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Open source is not about you (2018)

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Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#141

Post by hinkley »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #44

Counterpoints: - You are entitled to human decency. Maintainers don't get to be rude just because they run a project. This is a common thing in a lot of projects; maintainers have power, and this allows them to be rude without concern. Not ok. - As a maintainer, if you publish your work as open source, you already acknowledge you are engaging with an entire community, culture, and ethos. We all know how it works: you…

> Counterpoints:

> - You are entitled to human decency. Maintainers don't get to be rude just because they run a project. This is a common thing in a lot of projects; maintainers have power, and this allows them to be rude without concern. Not ok.

There is a subtle line here and I have some sympathy for both sides of this debate because for a long time there, and in some ways is still happening under different names now, we conflated decency with respect. So it gets a little weird.

We treat the guy ringing our doorbell with decency. We treat our new boss with respect. We treat the person spouting nonsense with decency, not respect. Free Speech says I can say anything I want but it also says that you can call me names for doing so. That's the difference between decency and respect, and it's important everyone knows what they mean when they say 'decency', instead of what they think they mean.

I honestly wish there were more women participating in these sorts of conversations because they have to deal with weaponized politeness on a daily basis, and I suspect the correct line for open source is a little closer to their definition of decency than mine.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#142

Post by hinkley »

shermantanktop wrote: post #61
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #44

Counterpoints: - You are entitled to human decency. Maintainers don't get to be rude just because they run a project. This is a common thing in a lot of projects; maintainers have power, and this allows them to be rude without concern. Not ok. - As a maintainer, if you publish your work as open source, you already acknowledge you are engaging with an entire community, culture, and ethos. We all know how it works: you…

Maintainers are sometimes not perfect. But they are providing known value, and you are trying to add something with unknown value. That's an asymmetry which doesn't look like a mutual exchange. So I'd downgrade most of the hard obligations you describe to "it's really smart to do this." I agree with the behavioral observations. People shouldn't be assholes just because they can. That applies to everyone everywhere. R…

I find code I wrote that violates advice I've given other people all the time. I've made release cycle mistakes on projects I maintain that I would have bet money a few years ago that you'd never catch me making.

The siren song of One More Commit or One More PR is out there, and there's always going to be some fraction of your work you do that in retrospect you should have slept on, maybe twice. (I recently fixed a problem I've been staring at for a year in an afternoon after a new, stupidly simple solution presented itself on a walk)

But there are lines, and you have to be careful not to go across them either too far or too often. Or you have to be utterly indispensable like Linus, and have a thick skin to criticism... like Linus. And if you have a thick skin to criticism you don't write long screeds about how everyone else is wrong and you're right. You just move on.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#143

Post by OrvalWintermute »

warkdarrior wrote: post #24
belval wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting world for sure, I maintain a somewhat popular package and got a form to fill from a Deloitte consultant about security once. They seemed genuinely confused when I told them I was not going to fill compliance form and make patching commitments for free. Really makes you wonder how many maintainers are letting themselves be taken advantage of.

Missed opportunity here. You could have offered consulting services, $10,000/hour. Compliance form requires at 40 hours of work minimum.

I do talk with OSS devs about “we need X for security and we are willing to provide X amount of funding”

You’d be amazed how much OSS devs will do for you when your request of something they wanted to do anyways (but had no impetus for prioritization) is matched by a healthy rate

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#144

Post by wat10000 »

M95D wrote: post #137
wat10000 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Probably won't get anyone killed, but I've seen loss of data. Valuable data. And now you're going to point to the disclaimer and 321 backups... Websites are seen by everyone seeking not a site, but a feature, via search engines. Same as a poster if you look in that direction.

Why are you trusting data to some random open-source project with no documentation?

The search engine is only going to direct you to my open source repo if you're searching for whatever it does. It's as if you'd only see my cake recipe if you were searching for cake recipes. And just like cake recipes, your search results will contain everything from superb production-tested projects (if there are any) to random stuff people have put up that isn't really used.

