FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project • Hacker News Board

Re: FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project

#21

Post by dalke » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 8:55 PM UTC

tikhonj wrote: post #3

> Why is our infrastructure important to you? Presumably because it affects how difficult it would be to contribute to the project? This sort of "us v them" outlook seems to be at odds with the nature of open source. I know a few Haskell projects moved from Darcs to Git recently. While it's sad because Darcs is awesome and underused, lowering the barrier to contribute is probably a net good. Questions about infrastru…

My presumption is that the question is more one of social conformity. Consider "why don't you wear a suit?", "why don't you stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?", "why do you eat fish on Friday?", "why can't you answer the phone on Saturday?"

Those are structurally similar questions, with the underlying premise "you are different." What obligation does the person who is different have to explain to those who don't understand? Very little if any, I think.

Now, your presumption does have some merit. My experience says that it's very minor. Very few people contribute to a project, and infrastructure rarely plays a role.

The FOQ even points out in the second answer, "There have been seven website patches from the community in the last three years". How many more contribution do you think they would get if they switched to Markdown over HTML? And how much work would it be to convert both the website and existing practices? Is it worthwhile?

> at odds with the nature of open source

Well, yes and no. "Open source" is applied to both a development model and a distribution model. My company sells software under a BSD license. I am the primary developer, though I've received a few patches and I paid someone to work on part of the code.

The development is all through my email. Do you call that "open source" or do you prefer a different label?

The difference is less entangled in the free software philosophy. You have the freedom to develop code for yourself and distribute it, and to ignore contributions. Compare that to your view concerning open source software, where there is at least some obligation to consider external contributions.

Re: FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project

#22

Post by notacoward » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 9:03 PM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #10

notacoward wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would you not instead implement these common requests? Because time is finite. Apparently you're one of the few developers that doesn't have 10x more feature requests than you have resources to work on them. Good for you. However, that's not the norm. > why not write a few modules for some other people? See above. It's a mistake to generalize from young and/or small projects to those that have become large and…

On every project that I have worked on, developer support for projects increased with the amount of users. I would understand if there was no one using this project and it was a one-person operation, but if you are getting so many requests that it is literally impossible to comply with the top 5% of them then you should have made friends with enough people in your community who would be suited for doing these tasks.…

> On every project that I have worked on, developer support for projects increased with the amount of users.

Cool anecdote, bro. Some projects are fortunate that way, but I'd say it's only those in the "Goldilocks" zone in which your user based overlaps significantly with average-developer skills. At one end of the scale, as another responder pointed out, the vast majority of people who care about your project will be below that level technically. At the other end of the scale, as for example when working on a distributed filesystem, the inherent difficulty of the project itself will be above that level. Either way, you'll get very few developers relative to the number of people making demands. The specific domain of a project also makes a difference here. If your projects are in a specialty and at a level where you get lots of developers, as I said, good for you. That doesn't mean your situation is sufficiently common to justify your callow dismissal of others' experience or concerns.

Re: FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project

#23

Post by dalke » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #11

tptacek wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a project owner to need to write a page about these common questions, why would you not instead implement these common requests? The whole document is about answering each of those common questions individually.

If it gets to the point where someone says "can you implement X, Y, and Z for me, it would make my life much better" isn't it better to just implement it and make everyone happier rather than write a web page just telling them essentially to get out?

Hey, can you rewrite your code in Visual Basic/Objective C? It would make my life so much better to be able to support Windows 95/the iPad.

Hey, can you rewrite your documentation in Swedish? It would make my life so much better?

Hey, can you implement I/O using size in English units instead of metric? It would make my life much better.

Hey, can you add a GUI for me? It would make my life much better than using the command-line.

Re: FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project

#24

Post by gravypod » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 9:08 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #23

gravypod wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it gets to the point where someone says "can you implement X, Y, and Z for me, it would make my life much better" isn't it better to just implement it and make everyone happier rather than write a web page just telling them essentially to get out?

Hey, can you rewrite your code in Visual Basic/Objective C? It would make my life so much better to be able to support Windows 95/the iPad. Hey, can you rewrite your documentation in Swedish? It would make my life so much better? Hey, can you implement I/O using size in English units instead of metric? It would make my life much better. Hey, can you add a GUI for me? It would make my life much better than using the c…

Come on, you know that is an absolute mischaracterization of what I am saying.

If those where the problems in this document, I would agree. However that is not the case.

Re: FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project

#25

Post by dalke » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 9:12 PM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #14

throw12121 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Q: Why won't you spend your free time implementing my favorite feature? If you're not paying us, you need to convince us that your feature is so great, that it's worth giving up our free time to work on. This is open source. Scratch thine own itch.

Not everyone knows how to program. If a programmer asks for a feature, tell a programmer to write it, if someone who is interested in programming help them write a feature, but if enough people officially request a feature it's better to just help the lot of them.

I wrote a simple RSS package in 2003. I still get support emails about it. I don't even remember how the code works.

