no, false, incorrect
Open source projects should run office hours
221–230 of 279 posts
Re: Open source projects should run office hours
#222I have deep aversion to "Open source projects should run office hours" title. Maybe "Office hours may be a good idea for open source projects"? This would not suggest obligation. In general, fact that someone created or maintains or supports open source projects should not be considered to create any obligations beyond lack of malice and abuse. I am not obligated to support any bugs, create any features and it is per…
Headline changed to "Open source projects: consider running office hours"
Thanks!
Sadly I can not edit my comment, in this case it would be useful :(
Re: Open source projects should run office hours
#223this is a great idea, I'm adopting it.
Re: Open source projects should run office hours
#224Anyone can run office hours for any of their open source projects they want - that sounds great! But I won't and I don't feel any sort of obligation to do so, so I don't think 'should' is really appropriate here.
I think the 'should' is targeted at developers who want their projects to grow (which is not all open-source developers).
I understand that, but a person new to the development world might see this as something expected for anyone starting an open source project.
I don't mean to exaggerate or make an unfair comparison, but I had very similar experiences 15 years ago when I was considering being interested in trying to get a contribution (any contribution) merged into the linux kernel. That process is so off-putting I lost interest. Granted, kernel development is an entirely different beast and I understand (better now after a career) why it's partly the way it is.
I think I'm rambling - tl;dr: this sort of attitude is off-putting from open source, even as someone who's been in software a long time.
Re: Open source projects should run office hours
#225Anyone can run office hours for any of their open source projects they want - that sounds great! But I won't and I don't feel any sort of obligation to do so, so I don't think 'should' is really appropriate here.
At my previous job, I used to run "office hours" originally as a way to onboard new engineers. They later turned into discussions on technical topics when someone needed it. It really depends on the nature of your project and knowing the limits of async communication. If you have lots of contributors, it might help.
You're talking about a 'job' and 'onboarding' engineers - that's quiet a departure from what I think most people imagine when they imagine an open source project.
Office hours for an office-like job sound totally reasonable.
Re: Open source projects should run office hours
#226Note: the author has changed the title. it is now "Open source projects should consider running office hours", precisely for the reasons highlighted here.
Re: Open source projects should run office hours
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, with hindsight I should have picked a different word. The message I'm trying to get across here is that I've found office hours to be incredibly valuable, and other maintainers should seriously consider adopting the same trick.
Keep in mind that you are only going to hear the voices of those who did not understand. Those who did had no reason to comment on it.
There is another option - I understood and did not agree.
Re: Open source projects should run office hours
#228I have deep aversion to "Open source projects should run office hours" title. Maybe "Office hours may be a good idea for open source projects"? This would not suggest obligation. In general, fact that someone created or maintains or supports open source projects should not be considered to create any obligations beyond lack of malice and abuse. I am not obligated to support any bugs, create any features and it is per…
What happened to the HN rule of "interpret everything with the most positive interpretation possible", when this is the top voted comment ? It seems pretty obvious that the author doesn't intend to coerce anyone into doing anything.
It is overruled by the "law of the topmost comment" - the top comment is very likely a negative take on some subpart of the topic at hand, sometimes unrelated to the actual article, worded in the strongest way possible.
Re: Open source projects should run office hours
#229I've had massive success with this in ML. My twitter DMs have become almost-daily office hour sessions with people trying to solve hard ML problems. The last fellow was so happy he venmo'd me $250 after I merely asked for "pay whatever you thought that was worth." Apparently putting "DMs open" in your twitter bio is an excellent way to meet new people. Also, tweet (often!) about what you're working on. Post lots of q…
I'm stealing that too. "DM's open" coming right up.
Re: Open source projects should run office hours
#230Isn't this kind of a paradox? Most open source maintainers work in their free time on those projects, and have an additional fulltime job to cover the bills. Assuming that everybody has the luxury to have additional office hours available is a bit far from reality in my opinion. I mean, if you can offer office hours for an open source project you probably are already so popular that you are able to work on it fulltim…
In my case I'm still very much trying to encourage people to use my project. The time investment for office hours isn't too high - I actually dropped it down to three sessions every Friday for a while due to other commitments, so it's only an hour and a half a week. In exchange for that I get extremely high bandwidth feedback from real users of my software!
It's a great idea, thanks for writing it Simon.