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Sorry everybody, I failed with you

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Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#121

Post by blacktriangle »

radarsat1 wrote: post #7

Of course it's terrible to become burnt out and it feels awful not having enough time to work on an open source project that you love. But, is it just me or has it become rarer for open source project maintainers to feel free to let projects go? I don't mean to let them die, I mean, to find like-minded individuals to which you can defer some or all of the work? I realize that as the original author one feels a sense…

This is partially why over the last few years I've been moving away from using smaller packages in favor of rolling my own. Big things like frameworks are generally safe bets, they generally are able to build a community around them pretty easily. But smaller libraries are often not worth the long-term risk.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#122

Post by glangdale »

usrusr wrote: post #116
glangdale wrote: post #98

Seeing a lot of posts like this. Open source is wonderful in its way, but it's really not sustainable to work on projects that make money for other people - including big commercial interests - when they don't help out in any fashion. I'm not just talking money or contributions. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement: "we use project X" - even privately. A open source library that I worked on at Intel (the Hypersca…

Oh, that scenario, retreating corporate sponsor would probably not have retreated if only usage was more visible, that must have been very frustrating. Almost seems as if the odd occasional visibility boost from some heavy bug or exploit could have saved it. Were Oscar Wilde and PT Barnum secretly open source visionaries?

One thing I found immensely frustrating was that occasionally other projects at Intel (not mentioning names) would wind up completely fucking up by, say, building the wrong thing, then they would do some heroic 8-week "save" of the mess that they made, and wind up getting Major Corporate Recognitions.

A bodgy, high-touch system that required endless customization and lots of meetings would become a high profile project that could ultimately get the corporate equivalent of high fives all around. Meanwhile, if you ship a library that Just Works, people quietly link it into their product and move on with their lives.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#123

Post by [deleted] »

glangdale wrote: post #118
jiofih wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there needs to be a way of getting paid You said you worked on the library at Intel . Doesn’t that qualify as getting paid for your work? That’s not the usual setup when developers talk about getting paid for their OSS contributions, usually off the clock, so its not clear what the lesson is here besides politics/resourcing at big co (which is a real but distinct problem). This situation was supposed to be where OS…

Fair enough - my complaint is a bit too compressed. The point here is that my experience at Intel led me to realize that corporate OSS users will take your library in secret and not even tell you - much less publicly acknowledge it, much less contribute or help support it. Obviously I'm not expecting to be paid extra while at Intel because folks are using a library. It's just rather discouraging from the perspective…

[deleted]

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#124

Post by glangdale »

tester34 wrote: post #120
glangdale wrote: post #98

Seeing a lot of posts like this. Open source is wonderful in its way, but it's really not sustainable to work on projects that make money for other people - including big commercial interests - when they don't help out in any fashion. I'm not just talking money or contributions. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement: "we use project X" - even privately. A open source library that I worked on at Intel (the Hypersca…

that's why telemetry is imporant If I were doing serious OSS I'd really hard consider adding just something like a once-a-week ping just to be aware of users count ofc with an ability to disable it

SaaS or something explicitly that people know will 'phone home' is one thing, but putting unexpected telemetry into a library would be staggeringly unprofessional.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#125

Post by throwaway894345 »

altf4 wrote: post #115
glangdale wrote: post #98

Seeing a lot of posts like this. Open source is wonderful in its way, but it's really not sustainable to work on projects that make money for other people - including big commercial interests - when they don't help out in any fashion. I'm not just talking money or contributions. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement: "we use project X" - even privately. A open source library that I worked on at Intel (the Hypersca…

I agree. I've been working on a Go library for 8 years now that I'm sure is used by quite some people and companies, and I've been close to burnout and letting it go at least twice. I'm super happy when people just "Buy me a coffee"--not for the coffee but for the feedback you get that someone is using your project, so it's valuable for someone. I'm very grateful for that, even without financial support. I think GitH…

What’s the library, out of curiosity?

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#126

Post by usrusr »

altf4 wrote: post #115
glangdale wrote: post #98

Seeing a lot of posts like this. Open source is wonderful in its way, but it's really not sustainable to work on projects that make money for other people - including big commercial interests - when they don't help out in any fashion. I'm not just talking money or contributions. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement: "we use project X" - even privately. A open source library that I worked on at Intel (the Hypersca…

I agree. I've been working on a Go library for 8 years now that I'm sure is used by quite some people and companies, and I've been close to burnout and letting it go at least twice. I'm super happy when people just "Buy me a coffee"--not for the coffee but for the feedback you get that someone is using your project, so it's valuable for someone. I'm very grateful for that, even without financial support. I think GitH…

In the Java world we have the Maven repository dependency aggregators like mvnrepository.com that accidentally serve as some kind of citeseer equivalent. I assume similar things exist for the package managers of other languages as well?

But obviously most commercial usage remains invisible. I could imagine a hybrid cultural/technological approach were dev teams publish/are allowed to publish at least usage metadata were they can't publish source (or actually contribute).

There's a huge tie-in with security, I remember heated discussions were one side tries to establish this as an audit mechanism ("how vulnerable is product x really, in terms of outdated dependencies?") and incentive for updating, while the other side is crazy scared of punishing a list of potential attack surfaces. Perhaps the implied attribution benefit should become part this discussion as well?

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#127

Post by ricardobeat »

onion2k wrote: post #93
wccrawford wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't mean to let them die, I mean, to find like-minded individuals to which you can defer some or all of the work?" I've seen lots of these calls for help fail. And someone else points out: It's open source. Literally anyone can continue the work at any time. There's no need for the original creator to find someone else to continue it. Anyone can just do it.

Anyone can just do it. They literally can't though. Only the owner or a maintainer has permission to merge PRs in to the main branch. Anyone can fork a repo, write a patch, and PR it, but that's where outside contributions stop. It still takes someone from the original team to accept a contribution. Forking a project and then maintaining that fork as a separate project is an option, but it's divisive one that a lot o…

There are endless examples of forks that pick up where some other project left off. They give it a new name, explain what's going on, and move on. If it's seen as hostile, that means the original project is still active and doesn't need this?

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#128

Post by jckahn »

bleepleblopple wrote: post #31
cheph wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've had a few people offer help over the course of the years, but unfortunately they don't always have all the skills needed, so they can only help with a part of the project. So whats wrong with allowing them to help with those parts?

Allowing people to help also takes time...there's a non-trivial management effort involved...one that's too frequently forgotten about in these discussions.

This is very true. Even when collaborating with very skilled engineers, it takes a lot of time and energy to respond to ideas, questions, and review PRs. It’s like a regular programming job to a certain degree, but you’re typically not paid for doing it.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#129

Post by eplanit »

I have a lot of sympathy for developers like this, and this kind of story is too common.

It seems like a problem that could be turned into opportunity. If one's software is becoming that popular, and the demands for changes so many that it's too much -- why not try to monetize it? Let the current version stay open source, and create customization and support for a fee. It could make the effort worthwhile, and could even grow into a business.

Consumers in the foss world need to understand that getting their wishes fulfilled isn't necessarily going to be free. They might be asked to pay; or, they have the option to fork their own branch.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#130

Post by wrycoder »

glangdale wrote: post #124
tester34 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's why telemetry is imporant If I were doing serious OSS I'd really hard consider adding just something like a once-a-week ping just to be aware of users count ofc with an ability to disable it

SaaS or something explicitly that people know will 'phone home' is one thing, but putting unexpected telemetry into a library would be staggeringly unprofessional.

There is the Debian popularity contest: popcon.debian.org , which tracks how many Debian users have a given package installed.
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