for free.

For many people, their personal interest in open source is writing code for fun and showing it off. For others, it's making a product that people can rely on. The second one is my motivation; don't take that away from me.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#113

Post by qwerty456127 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #98

qwerty456127 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> I used to do tech support As someone who also "graduated" through the trenches of tech-support, I think you underestimate how much that job hardened you and made you able to evaluate this sort of situations in a more detached way. The ability to calm down, bypass a human, and get to the root of a problem standing behind such human, is a skill that few people develop outside of such jobs. Even in healthcare, where "…

Perhaps. And that's what, in my opinion, people should actively engage in learning.

Perhaps somebody should build a chat-bot which would insult you in various ways and you are to just look at that and respond calmly (while being mindful of your feelings and avoiding feeling bad). That might suit for a risk-free exercise. And as I have mentioned, anonymous image boards are a useful experience too.

BTW I've seen a number of movies about the military where a sergeant would shower the recruits with humiliating insults - perhaps that's the purpose of the act.

Whatever, I can recommend "the fourth way" book by Peter D. Ouspensky to whoever feels interested in developing their capacity to deal with negative emotions rationally and doesn't mind a humble bit of mystical speaking (there is some + it is not really scientific as a whole yet I find it quite rational and, well, amazing). It has helped me a lot.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#114

Post by jeltz » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:51 PM UTC

zzzcpan wrote: post #77

jeltz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People did investigate for him and write a patch for him and he dismissed the patch with it being "boring".

Well, maybe people didn't provide detailed enough explanation for the author to understand and merge the patch, so he didn't bother.

Judge for yourself: https://web.archive.org/web/20200116203731/https://github.co...

Re: Actix project postmortem

#115

Post by captainbland » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

tiku wrote: post #61

tsukurimashou wrote: post #11

"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…

Once it's public and people depend on it you can't retract it like that. His goal was to make his work public, not private.

You basically can. The cost of free stuff like this is "be nice to the guy giving it to you" or at least don't be actively abusive about it. If the community won't pay that price, expect it to evaporate.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#116

Post by geofft » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

buzzkillington wrote: post #52

onli wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all. You can pay for amateur bullshit, and you can get professional software and support for free (and free as in freedom).

My Ethernet is stuck in ipv6, professionally tell me how to fix it, for free.

That's not an open source project any of us maintain.

Also, there are expectations for both sides of a professional interaction. My employer buys various fancy networking equipment for lots of money and we absolutely wouldn't expect an answer for that question.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#117

Post by saagarjha » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #108

geofft wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely correct that people don't have obligations simply by putting some code online. But they do have obligations when they start telling people to use their code. We understand this as humans even in realms far from open source: if I see you approaching a door, I am under no obligation to open it just because I'm physically able to, but if I open a door for you, I'd better hold it until you're finished wal…

He held the door open for a lot of people. Some people spit at him as they walked through. He doesn't want to hold the door open any more, he's done it enough. He didn't sign up to be a doorman for life.

Right, and he can do that and that would be totally fine. People stop maintaining projects all the time. But by going out of his way to antagonize people (many of whom aren’t even the people who “spit” at him) he’s just not being very nice.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#118

Post by qwerty456127 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

thrownaway954 wrote: post #58

qwerty456127 wrote: post #17

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?

You obviously have never participated in open source and are talking about something you had ZERO experience with. Go participate in a toxic open source community for a couple of months and report back about not only the experience but also you emotional well being. I can guarantee you'll be reading your comment and cringing at what you once wrote. btw, there is and awesome life lesson in this comment i posted, if yo…

Now I consider your message a puzzle and am curious about what awesome life lesson have you hidden in it. I am going to re-read it over and over again :-)

Re: Actix project postmortem

#119

Post by mabbo » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #99

tsukurimashou wrote: post #11

"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…

It's absolutely correct that people don't have obligations simply by putting some code online. But they do have obligations when they start telling people to use their code. We understand this as humans even in realms far from open source: if I see you approaching a door, I am under no obligation to open it just because I'm physically able to, but if I open a door for you, I'd better hold it until you're finished wal…

> if I see you approaching a door, I am under no obligation to open it just because I'm physically able to, but if I open a door for you, I'd better hold it until you're finished walking through, or I'm a jerk. By holding the door open, I've made an implicit promise that I'm not going to close it on you.

This reminds me of an incident years ago. I was on a city bus, very full of people, and we were just about to leave a stop. There's a woman maybe 150 feet away running towards the bus. The driver sees her running and re-opens the door, waiting. Inconvenience to all of us on the bus, but hey, she's running.

The woman, seeing the bus has waited for her, stops running and starts slowly walking instead.

Driver sighs, closes the door, drives away.

I'm not sure what the moral lesson I take from it is, but mainly "if I go out of my way to help you, don't take advantage of my generosity". Maybe that partially applies to situations like this one. Or maybe just "don't annoy transit operators". That's a good one too.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#120

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

Macha wrote: post #29

teddyh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (e…

I don't see why.

Anyone that cared already has their local repository copy.

After all that is what DVCS are all about