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The secret life of open source developers [video]

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Re: The secret life of open source developers [video]

#21

Post by sprash »

lordgrenville wrote: post #17
sprash wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what to do with that? Negative feedback is the only form of valueable feedback. If you want to make your software better you should listen to negative feedback. Of course negative feedback often comes with emotional baggage but you should be above that kind of thing. The right strategy is actually to ignore positive feedback (because it is mostly worthless) and ask the people that give you negative feedback for…

No, being abused by someone is not valuable and even very mature, confident people find it hard to handle emotionally. Negative feedback is helpful if presented politely or neutrally. Otherwise the form destroys the value of the content. (And by the way, positive feedback can be very valuable as well.)

> even very mature, confident people find it hard to handle emotionally.

One of the defining qualities of being "mature" and "confident" is to be able to fade out the emotional components and concentrate on the substance. This is the essential quality that seperates children from adults.

If you are fazed by some comments of random people on the internet then you are neither "mature" nor "confident". You either got to grow up or you will have a hard time.

> positive feedback can be very valuable as well.

Only for marketing, which you won't need if your product is good anyways. For example nobody did any "marketing" for git (except that Linus called his competitors "stupid and ugly" which was actually more like anit-marketing) but git is used by everybody because it is generally really good.

Re: The secret life of open source developers [video]

#22

Post by hnlmorg »

sprash wrote: post #16
tonyjstark wrote: post #6

I once got a mail for a free software I published: "You're product sucks, I don't like it, why are you even doing this? There are much better alternatives out there.". So what to do with that? I have to admit that this mail really stung for a while. Maybe I should have asked, why it sucked for this person, but then, why should I care about someone rude? It didn't take me long to learn that some percentage of people t…

> So what to do with that? Negative feedback is the only form of valueable feedback. If you want to make your software better you should listen to negative feedback. Of course negative feedback often comes with emotional baggage but you should be above that kind of thing. The right strategy is actually to ignore positive feedback (because it is mostly worthless) and ask the people that give you negative feedback for…

Negative feedback can fall into two categories:

* constructive - which are polite and informative

* deconstructive - which are basically just someone being an arsehole.

The former stuff can be great at time but the examples being discussed fall firmly in the latter category.

Re: The secret life of open source developers [video]

#23

Post by sprash »

imtringued wrote: post #18
sprash wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what to do with that? Negative feedback is the only form of valueable feedback. If you want to make your software better you should listen to negative feedback. Of course negative feedback often comes with emotional baggage but you should be above that kind of thing. The right strategy is actually to ignore positive feedback (because it is mostly worthless) and ask the people that give you negative feedback for…

Why does negative feedback come with an obligation to slave away for a person that doesn't even care about what you are doing?

If you want your product to be good you have the "obligation" to listen to negative feedback. But you don't have the "obligation" to make a good product. If you don't care about your product you are going to ignore the feedback anyways.

> a person that doesn't even care

This is a misconception. People giving emotially loaded negative feedback actually "care" about your product much more than the average user.

Re: The secret life of open source developers [video]

#24

Post by jp_sc »

fenomas wrote: post #15
tonyjstark wrote: post #6

I once got a mail for a free software I published: "You're product sucks, I don't like it, why are you even doing this? There are much better alternatives out there.". So what to do with that? I have to admit that this mail really stung for a while. Maybe I should have asked, why it sucked for this person, but then, why should I care about someone rude? It didn't take me long to learn that some percentage of people t…

I got a weird reverse one a few years back, to the effect of "your result is great, best I've seen, but the code is awful and I think you're not a good developer". What can you do? I just said something like "thanks, if you have any specific feedback please open an issue". One thing that's nice about getting this via GitHub is, at least the rude comment maybe gets a couple of :thumbsdown:s on it, which can help you b…

My answer would've been "fuck you", followed by blocking said user in all my repos.

Re: The secret life of open source developers [video]

#25

Post by shashankp »

notacoward wrote: post #9
wiz21c wrote: post #2

Hmmmm I dunno... You make software available to other people, for free. But it's for them to use it (else, what's the point ?). So you're exposing yourself to users and users behave like users. It's not because you give away something for free that its value (and the way that value is recognized, for example, by being polite) is any different. The only thing you get by making it is the right, as a creator, to make it…

> it doesn't give you any power The mistake is thinking it's about power. It's about aligning goals. A lot of the individual motivation for OSS is about making the world (what the developer believes is) a better place. Things that contribute to that vision are welcome; things that distract from it are not. The first category includes detailed bug reports and feature requests consistent with the software's existing di…

Right, so once you start "aligning goals", the concept of power and power itself just snaps out of existence, and the contributor ceases to be a human being and transcends into a divine roadmap.

