Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open source is not about you (2018)

gist.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 196 posts

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#181

Post by M95D »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #139
M95D wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] you have wrong expectations. I did. (Past tense.) I'm calibrated now. > You don't get to decide that. You're exactly right. I only get to decide what I do with my own toys. And I've decided I won't waste any of my time. If you (plural) can't write a one line answer to a bug report or click a reject PR button, then why should I put any effort? Isn't it nice "git clone" was invented?

Just sounds like you've moved the goal posts to something completely different. This entire statement is addressing people frustrated with their half broken PRs being closed. It has nothing to do with "not clicking the reject button"

No I didn't. I said the same thing from my first comment: Ignoring PRs with no review, accept, or reject is wrong.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#182

Post by M95D »

wat10000 wrote: post #144
M95D wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stuf…

Let me change the perspective:

Are you in any way no matter how small responsible for what you create, what you post online, and what effects those actions have on other people?

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#183

Post by M95D »

palata wrote: post #174
M95D wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] you have wrong expectations. I did. (Past tense.) I'm calibrated now. > You don't get to decide that. You're exactly right. I only get to decide what I do with my own toys. And I've decided I won't waste any of my time. If you (plural) can't write a one line answer to a bug report or click a reject PR button, then why should I put any effort? Isn't it nice "git clone" was invented?

> If you (plural) can't write a one line answer to a bug report or click a reject PR button, then why should I put any effort? You wrote a PR because you benefited from source code that somebody on the internet shared for free, and wanted to share that work for free as well. See the PR as just one way to open source your patch. You could put it on your blog, in an email list, or keep it in a fork. By opening a PR, yo…

> You could put it on your blog, in an email list, or keep it in a fork.

Get serious. Nobody's going to look into forks of a project to see what other people improved. Not even github has a search that good that would show bug fixes and improvements from forks that someone is searching for. How would you even search? (Well, to be honest, maybe Github has, or maybe Copilot can do that kind of search based on a half a page text description of what I'm looking for, but I'm really not aware that it exists.)

> By opening a PR, you make it visible to other people who also benefit from the project and who may be interested in using it.

Yeah, but if I have moral standards and care about not wasting those interested people's time, then I have to keep the PR forever maintained and rebased on current HEAD, even if I don't need to update my fork that often, or I stopped using that project altogether. If I didn't do that, then I would be a hypocrite.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#184

Post by elihu »

The other side of this is that if you want your open source project to be useful to people, relevant, included by default in Linux distributions, highly regarded by the community, and so on then it's expected that you treat your users well.

Not every project aspires to such things, but if you do then the path to success requires at a minimum not treating users as a burden.

Some users might be particularly rude or entitled, in which case you can politely decline their feature requests and move on.

Basically, it's never rude for a user to file a bug report or request a feature. It's never rude for the maintainer to decline to implement a feature if they haven't budgeted time (or other relevant resources) to do it, it doesn't align with the fundamental goals or architecture of the project, or they simply don't know how to do it.

It would be rude for a user to demand of maintainers more than they're willing to give, and it would be rude of a maintainer not to be at least somewhat mindful that spending at least a little bit of effort to respond to reasonable requests, fix known bugs, and keep documentation accurate and up-to-date can prevent a lot of random strangers from wasting a lot of time on something that isn't useful to them. No one has any contractual obligation to provide anything, but I think everyone should treat other people's time and attention as a scarce and valuable commodity, not to be wasted.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#185

Post by wat10000 »

M95D wrote: post #182
wat10000 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stuf…

Let me change the perspective: Are you in any way no matter how small responsible for what you create, what you post online, and what effects those actions have on other people?

Sometimes!

If I post an article about how drinking bleach makes your skin softer, I share responsibility when someone does it.

If I post an article about how to make your own bleach, and a reader says “that sounds tasty” and drinks some, that’s not my responsibility in any way.

If I put up some trash code with a README that says “this is solid, reliable code that you should use for storing all of your financial data and family photos,” I have responsibility for what happens when people do that. If I just put up some trash code and say, I thought this was interesting and wanted to share it, and some numbskull decided to use it for something critical without thoroughly evaluating it first, not my responsibility.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#186

Post by bachmeier »

ragall wrote: post #158
bachmeier wrote: post #86

> Open source is a no-strings-attached gift, and all participants should recognize it as such. I've always felt this is incorrect. First, because lots of people use open source to further their careers, it isn't. Open source contributions are paid work if you benefit from them in any way. Second, if you use open source yourself, your work is no longer a gift. You're contributing back to the community you've taken fro…

It is correct. Just because your livelihood might hinge on a specific project doesn't mean that its developers have any obligation to accept your patches. It means you have to be very careful in choosing which project you hitch your wagon. Obligations are created, in order, through law, contracts or personal relationships. If you have neither, you have nothing.

> It is correct. Just because your livelihood might hinge on a specific project doesn't mean that its developers have any obligation to accept your patches.

I think you responded to the wrong comment, since I didn't say anything about being obligated to accept patches.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#187

Post by ragall »

bachmeier wrote: post #186
ragall wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is correct. Just because your livelihood might hinge on a specific project doesn't mean that its developers have any obligation to accept your patches. It means you have to be very careful in choosing which project you hitch your wagon. Obligations are created, in order, through law, contracts or personal relationships. If you have neither, you have nothing.

> It is correct. Just because your livelihood might hinge on a specific project doesn't mean that its developers have any obligation to accept your patches. I think you responded to the wrong comment, since I didn't say anything about being obligated to accept patches.

I responded to "You're contributing back to the community you've taken from" which implies that one has some obligation to accept a patch (calling it a contribution). Just because you're offering doesn't mean that others are obliged to accept or even review it.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#188

Post by _slih »

belval wrote: post #19
_slih wrote: post #17

[dead]

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.

The compliance form thing is wild but predictable. I'm on the other side of that equation now. Companies will pay me to handle their compliance mapping but balk at paying an open source maintainer to fill out a security questionnaire for software they depend on in production. The disconnect is that compliance teams budget for vendors but have no line item for 'critical open source dependency we treat like a vendor but isn't one.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#189

Post by _slih »

ArnoVW wrote: post #47
_slih wrote: post #17

[dead]

my more generous interpretation of the situation is that people do not see the work / effort / complexity of operating a solution. They think that open source is free, when in reality it is cheaper (generally) but not free. You need to pay the hosting. You need to install it, configure it, and patch it. And when stuff breaks, you have no one to call upon but yourself. But, as you say, if you can do all of that, open…

Exactly this. The sticker price of open source is zero but the total cost of ownership is your team's time. I've talked to CTOs who spent more engineering hours configuring and maintaining free tools than they would have spent on a managed alternative. They just couldn't see it because the cost was buried in salary, not a line item on an invoice.

Re: Open source is not about you (2018)

#190

Post by _slih »

dspillett wrote: post #36
_slih wrote: post #17

[dead]

The other common “entitlement” is getting miffed when their suggested enhancement isn't something that you intend to do, or will/might get done but is very low priority so it won't be soon. Common responses are to suggest that you should reconsider “for the community”⁰, or start a moaning campaign on social media to try to get others to chip in and nag you. Or “threaten” to use something else instead, which always am…

The 'I'll use something else' threat is my favorite. In my space the threat is usually 'I'll just use the AWS native tools.' And my honest answer is: if that works for you, do it. Most of them come back three months later after the first Config rules bill lands.
Post reply on HN