I wonder why most people who use opensource are so consumerist? No thanks or stars or contributions. Only reports of things not working or not working the way they want them to.
Ask HN: Why most people who use open source are so consumerist?
1–10 of 25 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why most people who use open source are so consumerist?
#2You can't eat stars. What's the value?
Re: Ask HN: Why most people who use open source are so consumerist?
#3The world is too big, indirect stuff never works.
If you want people's praises, then you have to manouver and set your affairs and behavior in a way that is optimized to get people's praises. You can't hope to receive them organically as a byproduct of your opensource software work.
They'll take the product/service and not acknowledge anything about your work.
This works even at the very extremes, say a dictator or a king. If he doesn't make it clear that he wants a parade and set the organization in motion, nobody will throw a surprise military parade for him
Re: Ask HN: Why most people who use open source are so consumerist?
#4You can't eat stars. What's the value?
Stars on GitHub are a kind of rating. So why not give a star to the project you're using, since the cost is just your click.
Re: Ask HN: Why most people who use open source are so consumerist?
#5People value a thing, personally, in relation to what it cost them.
When it came free with no effort, it has no value and therefore it takes a real effort to understand that the maintainer and others may not see it the same way.
open source software gives you, the user, the responsibility for you use of it; where most people want that to be someone else's job. They want to jump on the gokart and ride, not check the tire pressures, tune the engine, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Why most people who use open source are so consumerist?
#6People value a thing, personally, in relation to what it cost them. When it came free with no effort, it has no value and therefore it takes a real effort to understand that the maintainer and others may not see it the same way. open source software gives you , the user, the responsibility for you use of it; where most people want that to be someone else's job. They want to jump on the gokart and ride, not check the…
In many ways I agree. But one thing I can not understand because if we talk in the context of GitHub, the project users are users of GitHub and they are probably the developers themselves and know the value of labor, well, I think they do.
Re: Ask HN: Why most people who use open source are so consumerist?
#7Most people don't have a github account.
Also, a nice bug report with clear reproduction steps is very helpful.
Also, to make contributions I need to build the project. Sometimes it's straightforward, sometimes it's necessary to install the compiler and a mess of undocumented libraries and then run the correct makefile with the correct options.
Re: Ask HN: Why most people who use open source are so consumerist?
#8You can't eat stars. What's the value?
A star is also a good way of bookmarking a repo which you see yourself using in the future.. or just to watch its progress.
Re: Ask HN: Why most people who use open source are so consumerist?
#9People value a thing, personally, in relation to what it cost them. When it came free with no effort, it has no value and therefore it takes a real effort to understand that the maintainer and others may not see it the same way. open source software gives you , the user, the responsibility for you use of it; where most people want that to be someone else's job. They want to jump on the gokart and ride, not check the…
Maybe developers should adopt the experience of bloggers from YouTube. Like: let's get n number of stars - then you'll get a new release? :)
Re: Ask HN: Why most people who use open source are so consumerist?
#10The same happens with apps, they will download it and need to try it first to decide whether it deserves a star, most will forget. That's why apps are constantly bugging users to leave a rating. Remind them that you need it for motivation.