Re: The secret life of open source developers [video]

#26

Post by mikekchar »

mugsie wrote: post #10
wiz21c wrote: post #2

Hmmmm I dunno... You make software available to other people, for free. But it's for them to use it (else, what's the point ?). So you're exposing yourself to users and users behave like users. It's not because you give away something for free that its value (and the way that value is recognized, for example, by being polite) is any different. The only thing you get by making it is the right, as a creator, to make it…

> in particular, you have no power to make the users polite. So very (and unfortunately) true. However they also have no power to make you do the thing they need straight away, or ever. > Even if you put hard work in it, you sacrifice a bit of your life. And this is bad. We need to move the needle away from this. It is incredibly exclusionary I am a younger person, no kids, in a job where I was able to negotiate for…

> By making "sacrifice" a requirement it makes it off putting for someone with kids, or working in a job that has them working long hours, or working multiple jobs.

I think I understand what you are saying, but perhaps you are talking at cross purposes with the OP. I don't think anyone thinks that sacrifice is required from the perspective that you owe it to anyone to do anything in particular. But, as you know from maintaining a project, what you do is always a trade off.

Even if you negotiate time for open source maintenance in your work, you may suffer in your career compared to the person who focuses only on climbing the ladder. In fact, I do not allow my work to pay for my free software work -- because freedom is the thing I want from that work. People who pay usually expect something in return and I seriously am not inclined to give it to them (especially since the demands are usually after the fact).

There are many people who think you can have it all. If you spend hundreds of hours working on free software, working on not-free software, playing video games, watching reality shows, typing replies into HN, etc, etc, that time is spent. That's time you don't get to spend with your kids. Or your spouse. Or walking in the woods.

It's important that people who choose to do these things actually choose, I think. It's all too easy to get to a certain age and realise, "Well, crap. That's not what I wanted to have done".

So, yes, it's a sacrifice. You don't get to do it for free. Someone with kids, or working in a job that has long hours, or working multiple jobs often will not choose to spend hundreds of house writing free software. They have more important things to do, and that's totally OK.

Re: The secret life of open source developers [video]

#27

Post by noonespecial »

hnlmorg wrote: post #19
fenomas wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a weird reverse one a few years back, to the effect of "your result is great, best I've seen, but the code is awful and I think you're not a good developer". What can you do? I just said something like "thanks, if you have any specific feedback please open an issue". One thing that's nice about getting this via GitHub is, at least the rude comment maybe gets a couple of :thumbsdown:s on it, which can help you b…

I used to really care about my own code quality in OSS but these days I just think it's a miracle if I manage to write any code (for the same reasons described in that video: full time job + family and other social obligations, eg I also do volunteer work most weekends). The way I see it, writing working code is more important than writing "good" code most of the time. That's not to say I don't try and follow some de…

Funny thing about that: Complainers always seem to think that the code that they could have written but didn't is better than the code that you could write and did. The trifling fact that theirs does not, in fact, exist never seems to register with them.

Re: The secret life of open source developers [video]

#29

Post by Isamu »

megous wrote: post #14
mugsie wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those sort of emails are really hard to deal with, especially when it is something you spent a lot of time working on. I like the idea from the talk of just blocking them outright.

I learened not to engage. It only ever once turned out, that the user actually spent quite a bit of time and contributed something as a result of me engaging futher and not just ignoring the e-mail. I guess some people may just be grumpy for whatever reason, and it will bubble up in the conversation. But I don't usually care for the positive words that much either. I guess it's nice that my sw is helping someone, and…

>What'd probably be more interesting to receive is just a thank you note and some info about what the user is using the sw for.

Good idea, I will try to start doing that.

Re: The secret life of open source developers [video]

#30

Post by sprash »

hnlmorg wrote: post #22
sprash wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what to do with that? Negative feedback is the only form of valueable feedback. If you want to make your software better you should listen to negative feedback. Of course negative feedback often comes with emotional baggage but you should be above that kind of thing. The right strategy is actually to ignore positive feedback (because it is mostly worthless) and ask the people that give you negative feedback for…

Negative feedback can fall into two categories: * constructive - which are polite and informative * deconstructive - which are basically just someone being an arsehole. The former stuff can be great at time but the examples being discussed fall firmly in the latter category.

Getting actually constructive feedback is super rare. When you ask emotionally engaged poeple to be more specific and precise about their problem they usually rationalize their anger and stop being angry when they actually notice what exactly they are angry about.
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