Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My boundaries as an open source developer

joeldenning.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 251 posts

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#231

Post by iiroj »

I originally set out to fix a performance problem in lint-staged that was preventing my then-company from using it in their large git repo (related to long histories, git read/write tree, and clearing index caches).

Here I am, many years later, still maintaining it and overally enjoying the work. I just chose to never take on any implied responsibility like described in the article. This means it's ok to ignore or close tickets, or simply not be active for some months if there was better things to do. So far the interest has kept up, and I'm improving it on our own terms.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#232

Post by jurassic »

seer wrote: post #201
jurassic wrote: post #142

A few years back I was in a role where it was my job to maintain a small but non-trivial open source project (~1500 github stars, 5 core contributors). I burned out after about two years in that role. People repeatedly demanding help in the github issues without even providing repro steps. Hate mail to the project email list from users angry we didn't implement the feature they want in the latest release. We had peop…

Do you think if more people provided positive feedback would have helped? I remember when working on customer relations roles in startups (devs wear many hats there), we had lots of bad responses, but some were just outright praise. Like "thank you, you've changed our live for the better" kinda stuff, and it always made the work of wading through the muck more bearable.

Positive feedback is nice, but it doesn't negate the amount of assholes and entitlement I needed to deal with on a regular basis.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#233

Post by SQueeeeeL »

roastytoasty wrote: post #223
jurassic wrote: post #142

A few years back I was in a role where it was my job to maintain a small but non-trivial open source project (~1500 github stars, 5 core contributors). I burned out after about two years in that role. People repeatedly demanding help in the github issues without even providing repro steps. Hate mail to the project email list from users angry we didn't implement the feature they want in the latest release. We had peop…

I don't understand, if it's open source why don't they just add whatever features they want.

Laziness/lack of understanding

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#234

Post by moron4hire »

beachy wrote: post #146
moron4hire wrote: post #26

I had a very similar experience with running open source projects. I was getting frustrated with people not contributing in any significant way. Functionally useless bug reports. Coding bootcamp students submitting PRs that did nothing but change some grammar in the README (and never actually changing it correctly). Feature requests for things I had explained in several other issues that I would never do. Requests fo…

> I eventually realized my motivations for developing open source software were rooted in vanity. Very insightful, but is it in fact a slightly different emotion to that? In the Mythical Man Month, Fred Brooks says: > Why is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as his reward? First [..] > Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people. Deep within, we want others to use…

For the vast majority of people, a program being open source does not make it more useful to them. The program just existing is the useful bit.

Also, Germans don't have words for things. They just remove all the whitespace from their sentences and then run around, "look at this neues word Ich hab!" :D

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#235

Post by cxr »

Nadya wrote: post #230
cxr wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're bordering on tautology. > Ask anyone who is not already heavily involved in open source software development [what "open source" means] Where's the shock? Asking anyone about something that they're uninformed about and expecting an informed response is silly.

Does similar confusion exist when asking people what the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative or Sustainable Energy Initiatives are about? Do you think there is a similar level of misperception among laypersons about the meaning of those initiatives? The common misperception regarding "Free Software" is that people think it means "gratis" rather than "libre". The common misperception with "Open Source" is that people thi…

> Does similar confusion exist when asking people what the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative or Sustainable Energy Initiatives are about? Do you think there is a similar level of misperception among laypersons about the meaning of those initiatives?

I think most lay persons, upon being informed of the existence of a "Sustainable Energy Initiative", would readily admit when pressed to a lack of sufficient familiarity with the subject that would allow them to answer with confidence about what does or does not meet the standards of being deemed "sustainable energy". Likewise with anything involving "cancer"—most people cannot define it.

But this is beside the point, because we're not talking about the work activity of the OSI. We're taking about the definition of "open source". This is not the first instance of your moving the goalposts in this discussion.

> The common misperception regarding "Free Software" is that people think it means "gratis" rather than "libre". The common misperception with "Open Source" is that people think it means "source-code publicly available".

