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Sorry everybody, I failed with you

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Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#231

Post by nitrogen »

scrps wrote: post #191
umvi wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think GitHub should really have a way for users of your repository to somehow illustrate that they're using your project. Well "stars" are kind of like that. Also the insights page tells you how many times your repo is being cloned per day, so that's one metric you can use to see how "used" your project is. You can also search GitHub for the name of your project and see how many other projects are cross referenci…

It would be nice to have a similar system to the language metric at the bottom of a repo, have something like a library metric that list what external libraries a project uses and feed those metrics back to the maintainers.

GitHub does show a dependency list in the sidebar for some projects.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#232

Post by usrusr »

glangdale wrote: post #122
usrusr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, that scenario, retreating corporate sponsor would probably not have retreated if only usage was more visible, that must have been very frustrating. Almost seems as if the odd occasional visibility boost from some heavy bug or exploit could have saved it. Were Oscar Wilde and PT Barnum secretly open source visionaries?

One thing I found immensely frustrating was that occasionally other projects at Intel (not mentioning names) would wind up completely fucking up by, say, building the wrong thing, then they would do some heroic 8-week "save" of the mess that they made, and wind up getting Major Corporate Recognitions. A bodgy, high-touch system that required endless customization and lots of meetings would become a high profile proje…

Sorry to hear that, I was hoping that my "no such thing as bad publicity" musings were merely crazy what-ifs, not a reflection of your reality.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#233

Post by ergot_vacation »

glangdale wrote: post #98

Seeing a lot of posts like this. Open source is wonderful in its way, but it's really not sustainable to work on projects that make money for other people - including big commercial interests - when they don't help out in any fashion. I'm not just talking money or contributions. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement: "we use project X" - even privately. A open source library that I worked on at Intel (the Hypersca…

I've long believed "open source" is for suckers for exactly this reason. Literally being open source, having the code open for review, isn't a problem. But usually "Open Source" also ends up meaning free as in beer, for EVERYONE, whether you're some college student or a billion dollar company.

The only sane, healthy, sustainable license is the "wacky" one you describe: individuals (and possibly even (very) small businesses) can use it for free. Everyone else needs to pony up. It's absurd that a ton of the software allowing giant corporations to run day-to-day is not only created but ACTIVELY MAINTAINED by an individual or groups of individuals for free, as if they were running a soup kitchen. Microsoft, Amazon and Google are not homeless. They can, and should, pay the people that make the software that keeps them going.

"But if it's open source, couldn't they just fork it and keep using that for free?" Yes, but a. not legally, if the terms forbid it and b. They would now have to find a new group of people to maintain the code, after just creating a bunch of ill-will in everyone in that space. In the end nothing is absolute: you can always just pirate closed-source commercial software too. But doing so has serious negative consequences.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#234

Post by dimgl »

antirez wrote: post #216

As somebody with experience in developing many OSS projects of different sizes (Redis, Hping, Jim Tcl, Visitors web analyzer, and many additional smaller ones), I think that the solution is simpler than it appears: just do what you want. When you are inside the flames of a successful open source project, you may think that the solution space is binary: don't do anything, or do everything people are demanding from you…

This is great advice and it's what I've done with my open source projects as well. The point of open source is that it's just that: it's open and free. People can try demanding things from you, but you don't work for them. So they can fork it and make changes or get lost.

I think there's something about seeing a line item on a UI that really breaks people's brains. This is why sometimes having a conversation on Slack can feel different than Zoom or even in person; there's a sort of permanence on these mediums that don't exist in person to person interactions. I think it's similar with GitHub issues. Seeing an issue and getting a notification for it can make repo owners feel inclined to answer.

Just don't answer. You don't owe anyone anything.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#235

Post by rileytg »

supportlocal4h wrote: post #139
altf4 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I've been working on a Go library for 8 years now that I'm sure is used by quite some people and companies, and I've been close to burnout and letting it go at least twice. I'm super happy when people just "Buy me a coffee"--not for the coffee but for the feedback you get that someone is using your project, so it's valuable for someone. I'm very grateful for that, even without financial support. I think GitH…

There are a lot of facets to open source contributions. One big facet is the whole itch-scratching thing. If you know longer itch, stop scratching. That's ok. Maybe when you stop scratching, it will start to itch again for you or for someone else. If nobody steps up, it just means it doesn't itch enough. Abandonware is not such a bad thing. It served its purpose for a season, then the world moved on. Nobody's out the…

This applies well for things like a java package where the itchy generally have the skills to scratch. I think of these things as having numerous benefits, namely saves your company/team time; most of the time, in this case I think boo-hoo if the person working tirelessly for no compensation stops doing that... Pay them or do it yourself. (I am currently doing-it-myself with an abandoned java package my team relies on.)

However, this logic fails for situations where the itchy often aren't capable of scratching. For example, a wordpress plugin. In this case, I think it's a grey area. Maybe users should have to pay since they can't write it themselves. But that attitude would still fail for situations where a library is widely used and security patches would be for the "greater good".

