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Open source is not about you (2018)

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Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#121

Post by shermantanktop »

awesome_dude wrote: post #98
shermantanktop wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You as a first-time contributor need to know that the large group of first-time contributors has a lot of poorly behaved people in it, and that the burden is on you to establish that you are not one of them. Trust is built through iterative exchange. This is Bayesian priors - default is average, and only moves on the introduction of new information. Lots of examples of this. In 1950's westerns, if a stranger comes to…

I'm not saying you're wrong - but I do detest that attitude myself As you say, trust is a two way street, and first time contributors are being expected to trust that it's not personal when they are met with brusquerie. I know it's hard when it's the 99th person and you've had to deal with 98 less than nice individuals, but defaulting to an abrupt or blunt manner does nobody any favours.

What’s the solution then? This is one of those emotional-labor questions.

Who is responsible for new contributors having a good experience? Especially thousands of eager, misinformed contributors?

It’s a DDOS that exhausts and burns out the maintainer even while the supply of newbie contributors is rarely meaningfully impacted by maintainer conduct.

The world has givers and takers, and we are all both at different times. The newbie thinks they are a giver, but mostly they are a taker.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#123

Post by wat10000 »

throwaway346434 wrote: post #119
wat10000 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, unless your IP is being infringed, you don't get to decide what's private or public. The internet is a vast and wondrous place. Figuring out which parts of it are worth your time is a you problem.

Picture this scenario. You make one really good birthday cake. Following the success of this went to your local school fete out of the goodness of your heart and set up a cake stall, had a complaints and suggestions box on the table, maybe even had a donation tin out. You know it's out of the goodness of you heart because everyone will SEE you doing this and maybe you'll get hired by the local bakery. But then it's a…

Now imagine I make a weird cake and I think it's interesting. I put up a poster with a photo and a recipe and say "thought this was cool, try it if you want." And then some nonce comes along and tells me off for a reckless disregard of other people's time and nerves. Compares it to an open manhole cover that could get somebody killed.

Throwing some interesting code onto a web site isn't like setting up a booth at a community event. Its not even really like putting up a poster, since posters get seen by whoever happens to come nearby whereas web sites only get seen by people who seek them out, but it's about the closest you'll get to a real-world analogy.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#124

Post by lucketone »

casey2 wrote: post #72

You are not entitled to that food or land over there, neither am I. What are we gonna do about it? You're naive if you think your immune to social exploitation just cause you write some words. Your entire being is defined by social exploitation. You adopt our language, our roles etc but you believe you can transcend them when it's convenient. Developers aren't entitled to make people reliant on software and ghost the…

Could you fix this bug? Please.

https://hibernate.atlassian.net/jira/software/c/projects/HHH...

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#125

Post by throwaway346434 »

ragall wrote: post #113
jaredcwhite wrote: post #79

I don't know why people keep sharing this. It's highly offensive and inflammatory. Plenty of open source projects consider themselves a community which welcome newcomers, take governance seriously, and ensure that even if suggestions or contributions are rejected, it's done in a thoughtful and considerate way. Acting like a jerk isn't a blueprint for how to be a good maintainer, it's how to be a jerk. And this "us ex…

> It's highly offensive and inflammatory. It is sane and factually correct. > Plenty of open source projects consider themselves a community which welcome newcomers, take governance seriously Rich is taking governance very seriously. Others aren't and give nobodies the right to vote. In any case, he's factually correct. Nothing in open source implies anything about any type of governance, as "Open source is a licensi…

You might need to go back and read that one again, this is the faintest criticism of a lengthy screed in which the person you are replying to labels user-hostile behaviours as "acting like a jerk" and generally disapproves.

Your counter argument to this is to just be contrarian and imply they are a jerk... because, well, you don't agree with them. You didn't add substance to the discussion (facts, evidence, argument seeking middle ground), you just sought to set fire to someone because you were uncomfortable with the dim prospect you might be wrong/guilty of acting like this/be the subject of the criticism.

Do you see how this undermines your point of view/actually re-enforces the validity of the criticism?

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#127

Post by lucketone »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #43
patcon wrote: post #27

I dislike this essay so much I can't say whether it accomplished its original intent, but my experience is that it's held up in really disappointing situations which sit counter to my collectivist values I have a ton of experience with community-building, and what's espoused in this essay is an attack on the values of that world imho. My take-home is that there are many conceptions of what "open source" is about, and…

It comes down to beggars asking skilled people for free labor. If the "community" really wants something, they can send a pull request.

Or.. fork it

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#129

Post by bostik »

awesome_dude wrote: post #98
shermantanktop wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You as a first-time contributor need to know that the large group of first-time contributors has a lot of poorly behaved people in it, and that the burden is on you to establish that you are not one of them. Trust is built through iterative exchange. This is Bayesian priors - default is average, and only moves on the introduction of new information. Lots of examples of this. In 1950's westerns, if a stranger comes to…

I'm not saying you're wrong - but I do detest that attitude myself As you say, trust is a two way street, and first time contributors are being expected to trust that it's not personal when they are met with brusquerie. I know it's hard when it's the 99th person and you've had to deal with 98 less than nice individuals, but defaulting to an abrupt or blunt manner does nobody any favours.

The demands here are effectively extensions of netiquette[0] and "how to ask good questions"[1]. Every code contributor should at least understand what is asked of them.

[Julia's post sadly does not include the blunt expression "demonstrate that you have done your homework", which is a fundamental tenet.]

0: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/netiquette

1: https://jvns.ca/blog/good-questions/

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#130

Post by throwaway346434 »

sethops1 wrote: post #45
patcon wrote: post #27

I dislike this essay so much I can't say whether it accomplished its original intent, but my experience is that it's held up in really disappointing situations which sit counter to my collectivist values I have a ton of experience with community-building, and what's espoused in this essay is an attack on the values of that world imho. My take-home is that there are many conceptions of what "open source" is about, and…

If you want to create and maintain a community that's fine, maybe even great. TFA is just pointing out that the presence of an OSS license is not an implicit signal that the project is interested in any such community. They're separate things, and my read is that the author is frustrated with the constant conflating of the two. It's not an attack on your values at all.

Quick questions; as this project clearly exists in a community-less vacuum:

How do people keep finding and using it?

How do complaints or feature requests keep arriving?

Why is the published to an audience that doesn't exist?

Or is it fair to say the project has published in public, so has contact with a very broad community already?

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