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I'm giving up on open source

nutjs.dev

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Re: I'm giving up on open source

#31

Post by franciscop »

You do need to develop a very thick skin in OSS to be able to thrive. You need to learn to just block those issues+people, both in the repo and mentally. I'm a nobody, but still some of my projects got a bit popular and I felt the heat, e.g. one of them was a CSS library which was very "beginner friendly", so people came constantly to the Issues to ask help with their CSS and how to do their job (not about the library)* so I decided to remove the Issues tab in Github. This lead to someone opening a PR insulting people.

But I know for every AH like that, there's thousands or millions of people who do benefit of using my software, so I try to keep it up. I do work fulltime so now I have little time to do new projects, but still keep up with the PRs and occasional small improvements in existing ones (e.g. adding types definitions, or moving to ESM).

* IMHO the move that happened where newbies stopped trying to learn how to properly ask questions in SO since that community didn't allow homework questions or low quality and started going to the repos of the projects they used to ask those very same questions

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#32

Post by unethical_ban »

>You should do a better job updating your documentation so that people do not waste their time like I did. This change to closed source was announced where, exactly? All of your READMEs and documentation sites do not mention this. Very easy to be confused and very disappointing to me that this went closed-source.

>Not only did you sell out, you also removed all the old versions that were released under an open source license so that others couldn't continue to use out-of-support versions. DISGUSTING.

>tl;dr get off GitHub and npm entirely if you want to do the closed-source thing, kthx.

---

This is a comment on an issue from the OP's project. A comment that was factually inaccurate from the start.

This smarmy piece of... well, this person has the nerve to use their full real name, full real profile picture and associated email addresses and blogs, to make such a self-righteous, entitled comment.

He looks to be a young guy, maybe anti-social and doesn't realize that "telling it like it is" is sometimes "being an asshole". I hope he matures.

---

edit to respond to gertop: (I got throttled by the system)

I mentored a guy one time who had absolutely no polish. Absolutely no sense of social self-awareness. When I met with him at one of bi-weekly meetings, he mentioned casually how he told his boss his internship "kind of sucks" and is boring.

I patiently tried explaining to him that there may be better ways to express one's interest in other areas of the department without slighting the boss's own team and mission. If he were capable of looking someone in the eyes, I'm sure he would have stared at me blankly.

There are people for whom interacting politely with others is wholly an unfamiliar concept.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#33

Post by monero-xmr »

roenxi wrote: post #10
lordleft wrote: post #6

I will never understand how entitled or mean people can be towards OSS devs. I sympathize with this post a great deal and wish the author all the best in whatever he does next.

It goes a bit beyond OSS; try doing anything important in life and you'll be a target sooner or later. Jealousy is a powerful force; ignorant mobs are powerful forces and there are a lot of evil opportunists in the mix. People really need to get a little more cynical at a young age. Everyone should be doing things because they think it is in their personal best interests. People can still be altruists, but it is impo…

They pity you when you fail - "What an idiot, everyone knew it would fail."

They resent you when you succeed - "They got lucky - I could have done that!"

You just need to do your own thing. You must find validation within yourself.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#34

Post by 7373737373 »

FpUser wrote: post #23

To summarize - welcome to a real world. If you want to do open source you do it for your own sake / pleasure / whatnot. Do not ever expect anything in return. Ignore complaints you do not feel worth your attention as you owe nothing to complainers. They're free to search for the alternatives.

Time for a code of conduct writeup specifically for non-contributors?

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#35

Post by MBCook »

justinclift wrote: post #27

> This public issue on the nut.js repo ... Personally speaking, if that user had posted something with the same attitude on one of my projects repos they'd have been banned from the repos of the entire org. Pretty sure I've only ever had to do that twice before, across a lot of years.

I think that’s a part of the problem. WAY too many projects/people are tolerant enough of abuse in issue trackers/mailing lists that this kind of behavior seems common.

I suspect a LOT more bans would really help with the average tone and amount of contributor stress/burnout.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#36

Post by kevindamm »

candiddevmike wrote: post #18
wetpaws wrote: post #4

>Same goes for companies. Nobody cares about you as long as everything is working smoothly, but as soon as they encounter a problem, guess who comes knocking on my door? Companies do not use libraries, devs do. Dev ability to pay for the libs is essentially zero, and even if you try to escalate it to management and purchase the license, this can easily take a year of few to approve.

Depends on the company. I know a lot of regulated companies that will happily pay for libs if it means they can "offload" the maintenance of them on whatever regulatory questionnaire they're filling out. For these companies, every dependency is either something they have to maintain or have a contractual relationship with the maintainer.

But if you plan on making a library for corporations to use, make the license clearly defined and don't use AGPL (it's like the legal form of hazardous materials to most corporations).

I couldn't find a LICENSE file or other notice on the repo this author was referencing.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#37

Post by nextworddev »

MBCook wrote: post #28
endominus wrote: post #11

"The lower your prices, the more entitled the user base you seem to draw." Not literally, perhaps, but with a wider net you do catch more of the louder, more annoying or insulting voices. I've seen this repeated too many times already (RIP FairEmail). Is this simply an endemic issue in the software space? I can imagine a great deal of people thinking it's not worth it to financially support a project or plugin they r…

> Is this simply an endemic issue in the software space? No. It’s everywhere. I don’t know if it’s a societal thing, I suspect more innate. Though individual cultures may modulate it to different degrees. The lower the price, the less valuable it is and the more people are willing to make jackass demands. You want respect? You have to charge enough. It’s sad. It’s amazing open source exists as successfully as it does…

can confirm that this is true in a fractal fashion, in every vertical

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#38

Post by MBCook »

croo wrote: post #3

Good read and I simpathise. Dealing with publicity can be horrible. You need such a thick skin and self confidence not to be moved by insults and demands coming with people actually start using what you created.

I disagree. Open source shouldn’t be limited to those with thick skin willing to take heaps of abuse.

This is a big culture problem driving a ton of good people away to avoid annoying jerks who deserve to go.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#39

Post by nanolith »

I've had differences of opinion with open source developers and maintainers. But, it costs nothing to be polite, especially when they are giving away their work and asking for nothing in return. When differences of opinion are strong enough, one is always free to take one's ball and go home. Forking or writing one's own alternative are both viable options. Fighting the maintainer is not.

Thankfully, my own open source projects aren't popular, so I don't have to deal with this level of self-entitled behavior. In other projects, when I report issues, I try to include a patch or PR that fixes the issue. If the maintainers are willing to work with me, I'll evolve this patch into something that they can merge into their project. If they are not, well, I can always maintain my own patches. Demanding that they fix an issue or launching insults -- even when certain toxic maintainers start this behavior -- isn't helpful to anyone.

I'm sorry the author was burned by bad experiences, but I completely sympathize with this decision.

Re: I'm giving up on open source

#40

Post by unethical_ban »

haswell wrote: post #25

I'm struggling with the framing of all of this. I think it's clear that the author doesn't want to be involved with the realities (as unfortunate as they are) of maintaining an OSS project. There are very real issues with entitled or abusive users that have been well documented. What I don't understand is the expectation that the money would just flow upon publishing the software with a permissive license. It sounds…

Nailed it. Particularly the fact that as valid as OP's situation is, it isn't necessarily indicative of FOSS as a whole.

They basically say it in their article: They grew up on the koolaid (no offense, so did I) of how awesome Linux and BSD are, and the GNU principles that closed source software is unethical, to be avoided, and so on.

It seems the harsh reality of "Not everyone can be sustained by a nonprofit foundation" has arrived.

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