If you're searching for software and you find some random project that isn't very well tested or maintained, and you put that project to use in a place where it can cause data loss, that again sounds like a you problem.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#145

Post by hinkley »

ge96 wrote: post #23

Tangent It's funny how a hobby project becomes "a burden" when you have to consider making it friendly/easy to consume by everyone eg. writing docs from the basics like how to make a venv in python, get your env setup...

When I was 25, I, like a lot of developers, wanted to write my own programming language. I realized that I should not create my own programming language around the same time that I realized that neither should most of the rest of us. Your brain has to be bent into a very specific pretzel shape to make that work.

I've since worked with some brilliant devs who were too smart for their own good and a lot of that came down to the difference between being able to create a solution and being able to explain a solution. There's a reason I hold Richard Feynman in very high regard, and it's down to his ability to pluck things from a very high shelf and hand them to 'shorter' people.

The last person to find his way onto my Do Not Hire list, was one of these too smart but inarticulate folks. Since that list is only about half a dozen people over almost 30 years, I think that says a lot about his character and what an absolute bull in a china shop he was. I'd need an Uber after discussing his many flaws over beers. Or maybe a stomach pump at the ER.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#146

Post by hinkley »

inoffensivename wrote: post #52

I love this article. Nobody owes you a new release, or a signed binary, or a feature you care about.

There's a project where almost all the merged PRs since the last release are mine and I'm practically vibrating with trying not making a big deal out of it.

It's not unlike how the game I gave someone as a birthday present on Steam has only been played for 2 hours and I'm absolutely certain it'd be his favorite game if he just got out of the character creator and played the goddamned thing. It's fine. Everything is fine.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#147

Post by PantaloonFlames »

dakiol wrote: post #42

> As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all I understand what the author means, but I think that in any human-2-human interaction, we are all entitled to at least basic courtesy. For example, if you show courtesy by contributing to an open source project and following all the guidelines they have, I think it's fair to assume that courtesy will be shown in return. I know that m…

I don’t know you but I like you.

Courtesy costs very little.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#148

Post by strken »

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…

It is sane but not rational, sometimes factually correct in places, highly offensive, and inflammatory. I don't use Clojure and reading it makes me never want to use Clojure.

Everybody is entitled to say (but not dictate) how something should work. Holding and expressing opinions is an innate human right, and the developed world only takes it away in extreme circumstances. Talking about open source governance is not an extreme circumstance.

We are not legally entitled to basic politeness, but politeness is enforced socially rather than morally, and failing to be polite means risking social consequences. If I used Clojure and I read the linked article, I would avoid hiring Cognitech, which is the exact problem Rich mentions.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#149

Post by hinkley »

blenderob wrote: post #60
rlnorthcutt wrote: post #53

Its an interesting situation when an asset (like an open source project) is run by a team of volunteers (community)... but due to licensing, it kind of belongs to the whole world (community) As a user of a project, I DO have a voice... but unless I am actively contributing (money, time, resources), then my voice has a different weight. On the one hand, I don't like the idea that anyone should get more influence simpl…

(edit: I totally misunderstood the parent comment and wrote this reply. I've apologized for it in comment below. I could delete this comment but I am leaving it here so that others don't get confused when they see the replies below it.) > or that anyone should have more power just because they are active in the project. So you are saying that although I create a project to solve my problems but as soon as I make it o…

> If making my project reduces my power on the project, why would I ever open source anything?

For me, especially when I'm increasing the bus number of something I worked on at work, it's down to two things. Either I'm hoping that my 'power' will remain the same but the 'power' of the project will grow and the new people will take their share out of the surplus.

Or, I want to focus my power elsewhere, and as long as I'm sole proprietor to this project I will be associated with it to the exclusion of other things. It was having my face pressed against glass of shiny new things I was iced out of at work that finally taught me the value of sharing. Indispensable can make you typecast. Deputizing someone has benefits that usually outweigh the costs.

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