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Actix project postmortem

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Re: Actix project postmortem

#381

Post by ww520 »

AzzieElbab wrote: post #376
ww520 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I would. Because that patch is a "style" patch. It's not important in the author's roadmap for the project. People ask for different things and think their things are the most important, and when they don't get their way, screaming and kicking to force them in. They can always fork it or create a separate project if it's so important.

I wrote "fixes a problem" explicitly. How is that a "style" patch?

Some people treat style as a problem. In the context of “boring” conversation the problem was the unsafe usage. How’s that not style?

Re: Actix project postmortem

#382

Post by geofft »

o-__-o wrote: post #360
geofft wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Th e artifacts of these little meltdowns are exactly the kinds of things your upper management will cite the next time you suggest using FOSS vs. whatever vendor they're about to push down your throat. Yes, this is what I don't understand - we spent decades fighting the perception that open source could never be as good as proprietary commercial software. Now that we've mostly convinced our bosses, we want to turn…

>you're telling me to expect that the upstream author will take their code offline Yes. If a company shuts down, who is to blame when the downloads are no longer available? No offense, but your build process is lacking if you are affected by a project disappearing from the internet.. You should be bundling all of your libraries with your final artifact. This is a prime example of relying on the cloud without a contin…

This has nothing to do with build process, this has everything to do with the expectation that a project will continue to exist and put out new releases. All out builds at work, in fact, are offline. We check in tarballs and we don't access the internet. That has nothing to do with whether I can tell my boss in good faith, allow me to submit a patch upstream and it'll be worthwhile to the company and we won't have to carry local patches. Right now I can say that. Why would we want to get rid of that?

Re: Actix project postmortem

#383

Post by geofft »

ghostwriter wrote: post #350
geofft wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Th e artifacts of these little meltdowns are exactly the kinds of things your upper management will cite the next time you suggest using FOSS vs. whatever vendor they're about to push down your throat. Yes, this is what I don't understand - we spent decades fighting the perception that open source could never be as good as proprietary commercial software. Now that we've mostly convinced our bosses, we want to turn…

> Why should I use this software at all, let alone let you waste your time on patches? I'm gonna buy from Oracle. With OSS you always have an option to keep your personal copy of the source tree, and you have an option to fork it and maintain it at your own expense. When Oracle closes and discontinues the software you rely upon, you are screwed big time.

Big companies often have code escrow agreements to cover that exact problem.

The advantage of them is pretty theoretical since you don't really want to become responsible for someone else's code drop, but that's not any different with open source.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#384

Post by rumanator »

geofft wrote: post #149
mabbo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 leav…

I think that's fair - especially the part about not taking advantage of generosity. But I don't think that's what happened here. Someone reported a soundness bug. Someone else (IIRC) posted a patch fixing it by switching from a custom Cell type to the standard library one, which is what the maintainer called uncreative and boring. Fixing a soundness bug is a perfectly reasonable, non-advantage-taking thing to do in a…

> Someone reported a soundness bug.

Your description starts off on the wrong foot because a) there was no bug, and b) although the library used unsafe code extensively, its maintainer argued that was not a problem and that didn't meant the code was unsafe.

So in the end we only have issues being reported by opinionated users trying to force their personal opinions on a project maintainer, who due to the content and tone of said issue reporters decided not to accept the reports or patches. Once some bad apples in the community started to increase the unpleasantness of the whole experience, the maintainer said enough is enough.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#385

Post by geofft »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #364
geofft wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social contract is generally not written down anywhere. Here's what we're all on about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract I consent to let other people make demands of my OSS because I wish to make demands of their OSS because together we can build a better world than either of us could on our own - because I am consenting to be part of a community . I have security-sensitive Rust code on GitHub. I'm…

good thing the license file cover implicit guarantees then, because this is just bullies making up bullshit for justify their pressuring people into complying with their wishes.

The social contract is not enforced in the courts.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#386

Post by rumanator »

saagarjha wrote: post #329
rossjudson wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are confused. The maintainer made an active and conscious decision to protect himself . That's clearly not "nothing", and a perfectly legitimate reason.

I think there are a number of ways the maintainer could have protected themselves without making it actively worse for the community. I would even predict that this decision makes them likely to get even more abuse, though of course I would never condone that.

> I think there are a number of ways the maintainer could have protected themselves without making it actively worse for the community.

If said community was the one causing the problem, what would be the point of that?

Re: Actix project postmortem

#387

Post by jmull »

dwaltrip wrote: post #359
jmull wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you implicitly promise and signed up for Think about this. Do you really think it makes any sense to try to hold people to promises inferred by alternate parties that aren’t even providing any consideration in return? Just think about that.

A large amount of human interactions work this way. It's fuzzy and messy, with many shades of gray, but the world is filled with implicit promises with varying degrees of commitment and severity.

Well sure.

That's exactly why I encourage people to think about it.

It's a delusion to believe random strangers owe you anything (beyond basic compassion and curtesy) and you'll continue to be unhappy until you let go of that delusion.

Apparently a number people believed this developer worked long hours on this project (for free) because they were obligated to do so. Not only was that incorrect, it seems to have contributed to the dev leaving the project since some people felt justified in making rude (and sometimes angry) demands.

Thinking about it is important because when you do, you can see there's no reason at all to believe that the dev would put in a lot of work for free to maintain a project while continuously receiving abuse from a reddit mob while doing so.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#388

Post by saagarjha »

rumanator wrote: post #386
saagarjha wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a number of ways the maintainer could have protected themselves without making it actively worse for the community. I would even predict that this decision makes them likely to get even more abuse, though of course I would never condone that.

> I think there are a number of ways the maintainer could have protected themselves without making it actively worse for the community. If said community was the one causing the problem, what would be the point of that?

The community is not a monolithic entity.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#389

Post by rumanator »

nindalf wrote: post #316
rossjudson wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are confused. The maintainer made an active and conscious decision to protect himself . That's clearly not "nothing", and a perfectly legitimate reason.

They're referring to the maintainer's conscious decision to reject a patch made in good faith, that fixed the issues that had been pointed out. It was rejected with the statement "this is boring." Do you think this behaviour is justifiable? > I think you are confused You sure?

> They're referring to the maintainer's conscious decision to reject a patch made in good faith, that fixed the issues that had been pointed out.

You're misrepresenting the problem. There was never a bug or an issue, only a bunch of opinionated and vocal users who thought that bullying a maintainer is an acceptable way to get him to accept their patches. The maintainer rejected the bullies' actions and in turn the bullies ramped up their attacks, which ultimately convinced the maintainer that closing up shop is the best way to stop having to deal with these bullies.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#390

Post by rumanator »

saagarjha wrote: post #388
rumanator wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there are a number of ways the maintainer could have protected themselves without making it actively worse for the community. If said community was the one causing the problem, what would be the point of that?

The community is not a monolithic entity.

If there are bad apples in the community then the good apples need to speak up and reject them.

Otherwise the bad apples are the apples.

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