Right. The key thing being that those are misperceptions.

Misperceptions about the distinction between "cancer" versus "viral infection" versus "bacterial infection" would not lead us to say that because the public does not have a good understanding then the definition of "cancer" changes to something that it isn't.

> if the argument about common misperceptions being muddied water is not entirely convincing

That's not what's at issue.

> The Free Software Foundation disagrees that "Open Source" and "Free Software" are the same thing.

The FSF agrees that the definition of "open source" is the one that was formulated at the end of the last millennium; the FSF doesn't disagree with the OSI about the definition of "open source".

We started with your claim from the ahistorical definition of "open source" that a given project may not actually permit people to make their fork available to others. Any argument you make here needs to support that.

So far, you're making a lot of facile "water _is_ wet*"-style observations and, I dunno, hoping that no one will notice that that was never the point of contention.

* Try substituting "FSF was founded in 1985" (or any other factual statement) here that while true nonetheless has no bearing on the actual substance of the current dispute, despite whatever surface-level relevance it may appear to have to someone who is only halfway paying attention.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#236

Post by Nadya »

cxr wrote: post #235
Nadya wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does similar confusion exist when asking people what the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative or Sustainable Energy Initiatives are about? Do you think there is a similar level of misperception among laypersons about the meaning of those initiatives? The common misperception regarding "Free Software" is that people think it means "gratis" rather than "libre". The common misperception with "Open Source" is that people thi…

> Does similar confusion exist when asking people what the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative or Sustainable Energy Initiatives are about? Do you think there is a similar level of misperception among laypersons about the meaning of those initiatives? I think most lay persons, upon being informed of the existence of a "Sustainable Energy Initiative", would readily admit when pressed to a lack of sufficient familiarity w…

I made my point incredibly poorly as I was a bit pressed for time. My bringing up other initiatives misled you as to the point I was poorly trying to make. My point was that laypersons know what the words mean - there is no "aha, it actually means !" in the words "childhood cancer data". If one knows the words "childhood", "cancer", and "data" they can accurately guess what "childhood cancer data" means and that is not the case for "open source" which has an obvious meaning in plain English which is also not what it means at all.

How people use words matters almost as much as what those words mean - and meaning can change because of how people use words over the course of years, decades, or centuries. Pointing at a dictionary is only useful when clarifying which meaning is being used.

> That's not what's at issue.

Then what is the issue, if you don't mind me asking? The issue as I understand it was what was meant by "open source" and my not already prescribing to the OSI's definition of it. Pointing to the OSI's definition cleared the air about which definition was being used but did not resolve the issue that the phrasing is easily misunderstood outside of the OSS community and is the reason the term "FLOSS" exists to circumvent the issue. The fact they had to specify the definition as defined by OSI and not "source available" is part of the issue. That this misperception exists at all is part of the issue. That the OSI has had to plea with people to please use the branding how they want it to be used [0] is part of the issue. That it is not totally uncommon to see "open source" to only mean "source available" is part of the issue. That "open source" has an obvious plain-English meaning separate from it's "intended meaning" is part of the issue. This is an issue that has existed in the community for the entirety of its 23 years of existence, been spoken about at length by both the OSI and FSF as being an issue, and some people are acting like it's the first time they've ever heard about this being an issue or even denying that it is an existing issue at all.

I'm not sure how many articles from community leaders and the very people who defined the words in the first place speaking about the issue being an issue I need to cite before people go "OK maybe it is an existing issue and not just Nadya saying it's an existing issue when it isn't."

To actually and intentionally move the goalposts this time: It still isn't even logically sound that because you're able to fork and send a PR on Github that the project is "open source" to begin with and it especially doesn't follow that the project is compliant with OSI's definition of "open source". Per my understanding of the Github Terms of Service Section D Parts 4-7 the license given to other users only extends so far as to their using Github's functionality (including "forking") - which I'm reading as not providing any license to compile or redistribute modified source code compiled into an executable. Making sending a PR possibly the only reasonable method of ensuring that a fix or feature makes it to end users.

