Actix project postmortem • Hacker News Board

Re: Actix project postmortem

#151

Post by j1elo » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

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?

I agree with you. Really it is something that probably can be learned over time. I think it helps a lot to just remember how much money this or that dumb hater have paid for their entitlements (i.e. nothing), which -at leas in my eyes- emotionally reduces their words to a child's tantrum.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#152

Post by beatgammit » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:25 PM UTC

m4r35n357 wrote: post #42

I don't get it. This is a Git project. So did none of these people actually bother to clone it? Probably easier to just rely on binaries . . . suckers!

There are plenty of repository clones, that's not the issue. The issue is that people want to contribute back to the same repository so you don't have to figure out which project is the just up to date. When a project like this goes away, it takes some time for everyone to figure out which fork is actually being maintained properly.

The best course of action, IMO, is to state that you're stepping away, perhaps indefinitely, and ask if anyone wants to be added as an admin to take over. That's not required, but it's a nice thing to do.

I'm sad about this on a lot of levels, any I hope the maintainer does what I'd like, but if not, I'll just wait a few months and see how the dust settles. For now, I'll probably go back to investigating other projects.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#153

Post by pauldix » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

Sad to see this. I'm using Actix in a new project and have been watching the project for a while. Guess I'll be refactoring to use Hyper. If I were farther along I'd probably try to take ownership, but it doesn't make sense given that it's only around 40 LOC in my project that depend on Actix at this point so switching out to another framework is more straightforward than taking ownership of a codebase I don't know.

I understand fafhrd91's (the maintainer) frustration, but it would have been much better to just abandon the project and throw it up for some other volunteer to come in and take it over. Then the project can live on and he can bask in any success it has in the years down the road. Instead, it's a complete mess where all the good work and good will has been undone in a single move.

I've abandoned multiple OSS projects over the years and let other maintainers come in and take them over. Now over 10 years later I can still say I created that project that still gets used because other people have seen value in continuing to contribute and maintain it.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#154

Post by cesarb » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #128

Macha wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Issues and pull requests are often useful documentation (for open source projects, sometimes the only documentation), links to files and lines of code are now broken.

That is what happens when one outsources everything to Github.

This would have happened identically even if the project had its own hosting, so outsourcing hosting to GitHub isn't a factor in this case.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#155

Post by m4r35n357 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

beatgammit wrote: post #152

m4r35n357 wrote: post #42

I don't get it. This is a Git project. So did none of these people actually bother to clone it? Probably easier to just rely on binaries . . . suckers!

There are plenty of repository clones, that's not the issue. The issue is that people want to contribute back to the same repository so you don't have to figure out which project is the just up to date. When a project like this goes away, it takes some time for everyone to figure out which fork is actually being maintained properly. The best course of action, IMO, is to state that you're stepping away, perhaps indefi…

The Linux kernel has no central repository, they use email & stuff. I believe that is what the author of Git intended.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#156

Post by mwcampbell » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:30 PM UTC

We did this to him. [1] We drove him to burn-out. We should reflect on that and make sure we don't ever do that again to any open-source maintainer. And we should pay more of them for their work.

[1]: Including me, as I contributed to a comment thread here about cheating on benchmarks.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#157

Post by zzzcpan » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:33 PM UTC

beatgammit wrote: post #152

m4r35n357 wrote: post #42

I don't get it. This is a Git project. So did none of these people actually bother to clone it? Probably easier to just rely on binaries . . . suckers!

There are plenty of repository clones, that's not the issue. The issue is that people want to contribute back to the same repository so you don't have to figure out which project is the just up to date. When a project like this goes away, it takes some time for everyone to figure out which fork is actually being maintained properly. The best course of action, IMO, is to state that you're stepping away, perhaps indefi…

> and ask if anyone wants to be added as an admin to take over.

That's the worse possible course of action, this is how you get RCE vulnerability or bitcoin stealing malware injected into a popular project. Other random people should not be able to take over any project, they should do the work to promote their own fork and gain their own reputation. At least until we have a language able to protect from threats like that.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#158

Post by christiansakai » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

xtf wrote: post #129

christiansakai wrote: post #124

I am a Rust beginner, and have made a few small projects with Actix Web. Actix Web is the only framework I use in Rust and spent some time learning about it. During that learning process, the docs constantly get updated but there are examples in the repo. Sometimes there aren't examples and I go to their chat room and ask the maintainer directly, and to my surprise, he always answered my question. He is a busy guy wi…

Tried to write it down and help to enhance the documentation, or written an own documentation? So that reoccurring questions could be reduced.

During that time the actix web library was planning to do some breaking changes because of 1.0 target

Re: Actix project postmortem

#159

Post by dangerface » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #135

dangerface wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If some one opens the door for you that was nice of them, they did your work for you, they have no ongoing obligation to maintain the door in an open state. If some one give you their code that was nice of them, they wrote your code for you, they have no ongoing obligation to maintain your code. by simply giving you their code they have already provided you with value, a head start for nothing in return, they have op…

We’re starting to stretch the metaphor too far, but by opening the door you’ve signaled to me that I can walk through it safely. Closing it abruptly can in some cases be even worse than the alternative, since I could have possibly opened the door myself (written it myself and not invested time in this particular project) or gone through a another door that was also being held open (used another open source project).

> by opening the door you’ve signaled to me that I can walk through it safely.

It was safe for me, is it safe for them? Thats not a judgment I can make on their behalf. A lot of people are complaining that the code is unsafe while the author thought it was safe enough for them. How many nines is safe, depends on the person.

You should consider these things before using some ones help, not after, looking at the comments here no one did that.

> It's not very hard to say, this is a project for my own technical interest, I don't intend to follow Rust norms about use of unsafe, and you shouldn't rely on it.

So this guy is happy to rely on code he hasn't even looked at and then gets upset when that code is unreliable. This is not a reasonable expectation.

He try's to make out like this was a professional product that you would expect professional support for, but this is just some code he found on github and couldn't even be bothered to look at.

If you took the code when it was available then you walked through the door when it was open, now the door is closed its your responsibility.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#160

Post by toyg » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

lifthrasiir wrote: post #143

toyg wrote: post #46

I'll save this link for the next time someone tries to argue that the Rust community is somehow "more welcoming" than some other X community. All internet-based communities contain some assholes. All of them. Sadly some maintainers don't seem to have the werewithal to tell them to go away. I mean, when you get "asked to change coding style", it's the time to put the banhammer down, because there is no way to please t…

> I'll save this link for the next time someone tries to argue that the Rust community is somehow "more welcoming" than some other X community. It's deeply disappointing to see this outcome (and r/rust is literally divided into two halves on this drama at least for now, ugh), but I believe it is the statement about the average atmosphere. Not that I have an argument for or against the refined statement, but it doesn'…

Nah, it's just the usual delusion of small-but-growing communities. The Python community was great in 2001, a bit less so these days. The Lisp community was probably great at some point in the '70s too. It's just that, with size, the likelihood of attracting undesirable elements inevitably grows until their presence simply cannot be denied. At that point, you either deploy heavy-handed moderation and get branded "unwelcoming" by the assholes, or leave it free for all and get branded "unwelcoming" by the most sensitive not-assholes. Then someone or something will spawn a new community, and the cycle will repeat itself.

This process is basically inevitable, and it has been observed in internet communities for so long that it's basically a science by now. It's just the nature of the (human) beast.