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#236

Post by sillysaurusx »

glangdale wrote: post #98

Seeing a lot of posts like this. Open source is wonderful in its way, but it's really not sustainable to work on projects that make money for other people - including big commercial interests - when they don't help out in any fashion. I'm not just talking money or contributions. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement: "we use project X" - even privately. A open source library that I worked on at Intel (the Hypersca…

I was recently shocked to discover that sindresorhus, one of the most prolific oss devs of all time (I think), only has around $14k/yr of app revenue. It sounded like he was saying that it was a majority of his income, so I pressed him how he could possibly live on it. He said he had GitHub sponsorships and open collective donations, and then mentioned he was living in a country with low expenses.

I ended up feeling... amazed, really. I was going to say sad, but if the most prolific oss dev can’t make more than an entry level salary from 2008 on community support alone, it’s not sad — it’s simply how it is.

People need to think of open source as something they do for themselves. I put stuff out for people to use. You don’t like it, you can use something else. I try to give as much help as I can, but only because it makes me happy to do that.

The recipe for burn out is, you’re not putting yourself first. You should! Most people do open source the way a jazz pianist does a jam session on the weekends, but it sounds like your typical jazzist (jazzer?) ends up happier than most of us. It’s worth taking a hard look at why.

Don’t do it to yourself. Life’s worth more. I understand why they left a lengthy apology here, saying “I let the community down” and such, but it’s just not true. Everyone who makes their code available for others isn t a letdown — you’re a hero to 12yo me, who would’ve given anything to get a glimpse of any closed-source gamedev engine. That’s what OSS is all about: letting people build on your work, not working yourself to death for other people.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#237

Post by santoshalper »

Imagine giving so much of your life, passion, and energy away for free, then feeling guilty that you couldn't give even more. I'm glad Pedro decided to step back to focus on his health. That is not an easy decision to make. As he starts to return, I hope he will consider letting others take up part of the work and shoulder some of the burden. This kind of open source vampirism isn't healthy.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#239

Post by arp242 »

antirez wrote: post #216

As somebody with experience in developing many OSS projects of different sizes (Redis, Hping, Jim Tcl, Visitors web analyzer, and many additional smaller ones), I think that the solution is simpler than it appears: just do what you want. When you are inside the flames of a successful open source project, you may think that the solution space is binary: don't do anything, or do everything people are demanding from you…

Over the last year I've been very explicit about this in issues and such that people report (especially feature requests, but also bugs I don't really care about): "Thanks! Sounds good; keep in mind this is a spare time project I wrote for my own reasons, I'm happy working to solve other people's problems too if it improves the project, but I work on it when I feel like it, which may be next week, next year, or never. In the meanwhile, I'm happy to review and merge patches".

Often it's closer to next week than never, but sometimes it's not. This sets expectations, and best of all, it just feels very liberating saying it out loud. Some of the stress I had in the past (not just OSS work, also other volunteer work) is having the feeling I was obligated to do stuff; for me personally anyway, this relieves much of it.

Thus far, everyone has understood this too; that it's delivered in a friend/positive rather than snappy way (as I've sometimes seen) probably helps. Granted, I haven't maintained some truly "large" projects since I started doing this, but there are a few of non-trivial size with some amount of issues.

Personally, I think this is better than outright ignoring, at least for me personally (everyone is different). I will feel guilty if I ignore people, and even a reply like the above removes that guilt because I've clearly communicated expectations.

Aside: if you say "I'm happy to merge patches" then you should really do your best to actually do so or not say it at all IMHO (which is also fine). Of course life happens and it's not a hard promise, but you're essentially asking people to volunteer their spare time to write code, and ignoring their code (and time) is not great. I've seen people solicit patches (sometimes very large non-trivial ones), people write them and then ... crickets. Not even a "this patch won't do", just ... nothing.

Unsolicited patches is a bit different, I do try and respond as best/quickly as I can out of respect for people's time, but I didn't promise anything beforehand so I don't feel the obligation, and especially for difficult patches I sometimes leave a similar message as above.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#240

Post by zxzax »

ergot_vacation wrote: post #233
glangdale wrote: post #98

Seeing a lot of posts like this. Open source is wonderful in its way, but it's really not sustainable to work on projects that make money for other people - including big commercial interests - when they don't help out in any fashion. I'm not just talking money or contributions. I'm talking about simple acknowledgement: "we use project X" - even privately. A open source library that I worked on at Intel (the Hypersca…

I've long believed "open source" is for suckers for exactly this reason. Literally being open source, having the code open for review, isn't a problem. But usually "Open Source" also ends up meaning free as in beer, for EVERYONE, whether you're some college student or a billion dollar company. The only sane, healthy, sustainable license is the "wacky" one you describe: individuals (and possibly even (very) small busi…

I've never liked that approach, it's leading with the stick and not the carrot and IMO it defeats the purpose of open source. It cuts away one of the main benefits of open source -- that companies can use it and start contributing back to it right away with no friction. AFAIK Microsoft, Amazon and Google actually DO hire a lot of open source maintainers at this time, for exactly this reason.
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