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My boundaries as an open source developer

joeldenning.com

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Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#121

Post by mickael-kerjean »

NorwegianDude wrote: post #73
newshorts wrote: post #66

Honestly, I don’t understand the entitlement that causes someone to have to write this. Having experienced the “overwhelmed with requests” thing myself, I now find myself thinking anyone who becomes demanding of open source maintainers is not seeing reality. These folks have day jobs, they don’t work for you. If you’ve implemented my library in a mission critical part of your system, then feel free to fork & fix or p…

That's not hostile at all. If someone decides it's best to use your code then you have already helped them out. Expecting you to do work for free for them because you already did something useful for them is just stupid.

It's great to have that kind of post published. I had that exact conversation just yesterday with a director who "love" open source and see it as "the future". When asked to pay market rate for the extra features he want, he was struggling to understand that 8k won't get him a few months of work and felt entitled on a discount on the basis that I'm doing open source and he is helping the project ...

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#123

Post by brunoborges »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #91
brunoborges wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same thing, because of the flow: - developer finds a cool project - developer consumes the cool project - developer finds opportunity for bug fix or enhancement - developer forks and starts working on the enhancements - developer spends hours/days writing code - developer submits a PR - developer gets a notification (upon filling the PR, or after, from a bot) - developer is now extremely frustrated - dev…

If issues/PRs were limited to collaborators, wouldn't they not be able to submit a PR at all?

Here's how I propose a better PR flow in GitHub:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30705581

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#124

Post by yblu »

I used to maintain several popular open-source projects and contribute to even more popular ones. It was always fun at the beginning, especially because I built them for my own needs. But I kept getting asked to fix bugs or improve things even long after my needs had expired. I tried the donation route for a little while but it didn't go anywhere - I received maybe a few hours worth of money (versus hundreds if not thousands of hours I had spent working on those projects). I also tried releasing a paid version for one of the projects and got buried with hate mails and, unfortunately, online abuse. That was when I stopped working on open-source and I'm happier than ever.

I'm very happy for people who make it from doing serious open-source work. I think they deserve it. But at the same time I feel bad for those who build or maintain no less serious or popular work and yet couldn't make enough to worth even a portion of the time they'd spend.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#125

Post by saagarjha »

blittle wrote: post #119
saagarjha wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collapsing them misses the nuance that I am specifically talking about. It’s kind of like when the ice cream parlor down the street gives our free samples and you decide to go “well, actually, they don’t have to give you any samples because they can refuse service to anyone so in fact there is no difference in them providing free samples and not providing free samples” and it turns out that people can offer things in…

That's a poor analogy. An ice cream parlor offers free icecream purely to market thier product and drive business. An OSS dev gets nothing.

Nothing? Not at all: an open source developer gets the marketing/publicity benefit just like an ice cream parlor does. Why do you think companies open source their things? And as a solo developer, I get tons of high-quality inbound leads for job opportunities, get to interact with lots of smart people (many whom I end up forming long-lasting friendships with), and get other people to help improve and support my project with me. Plus I get the warm fuzzy feeling inside or high moral ground, or whatever you want to call it. If you’re not getting that from your open source work, why are you doing it anyways?

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#126

Post by duskwuff »

brunoborges wrote: post #120

Open Source licenses are not about entitlement to contributions, engagement with the maintainers, or even community building. Open Source license is exclusively about the software. But the "Open Source Movement" is blending over, and that's what is burning out so many people on both sides: maintainers and contributors. GitHub's Pull Request feature creates an expectation that the maintainers will read a contributor's…

There is one way to disable pull requests on GitHub: enabling "interaction limits" on the repository. The gotchas are that it disables all interactions, not just pull requests, and it can only be enabled for 6 months at a time.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#127

Post by mwattsun »

yblu wrote: post #124

I used to maintain several popular open-source projects and contribute to even more popular ones. It was always fun at the beginning, especially because I built them for my own needs. But I kept getting asked to fix bugs or improve things even long after my needs had expired. I tried the donation route for a little while but it didn't go anywhere - I received maybe a few hours worth of money (versus hundreds if not t…

The reality is: most companies are taking economic advantage of the generous spirit of open source developers. That needs to stop.

SPONSORING OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPERS Rich Hickey - December 15, 2020 https://cognitect.com/blog/2020/12/15/sponsoring-open-source...

HN Thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25436335

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#128

Post by brunoborges »

duskwuff wrote: post #126
brunoborges wrote: post #120

Open Source licenses are not about entitlement to contributions, engagement with the maintainers, or even community building. Open Source license is exclusively about the software. But the "Open Source Movement" is blending over, and that's what is burning out so many people on both sides: maintainers and contributors. GitHub's Pull Request feature creates an expectation that the maintainers will read a contributor's…

There is one way to disable pull requests on GitHub: enabling "interaction limits" on the repository. The gotchas are that it disables all interactions, not just pull requests, and it can only be enabled for 6 months at a time.

What I described is what I believe GitHub should support. Not that they support it today.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#129

Post by graderjs »

Exactly. I talked about this in my 22120 interview[0] a couple years ago. You have to learn to say no. Self-management taking care of yourself and setting boundaries, protecting your space to ensure you can continue making contribution on something you care about. People can be so demanding you have to push back. Use the block feature on GitHub if they're real trouble. I don't have a ton of experience but in my experience of this somehow by pushing back and setting boundaries and saying no it seems you change the expectation or culture and it's a persistent thing. Then the "little community" you have seems to behave better.

[0]: https://console.substack.com/p/console-28?utm_source=url

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#130

Post by carapace »

GoToRO wrote: post #38
cweagans wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about honesty or fame. The author does not and can not know if the code is going to be good for your use case. Only you can know that. Evaluate it yourself and see if it works for you. If it doesn't, don't use it. It's really that simple.

If they can not know their software is good or bad just please choose another profession.

I upvoted this comment because it is correct and valuable advice.

Having had a professional career as programmer now for about a decade and a half, it's my considered opinion that about nine out of ten people getting paid to write software today really shouldn't be [paid to write software]. In other words, 90% of programmers or "software engineers" (what a sick joke that title is!) should be fired; the quality of software would improve dramatically.

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