> This is the way it works. It needs to change.
Well, it’s on you to set your boundaries. "Feel free to submit a PR" works wonders.
Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects
201–210 of 353 posts
Re: Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects
#202I 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…
Usually, I try to use projects in languages I work with so if the issue is not important enough for me to make a PR, then it’s not important enough. One thing I wish were possible is to sponsor an issue. I don’t usually sponsor open source projects, but I would likely sponsor a lot of issues just to speed up resolution. I think this could move a lot of projects in the right direction. Depending on difficulty, the mai…
An issue is that the maintainer may have other priorities. By sponsoring an item you "force" them to look at that sooner.
Re: Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
You dont need to wonder. Any long term maintainer of even semi popular open source projects will tell you that engaging with the peanut gallery is completely counter productive. Engage with people that have earned it in your eyes, whether by contributing to your project via code, assets, bug triage, writing a good and effortful bug report, whatever. Just ignore what the larger internet has to say about you and your c…
What form should this ignoring take, in your eyes? I’ve never maintained an open source project but I’d imagine this is the hard part, how to politely decline the peanut gallery’s feedback. Do you disable GH issues? Leave them open and ignore them? Decline with some boilerplate language? How do you stop people from being mad that you’re ignoring them? (IME these types of people are likely to take things personally an…
Say no, politely, with your reasons. If they continue to argue:
1) Unwatch the issue/block emails realted to the issue (setup tooling for this)
2) If they continue to harass just block them, they are a waste of your precious time and energy
And yes they will go cry on reddit or HN or their own blogs and call you names. Ignore it. Be happy in the knowledge of the thousands or millions of people whose lives you have improved by your labor. Most of them wont bother to say thank you, but a few will, rememebr those. And be happy in the knowledge that the worlds is a better place because you exist in it, in however small a way.
The key is to realize that human psychology is by default not well equipped to deal with the internet. We tend to react much more strongly to criticism than praise. Recognize that in yourself, and gradually change it.
Re: Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects
#204awkward, but heard very recently that open source is not "vc backable, go away". maybe it will change now, after the infrastructure pillars of the modern world ruins in front of those many saas/ai/web3/cloud/whatever investors
Why should VCs back oss infrastructure directly? It doesn't help the VCs and only creates perverse incentives for the oss projects. The SaaS/cloud/etc. companies themselves should fund the projects they depend on. They actually know what those are and don't have to force their own monetization/growth models onto the projects.
Sure, may be VCs specifically shouldn't be where the money comes from but this labour NEEDS to be paid otherwise shit like this will keep happening. Dear god, I looked it up just now, but next week will be the 10th anniversary of Heartbleed being introduced to the world. A decade, and really little has changed.
Re: Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
You dont need to wonder. Any long term maintainer of even semi popular open source projects will tell you that engaging with the peanut gallery is completely counter productive. Engage with people that have earned it in your eyes, whether by contributing to your project via code, assets, bug triage, writing a good and effortful bug report, whatever. Just ignore what the larger internet has to say about you and your c…
What form should this ignoring take, in your eyes? I’ve never maintained an open source project but I’d imagine this is the hard part, how to politely decline the peanut gallery’s feedback. Do you disable GH issues? Leave them open and ignore them? Decline with some boilerplate language? How do you stop people from being mad that you’re ignoring them? (IME these types of people are likely to take things personally an…
Decline with some boilerplate language?
Re: Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
2007 wasn't that long ago, and these type of maintainership issues aren't new – they were a thing when I was starting out in the early 2000s as well. What changed are the stakes, and also the amount of effort bad actors are willing to spend to mine their cryptoblahblah or whatever. And sure, I understand why people feel a responsibility. And it's fine to take this responsibility too. I'm just saying: there is no need…
2007 was 17 years ago, and it was another world. This time 17 years ago, the iPhone had not been released. Facebook was still new and hot, the first big operation to be unashamedly built on PHP (!). GitHub didn't exist , opensource happened on mailing lists, Sourceforge, private Subversion repos. It was definitely another world. I do agree that maintainership issues were already there, but I think they were smaller i…
MySpace, Yahoo! Mail, eBay and probably other large scale operations were all built on PHP long before Facebook and I don’t think any of them were particularly ashamed about it.
Re: Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I don't feel like it, if it's important to you then feel free to fork". That's really all that's needed. that's much harder than it sounds. having someone fork your project can give you the feeling of loosing control over the project as potentially all your users might go with the fork. that fear is often strong enough to push yourself to do things that will avoid a fork. it's a desire for harmony and a fear of conf…
I'm reminded of this recent post about the Redis fork to be maintained by Drew Devault: https://andrewkelley.me/post/redis-renamed-to-redict.html > Redict is a Finished Product > Drew is a controversial person (he's been rude/mean in the past) xz should be pretty much finished as well, major overhauls like the "ifunc" feature to inject alternate function implementations are not really justified. Beware of busybodies…
It's important to note that rudeness is somewhat up for interpretation. Rejecting a patch because it's full of bugs might be considered rude to some people, but not to me. There are definitely times where Drew rubs me the wrong way, but I know he's good at what he does, and I know he's just as fed up as I am about the nonsense. He doesn't suffer fools, and that can seem rude and mean if, well, you're a fool. (To be clear, he's been totally out of line before, but I know he's been working hard to change that, and I think he's been successful.)
Re: Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
You dont need to wonder. Any long term maintainer of even semi popular open source projects will tell you that engaging with the peanut gallery is completely counter productive. Engage with people that have earned it in your eyes, whether by contributing to your project via code, assets, bug triage, writing a good and effortful bug report, whatever. Just ignore what the larger internet has to say about you and your c…
What form should this ignoring take, in your eyes? I’ve never maintained an open source project but I’d imagine this is the hard part, how to politely decline the peanut gallery’s feedback. Do you disable GH issues? Leave them open and ignore them? Decline with some boilerplate language? How do you stop people from being mad that you’re ignoring them? (IME these types of people are likely to take things personally an…
Based on my experience running open source projects for a couple of decades, not replying/engaging is the only way.
Don't reward incompetence with a response -- are they paying attention, have they done their homework? (paraphrasing Maria Popova)
Re: Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something I've observed as an English speaking immigrant is that in general, the US/UK is very forgiving when it comes to foreigners trying to speak English. Where certain types of phrasing and harsh words would not be tolerated with first language English speakers, the benefit of the doubt is given to 2nd/3rd language speakers because they 1. Might not have the vocabulary to express themselves correctly 2. Not under…
The English used in the commit messages I’ve seen was pretty much perfect, but unfortunately the repo has been suspended now.
I agree. Either native English or very very good second language. Given the weird laziness of some parts of the attack I'd put my money on native English.
Re: Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't blame anyone; I just made some observations on how this type of thing can be avoided, partly based on my own experience doing volunteer work for the last 20 years (as open source maintainer and as scout leader), and being subject to the same pressures at times. I hate this trend of shouting "victim blaming!" once someone tries to explain things or analyse anything. Not everything needs to be a value judgemen…
Well, when you say "the victim could just not have succumbed to the pressure" I don't see how that doesn't blame the victim. I understand it's not your intention, but peer pressure works exactly because it gets around people's "wait, I don't actually want to do this" defense, and to say "just don't do it, nobody is physically forcing you to" ignores that fact. If I were in the maintainer's shoes, and was feeling ambi…
Giving out advice for concrete steps someone can take to prevent a problem isn't victim blaming. Unless we're all content with people just sitting and whining all the time instead of actually doing anything to help themselves. And let's be real, we're talking about open source contributions, not getting mugged for wearing the wrong clothing here.