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Sorry everybody, I failed with you

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Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#151

Post by josephg »

ratww wrote: post #145
josephg wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For javascript packages, npm lists which other packages which depend on any given package, and how many times a package was downloaded in the last week. That gives you a rough sense of usage, but it can also be super mysterious. As an example, here's a package I wrote which I haven't touched in 3 years: https://www.npmjs.com/package/jumprope There are no projects on npm which depend on this, and yet it gets downloade…

You can possibly find some users in Github: https://github.com/search?q=jumprope+filename%3Apackage.json...

Oh good idea! It looks like Github also tracks a project's dependancy tree explicitly, though those 3000 downloads per week remain a mystery:

https://github.com/josephg/jumprope/network/dependents

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#153

Post by allochthon »

As a user of other people's popular open-source projects, I generally lack awareness of the effort and investment of time that the maintainers put into the projects. It's always eye-opening and helpful for me to see posts like this, because I gradually take their work less for granted.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#154

Post by gpanders »

Vaslo wrote: post #133

This is kind of sad to read, that someone building and maintaining a free product feels compelled to over apologize for want burning out. It may just be my cynical view of the world but it just seems like more and more people are demanding higher and higher levels of service for things that they don’t pay much if anything for. I play a game right now that is in Beta called Dual Universe. Some people paid for Kickstar…

> It may just be my cynical view of the world but it just seems like more and more people are demanding higher and higher levels of service for things that they don’t pay much if anything for.

I know it’s cliche on HN to blame everything on Google and Facebook, but I really do suspect that the “free to use” model pioneered by these companies (among others, of course, but these are the biggest) have got everyone used to expecting things for free.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#155

Post by indigochill »

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…

> I think GitHub should really have a way for users of your repository to somehow illustrate that they're using your project

I kind of use forking that way (although more when I like a project, it's not necessarily a promise that I'm using it anywhere). This ensures that I have a copy of the project in the state that I originally liked. Then if the project is either (a) taken in a disagreeable direction or (b) deleted, I still have my local copy. I can also always update from upstream if future development occurs that I want to benefit from.

That said, I don't fork all the open source packages I use, although maybe I should.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#156

Post by wrren »

I feel sympathy for the maintainer here, but at the same time I feel as though they've cultivated a very unhealthy relationship with the users of this project. If the users aren't paying you, you really don't owe them anything and you certainly don't need to apologise for prioritizing your own mental health and happiness over users' demands.

It's a different story if you're being paid to do some work, then you hold a degree of responsibility, demarcated by contract, for the thing you're working on. In the case of open source, however, that's not the case and it's absolutely your right to minimise or drop your support for a project at any time.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#157

Post by contriban »

zx2391 wrote: post #36

I maintain OS projects and my stance is simple: I'll fix thing, that are broken - mostly because I want things to work. I won't add new features for you, unless I really see the appeal. If you come up with a PR, nice! I'll take the time to review, but even for that there is no guarantee. The same limits I impose on the community I fully expect to follow when working with any OS project. Period. Remember, in that "oth…

Even PRs often take a long time to review and get to a reasonable point, especially but not only from new contributors. Some are so bad I just have to close them even if I want the feature, and some I waste hours on that I could have spent just writing it myself. Rarely I get PRs that I can merge without non-nitpick reviews.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#158

Post by dzink »

To reduce burnout among open source developers GitHub could offer a couple of additional features:

1. Repo endorsements by companies or brands that use it.

2. Bounty option on feature requests - aka increase the priority on a request by paying a bounty on it of sorts - attracting more contributors to projects in demand.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#159

Post by hnthrowaway2 »

Vaslo wrote: post #133

This is kind of sad to read, that someone building and maintaining a free product feels compelled to over apologize for want burning out. It may just be my cynical view of the world but it just seems like more and more people are demanding higher and higher levels of service for things that they don’t pay much if anything for. I play a game right now that is in Beta called Dual Universe. Some people paid for Kickstar…

This has probably something to do with big tech companies putting out highly polished products for "free" while making money in no-so-obvious ways. People have been conditioned to expect high quality work for free.
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