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Open source projects should run office hours

simonwillison.net

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Re: Open source projects should run office hours

#251

Post by Qwertious »

C4stor wrote: post #191
matkoniecz wrote: post #90

I 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.

>What happened to the HN rule of "interpret everything with the most positive interpretation possible", when this is the top voted comment ?

What makes you think this comment is doing anything except providing positive feedback?

>It seems pretty obvious that the author doesn't intend to coerce anyone into doing anything.

Subtext is weird and dangerous. Using more accurate phrasing costs nothing and potentially averts problems.

Re: Open source projects should run office hours

#252

Post by Qwertious »

shoo wrote: post #171
matkoniecz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I referred specifically to the title in my comment. It is part of things personally irritating to me, and something what is biggest threat to small open source projects that I like. People are mistaken in thinking that having an open source project implies any obligation beyond lack of malice. And people tired by dealing with that are one of top reason why open source projects disappear or are never created.

Rule of thumb when speaking or writing: replace "should" with "could". Simple way to avoid implying obligation.

"could" is true but irrelevant and therefore implies subtext. I don't think "could" would be much better, it ought to just be re-phrased as a suggestion in the first place.

Re: Open source projects should run office hours

#254

Post by _7hzo »

shadowfox wrote: post #228
C4stor wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everything about your comment is just wrong, so wrong.

The Law of the Topmost Comment says nothing about the relatedness to the OP's article[1]. I would suggest you research the topic further before making any more ill-informed comments on it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

Re: Open source projects should run office hours

#255

Post by HeavyStorm »

C4stor wrote: post #191
matkoniecz wrote: post #90

I 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.

Well, someone changed the title and that will change responses to it...

The qualifier "consider" is very important but was removed by the OP.

Re: Open source projects should run office hours

#256

Post by C4stor »

Qwertious wrote: post #251
C4stor wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>What happened to the HN rule of "interpret everything with the most positive interpretation possible", when this is the top voted comment ? What makes you think this comment is doing anything except providing positive feedback? >It seems pretty obvious that the author doesn't intend to coerce anyone into doing anything. Subtext is weird and dangerous. Using more accurate phrasing costs nothing and potentially averts…

> What makes you think this comment is doing anything except providing positive feedback?

It doesn't address any of the points mentioned in the article, and in fact, doesn't address the general theme of the article.

There is no subtext at all, the article is simple and clear, and one would be hard pressed to think that the author is trying to force anyone to do anything while reading it.

Re: Open source projects should run office hours

#257

Post by robinhood »

Big no.

On the open source projects I supervise which have a fairly big reach, it's simply impossible to do that, especially since I work on it a few times at night each week.

Having office hours would mean dedicate even more time to them, which I can't.

It would mean speaking in a common language, probably English. Writing in English is one thing - talking in English is another. It's super tough for some foreigners (including myself).

It would also mean much more organization. Calendar invites, Zoom or whatever tools, etc...

Re: Open source projects should run office hours

#258

Post by lolsal »

_Microft wrote: post #243
lolsal wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another option - I understood and did not agree.

My mistake - I meant to reply to the discussion about people misunderstanding the expression "office hours" and attached it to the wrong subthread. This is not related to your point about "should" at all.

Thank you for clarifying!

Re: Open source projects should run office hours

#259

Post by victor9000 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #150
victor9000 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some of the more interesting problems you've encountered using this approach?

I helped a fella figure out how to imbue their GPT model with emotional awareness. That was one of the cooler ones, and we solved it in about an hour or so. The actual technique will take a month or so to execute, but the core idea is pretty much guaranteed to work.

Interesting! Are you able to share what you came up with? It seems like at minimum you could verify that the sentiment analysis for your generated text matches that of the input prompt.

I've been working on getting GPT2 to write poetry and I've made a fair amount of progress by fine-tuning on a poetic corpus. Then during generation I constrain tokens that would break the style of the previously generated text. It has already produced a few samples that are surprisingly moving. Here's one of my favorite cherry-picked samples which was generated with a prompt of "The sea grew":

"The sea grew angry, and turned to fire,

And all the stars did mourn for earth and sky.

The wind did moan, as when one who hath lost

Love through some evil counsellor, hears

A lamentable voice that sobs and sighs;

Or when some old sorrow's semblance doth appear"

It makes me think of someone describing the meteor strike that killed off the dinosaurs.

To achieve this, I simply perform analysis on the tokens as they are generated, then turn off the logits for tokens that would break the current flow. I'm currently working on enforcing meter and rhyme using a similar approach. I've also had success with creating checkpoints by pickling the model state at a good stopping point, like at the end of a line, then letting the model do its thing and reverting back to the checkpoint if it produces something that doesn't match what I'm looking for.

Re: Open source projects should run office hours

#260

Post by layer8 »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #208
layer8 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under GPL-like licenses you are obligated to provide source code if you provide a binary. If you don’t distribute anything, e.g. you only use something privately, then there are effectively no obligations. Of course, if you don’t provide source code for your project (whether legitimately or not), then by definition your project is not open source in the first place. Note that the GPL specifically does not require pub…

> Under GPL-like licenses you are obligated to provide source code if you provide a binary No, this requirement applies only if you are using somebody's else GPL code, and it's meant to allow other developers and users to benefit from the work done. It does not apply to the original author because the author owns the copyright of that code.

That seems to be disputed, see https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/27768/is-there-a-loo....
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