Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects

I do sometimes wonder if by trying to be "nice" to users and try to see the best intentions of commenters, many developers waste huge amounts of mental energy.

For context, I've really only worked on "fun" side projects, namely emulators and game remakes, where I've explicitly avoided any mention of donations or similar. Both as it's intended to be a distraction from my job, not become part of it. And generally avoid as many issues as possible around said money distribution within the project, and possible copyright problems that such things often skirt.

And those sort of projects tend to be extremely limited in progress not by total interest, but skilled interest with the ability to contribute. I wish as many as 1% of the regular discussion participants in the community could contribute to that level.

There's a natural belief that unless someone is egregiously out of line, all discussion around a project from users is allowed, even encouraged.

But many people just can't seem to help themselves making "suggestions" (or, another reading, "demands"), and that can have a significant impact on motivation of volunteers. I believe the vast majority are from based in good intentions, wanting a "better" result, but arguably are mostly self-defeating in that I find the discussion around much of these things to be draining and demotivating. I want to have "fun" coding game remakes, not defusing drama in discord threads.

But it's expected to have a "community" for all such projects, and not exclude non-direct contributors. Even writing it down here I'm worried I sound like I'm trying to curate a closed community of ego-boosting yes men.

But I sometimes wonder if allowing this sort of open community is better in the long run.

I often debate if I should go into the hacking world, best case I get bug bounties, worst case I get rich and I contribute immoral actions.

I think its far easier to make $3,000,000 as a hacker than a worker/entrepreneur.

Its way easier to find flaws/bugs than to do the entire Capitalism thing correctly.

Then I see that half of these major attacks required social engineering.... Maybe being a hacker is significantly easier. I only need to fool 1 person, there are a lot of people, and merit isnt exactly how everyone got to their position.

Anyway point being: People are amazed by hacking, they shouldn't be, its relatively easy if you are a mere 10 year programmer. Most of us pick relatively moral work, so the number of attacks are small. It is also why we really need to treat security on computers like its no stronger than your home's front door lock. There are too many attack vectors to be perfectly safe.

Sadly, this is how it works in many large social systems, left unchecked. The “reasonable consumers” drain the kind contributors until they cannot do this anymore. The curse of kindness strikes in software and other industries alike.

Well, in this case it's even worse. The "community" here in all likelihood was overrun with sock puppets of a malicious state-level actor.

In the end you're only pressured as much as you allow yourself to be pressured.

"I don't feel like it, if it's important to you then feel free to fork".

That's really all that's needed. "I don't feel like it" is all the justification you need.

Some guy just made a compression tool, because some people like doing that kind of thing, or because it was useful for him. He didn't ask to be made "critical infrastructure" or to be responsible for the security of sshd or to have some business depend on it, or anything like that. No one even asked him.