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It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

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Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#221

Post by cycloptic »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #209
dunkelheit wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. People who demand free labor from open-source maintainers get a lot of deserved flak lately, but it is not that project authors are always blameless. Everyone who publishes some code for others to use faces a dilemma: they want their project to be popular (because being associated with a popular project is prestigious), but popularity means that the project demands additional effort to polish it, deal with bu…

I agree. If you are actively marketing a project, you are declaring yourself open to criticism. You don't get to play the "what do you want for free?" card and say "my thing is totally awesome and you should use it!" at the same time.

Yes you do. I do that all the time. It just depends on who you're talking to. You can usually tell within a very short period of time who is going to get invested and add value, versus who is going to fall behind and demand a disproportionate amount of attention.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#222

Post by jlengrand »

CalRobert wrote: post #210
Justsignedup wrote: post #89

I once wrote a library in backbone.js to have a data-synchronized list. It allowed me to provide an array, and it'll keep that array sync'd up to what I saw. I had a kid and a fulltime job and going through a divorce. I happened to use it at my job, but everyone kept asking for me to integrate it into new up and coming repos which I didn't have time for. Honestly I felt bad about not caring, but the reality is that I…

Unfortunately, DINKs are hard to compete with professionally. Old boss used to loudly thank my colleague for doing tickets on the weekends, and too often people seem to assume I want to spend my weekend "brushing up" on some implementation detail for a project I don't care about. Even "why doesn't he come to after work drinks?" Is hard to answer with "because my spouse is _also_ an exhausted wreck at the end of the d…

Is your manager a DINK himself? I empathize, honestly. Don't question your life choices though :)

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#223

Post by rmetzler »

leibnitz27 wrote: post #190

I have an OSS 'fun project' - I'm still amazed by the number of issues/emails I get raised which say: "You should rewrite in" / "Why does't it do" / "Make it do". It's nice that people are using it. I generally (try to) assume this is a language/cultural thing, and people don't realise that they're coming across as a bit rude in English . But, it would be nicer if people approached commenting on OSS by first thinking…

Thanks for acknowledging this might be a language or cultural thing. I’m sure this kind of „smalltalk“ is appreciated when you put your free time into what others maybe use for their job.

One thing I would like to suggest is to have a question in the feature or bug issue template to ask what people use the lib for and what they like about it. Maybe even set expectations.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#224

Post by bredren »

imgabe wrote: post #73
bredren wrote: post #52

I just picked up maintainership of django-address. It is a set of models and methods for dealing with postal addresses in Django. The product is dominant in seo and many django beginners and intermediate install it without looking at it. But it has also languished for years and failed to get an important model rearchitecture after the author had to stop work on it. Still, I see it as a great turnaround opportunity an…

Glad to hear someone is picking up maintenance for this! I found it via Google a while ago and ended up forking it to make it play more nicely with Google Maps. I really appreciated the starting point though and that a lot of the heavy lifting of creating a custom model field had been done.

Right on. Please reply in the 'path forward' issue with a link to your fork. I'm interested in learning how people have taken upon themselves to improve the package.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#225

Post by rlayton2 »

Just a FYI for the library authors out there, but you can usually set a template for submitting bug reports and issues (for instance, Github has this feature). This can help put a message in front of users right as they are making the issue. It might not fully alleviate the issue, but it might help set expectations! (i.e. "Please feel free to submit a bug report, but please note we are volunteers. We cannot get to every issue, and we can more easily resolve issues that are well researched before making it here.")

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#227

Post by nicoburns »

Justsignedup wrote: post #89

I once wrote a library in backbone.js to have a data-synchronized list. It allowed me to provide an array, and it'll keep that array sync'd up to what I saw. I had a kid and a fulltime job and going through a divorce. I happened to use it at my job, but everyone kept asking for me to integrate it into new up and coming repos which I didn't have time for. Honestly I felt bad about not caring, but the reality is that I…

I think it's fine to not have time to maintain code you open source. However, if your library ends up gaining a significant user base and you don't have time to maintain it, then I think you have a duty to either:

1. Allow others to step in as maintainers and review/approve new features and bug fixes in your stead.

or (if you want to maintain control of your library)

2. Be clear that your library is in maintenance mode, and encourage and bless (by linking from your README) a fork (or forks) that work for those who were using your library but want the extra features that you don't want or have time to implement in your library.

Otherwise your project is actively getting in the way of the community organising development of similar.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#228

Post by j1elo »

CalRobert wrote: post #210
Justsignedup wrote: post #89

I once wrote a library in backbone.js to have a data-synchronized list. It allowed me to provide an array, and it'll keep that array sync'd up to what I saw. I had a kid and a fulltime job and going through a divorce. I happened to use it at my job, but everyone kept asking for me to integrate it into new up and coming repos which I didn't have time for. Honestly I felt bad about not caring, but the reality is that I…

Unfortunately, DINKs are hard to compete with professionally. Old boss used to loudly thank my colleague for doing tickets on the weekends, and too often people seem to assume I want to spend my weekend "brushing up" on some implementation detail for a project I don't care about. Even "why doesn't he come to after work drinks?" Is hard to answer with "because my spouse is _also_ an exhausted wreck at the end of the d…

That's also part of a sick culture.

I've seen places where working on your free time and/or weekends would be totally frowned upon by managers, and the general culture around workers would be that working on weekends is giving up your time for free in an attempt to clib on the other's backs, so that wouldn't be very popular among your colleages.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#229

Post by chadlavi »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #179
harikb wrote: post #105

Github can help with this situation a lot. Yes, people are free to write and abandon whatever they want, but once a library has had hundreds of dependent users, and the primary repo is abandoned / unmaintained, Github could do a lot to guide dependent users away to a better fork. Today though, every popular repo has hundreds of forks and there is no easy way to identify forks that are more actively maintained. I unde…

At scale, how do you tell the difference between software which is finished vs software which is unmaintained?

"Finished software" is a myth.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#230

Post by 1000units »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #215
guygurari wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t doubt it, but covid-sim is not the best example of this effect. In this case, people are worried that poorly written simulation code is informing policy decisions that affect billions of people. They are not demanding that it should be fixed, they are demanding that it should not be relied on in its current state.

Dunning-Kruger powered software developers with beliefs that they are in any way qualified to say that mathematical simulations checked by dozens of actual scientists with PhDs are not valid ask that results are ignored because there's no unit tests.

It's funny that none of these people has produced a failing test.
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