[0] https://opensource.org/node/163

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#237

Post by pabs3 »

moron4hire wrote: post #217
pabs3 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if such projects should be collaboratively maintained rather than attached to your name? Then anyone who is part of the ROS community and ends up needing them can take on fixing any issues they encounter. As long as the org holding them has a liberal enough membership policy, this should work well.

"It's hard to maintain a project as a single-maintainer. Nobody puts in more than a cursory effort to contribute." "Yeah, but what if other people contributed?" It's a huge chicken-or-egg problem. At this point, unless you have a big name behind you (being a major corporation like Google or Facebook, or OSS celebrity like Torvalds), the chances of any particular project growing beyond single-maintainer are really sli…

I'm sorry that happened to you, that is a horrible way to treat people, Mozilla and all open source users and contributors need to do better than that.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#238

Post by pabs3 »

jlokier wrote: post #215
pabs3 wrote: post #141

> Part of the stress is in interacting with so many people a single time, never having a solid relationship with any of them. I found that working in the Linux distro space doesn't have this problem, especially in the pre-COVID times when there were annual in-person conferences and lots of socialising.

I found working in the Linux space did have that problem in pre-COVID times. Especially the lack of solid relationships, due to never meeting people and getting to know anyone personally. I spent too much time working on things for free (not just open source, but also voluntary work, and a couple of tech R&D ventures that ate my savings) and as a result I couldn't afford to attend any of the in-person conferences in…

It sounds like we are talking about different spaces, I was talking about Linux distros (specifically Debian). Even before I started going to the conference there was some feel of community.

Perhaps the Linux community is larger than Debian or more subject to churn as people change employers and thus change which part of Linux they work on. Or maybe as you say attending the conferences is a bit part of community feeling.

I'm surprised you read LKML, the volume is enough to put anyone off. If you are still interested in reading some of it, these days there is lore+lei to filter down the volume just to your personal interests.

https://lwn.net/Articles/878205/

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#239

Post by pabs3 »

Nadya wrote: post #230
cxr wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're bordering on tautology. > Ask anyone who is not already heavily involved in open source software development [what "open source" means] Where's the shock? Asking anyone about something that they're uninformed about and expecting an informed response is silly.

Does similar confusion exist when asking people what the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative or Sustainable Energy Initiatives are about? Do you think there is a similar level of misperception among laypersons about the meaning of those initiatives? The common misperception regarding "Free Software" is that people think it means "gratis" rather than "libre". The common misperception with "Open Source" is that people thi…

> Does similar confusion exist when asking people what the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative or Sustainable Energy Initiatives are about?

No idea about cancer, but even just on HN there is confusion about which meaning of "sustainable" is being used and what environmental and other impacts each energy technology embodies.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#240

Post by pabs3 »

Nadya wrote: post #236
cxr wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does similar confusion exist when asking people what the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative or Sustainable Energy Initiatives are about? Do you think there is a similar level of misperception among laypersons about the meaning of those initiatives? I think most lay persons, upon being informed of the existence of a "Sustainable Energy Initiative", would readily admit when pressed to a lack of sufficient familiarity w…

I made my point incredibly poorly as I was a bit pressed for time. My bringing up other initiatives misled you as to the point I was poorly trying to make. My point was that laypersons know what the words mean - there is no "aha, it actually means !" in the words "childhood cancer data". If one knows the words "childhood", "cancer", and "data" they can accurately guess what "childhood cancer data" means and that is n…

Even worse is that "free software" has a vastly different meaning to a layperson, who probably think mostly gratis before they think libre when they hear "free".

It might be time to start using more descriptive sentences like "source code available under a proprietary license" or "libre software that can be made proprietary" or "software that is perpetually libre" instead of the "Free Software" and "Open Source" terms.

Post reply on HN