I wrote some introductory Python code 10+ years ago, for one of my classes. I put it online. I now get random college students emailing me personally to ask for help doing their homework.

I distribute some of my software for free. I've since had people demand (yes, demand) essentially hours of free support time to debug their hardware configuration for them because they don't know enough to do it themselves.

When do I get to decide what is "better" for me, rather than do things which are "better" for others?

Re: FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project

#26

Post by dalke » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 9:17 PM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #24

dalke wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, can you rewrite your code in Visual Basic/Objective C? It would make my life so much better to be able to support Windows 95/the iPad. Hey, can you rewrite your documentation in Swedish? It would make my life so much better? Hey, can you implement I/O using size in English units instead of metric? It would make my life much better. Hey, can you add a GUI for me? It would make my life much better than using the c…

Come on, you know that is an absolute mischaracterization of what I am saying. If those where the problems in this document, I would agree. However that is not the case.

Okay, "Can you rewrite the documentation in Markdown instead of HTML? That would be so much better for me."

"Can you switch from Atlassian to the Github issue tracker? That would be so much better for me.

"Can you switch from a custom CI solution to Travis? That would be so much better for me."

Then two years later someone comes along and says:

"Can you rewrite the documentation in reStructuredText instead of Markdown? That would be so much better for me."

"Can you switch from git to mercurial? That would be so much better for me."

And so on.

When does the madness stop?

Re: FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project

#27

Post by dalke » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #6

I totally understand where this is coming from. Any software project of non-trivial size has a certain kind of inertia. The code is written a certain way, the infrastructure works a certain way, the processes and culture are a certain way, because they have evolved over time and often at great cost. Changing them is not easy, and not to be undertaken lightly. That doesn't mean e.g. that moving to GitHub is absolutely…

The scenario here is "The package is out of date, why have you not refreshed it yet."

What should the Taskwarrior developers do to fix that?

You suggest the failure is due to 'problems that make packaging difficult'. But perhaps it's the lack of an active package maintainer?

Re: FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project

#28

Post by Semiapies » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 9:29 PM UTC

laurent123456 wrote: post #15

I don't get who this page is for. Those who ask "obnoxious questions" usually don't read FAQs or FOQs so they'll keep asking them anyway. However, I could see how this kind of document could deter people who actually want to contribute, since they might not want to deal with the condescending tone of the owners.

I have to admit, my reaction to the repeated "Why do you care about our infrastructure?" is "I don't, or about your project."

That's part of the nature of following a random HN link, of course, but after reading that, I'm certainly not inclined to care more about this project I've never heard of. And I say this being completely aware of annoying feature requests.

Re: FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project

#29

Post by gravypod » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 9:36 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #26

gravypod wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, you know that is an absolute mischaracterization of what I am saying. If those where the problems in this document, I would agree. However that is not the case.

Okay, "Can you rewrite the documentation in Markdown instead of HTML? That would be so much better for me." "Can you switch from Atlassian to the Github issue tracker? That would be so much better for me. "Can you switch from a custom CI solution to Travis? That would be so much better for me." Then two years later someone comes along and says: "Can you rewrite the documentation in reStructuredText instead of Markdow…

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11054268.

But in the end, I am not talking about the devops around the application. The only opinion that really matters there is the one coming from the project owner.

Your obvious attempt straw-man is nothing but opaque.

What I am attempting to discuss are features for the application that the owner refuses to implement because "get out".

Had Linus said that to the first person who emailed him about building an init daemon, I don't think many people would have paid much attention to Linux.

Re: FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project

#30

Post by dalke » Sun, Feb 07, 2016, 10:01 PM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #29

dalke wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, "Can you rewrite the documentation in Markdown instead of HTML? That would be so much better for me." "Can you switch from Atlassian to the Github issue tracker? That would be so much better for me. "Can you switch from a custom CI solution to Travis? That would be so much better for me." Then two years later someone comes along and says: "Can you rewrite the documentation in reStructuredText instead of Markdow…

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11054268 . But in the end, I am not talking about the devops around the application. The only opinion that really matters there is the one coming from the project owner. Your obvious attempt straw-man is nothing but opaque. What I am attempting to discuss are features for the application that the owner refuses to implement because "get out". Had Linus said that to the first pe…

You say "see ...", but I've already commented on that comment.

Your analogy with Torvalds isn't that relevant. Building an init daemon didn't conflict with the long-term goals, and the advantages are reasonably clear.

Consider the FOQ "Why is Taskwarrior written in C++ and not something hackable".

We can construct a similar question to pose to Torvalds - "Why is git written in C and not a more modern language like C++?"

We know what Torvalds thinks of C++ ("C++ is a horrible language") and of that proposal.

If he ignored or blew off the first email to suggest rewriting git in C++ then we know exactly where git would be.

This demonstrates that your argument concerning "can you implement X, Y, and Z for me, it would make my life much better" has little predictive or even explanatory power.