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Ask HN: How to say no to a GitHub issue feature request?

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Re: Ask HN: How to say no to a GitHub issue feature request?

#41
post #15

If you don't see that the feature would fit your vision of the codebase then just tell them that. If you think it is a useful feature tell him that you currently don't have time to implement it yourself but a PR is welcome. Often people only want that there issue is tracked, so to avoid conflict and just do nothing just tell them that it goes into the backlog of future features to be considered ;)

Just another point to consider: sometimes reviewing a PR and getting it up to your standards is significantly more work than doing it yourself.

If you don't have time to implement it, there is a chance you don't have time to review it.

If it is like that, you can simply say you don't have the bandwidth to review, and/or you don't want the feature in your repo. You can emphasize that they can always simply fork the project and do whatever they want with it.

Re: Ask HN: How to say no to a GitHub issue feature request?

#44

"This feature is a bit out of scope"(if applicable). "Our team, aka me, has limited time for this project, and I just don't have the bandwidth. I can answer questions or possibly collaborate if you'd like to have a go at the code yourself though." "This is a personal/internal use project made available to the community as is, and adding features outside of what I need for my own company is not a priority. You're welc…

There's another consequence to consider as well: even if a PR does materialize externally, do you want to sign up to maintain it in your codebase?

Re: Ask HN: How to say no to a GitHub issue feature request?

#45
I think this is a massive issue for both of you and I don't know how we can resolve it.

Because it's an issue for you because you don't have time to work on it and you can't always work for free.

But most people are on the other side. They work for a company and the company want them to use a package. But the package doesn't work or doesn't have the feature they need.

The can't fix it or add the feature because their company don't give them time to read thousand of line of code and fix the bug or even worse, they just don't have the skill for it. What are they suppose to do ? Their company will put pressure on them and they are stuck so they ask you to fix the bug/add the feature.

In the head of the manager the library is "famous", it is suppose to work and thousand of developer are using it. If it doesn't work it's because the company's developer is bad. But it's not his fault too. So everybody is in the same shit.

And it's a very recurring situation. I'm an average python developer, yesterday my task was to add celery to our django project. Celery is an old and massive "famous" project. It is suppose to work. But what happened when you follow the tutorial ? The tutorial doesn't work. What do I say to my manager ? Sorry the project sucks it doesn't work. He will not understand me. I had to follow another tutorial made by someone else and their install guide was different from the official one, and it kinda works. "Kinda" because it didn't work, to start Celery, celery needs to load the django settings. My django settings was using environment variable. It works for all of them except the django.SECRET_KEY. Why ? I have no idea, so I had to hardcoded the secret key in the settings which is not a good solution, but at least it works and I can progress on the feature I have to do.

What am I suppose to do ? Create an issue in celery asking for "please, can you fix your getting started because my company want me to use celery but it doesn't work ? Can you create a tutorial for using celery beat with django because my company want me to use it and I don't know how to do it ?"

Of course I didn't create an issue because I know I will not have an answer and it's always my fault because I can't debug the library for hours to find a solution to the shitty tutorial who doesn't work.

And that's just the type of the iceberg, I use all my day to make it work and I didn't manage to do it. I had to try different package, downgrade setuptools because one package wasn't compatible etc. At the end of the day, my environment was fucked up, django didn't even start anymore and I had to erase my environment and create a new one.

And that's the day of every average developer (so not HN developers). We get angry because nothing work, our company put pressure on use, and at the end, we ask coldly on github for bug fix or feature.

Re: Ask HN: How to say no to a GitHub issue feature request?

#46
Hi, sorry but this is simply not something I'm interested in implementing.

Further, please remember that GitHub maintainers do this for free, on their own time.

Thanks!

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Anything more than that, block and move on. I've been on GH for 10 years or so and it's gotten really bad in the last few regarding pushy dickheads like this.

You owe nothing to them, and if they can't behave within the OSS ecosystem then they're going to get blocked. Plain and simple.

In the past, I've simply responded to drive-by PRs with "No thank you :)" and closed them. Not common but sometimes people do stuff that makes no sense and you just can't really say anything other than that.

Re: Ask HN: How to say no to a GitHub issue feature request?

#48

You can just politely say no. That's it, don't feel obligated to do anything else (and for that matter, even this is optional). I don't recommend you say f off or be hostile, it's not worth the trouble, be gracious and kind, but don't be afraid to be firm and establish your boundaries. If he keeps bugging you, simply ignore him or block him if needed. There are lots of entitled people on the internet, it's up to you…

> You can just politely say no.

To emphasize even more, you do not need to explain yourself at all, in any way. You may want provide your reasons / rationale, but you don't have to (see other comments stating that as well).

Re: Ask HN: How to say no to a GitHub issue feature request?

#49
I'm no dev but let's say that my job has a similar issue. The approach that I use focuses on being 1) truthful, 2) clear, 3) polite, 4) concise. In this specific order.

In other words: "Sorry, I'm not going to do this because [insert here the actual reason, not some lame excuse]".

Past that, if that user keeps insisting, the user is being entitled and you should not bother yourself with entitled people.

Re: Ask HN: How to say no to a GitHub issue feature request?

#50
I think this where some bureaucracy would be in order. Have a list of rules somewhere for the project. Have a list of close reasons based on the rules. One of them will be "Feature Request Declined". With the rule being "If you ask for a feature, we will consider it but we cannot guarantee to implement it, we may close it with Feature Request Declined because of time constraints, priorities or just that the maintainers need a life outside of doing this.".

This might take the emotion out of it.

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