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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)

#271

Post by jankiehodgpodge »

BurningFrog wrote: post #249
CalRobert wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Unfortunately, DINKs are hard to compete with professionally Sure, but people with kids win at life. Let the DINK make some extra money. You still have it better.

I couldn't think of anything worse than having kids. Don't project your life choices onto others.

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

#272

Post by [deleted] »

vxNsr wrote: post #106
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While `left-pad` certainly wasn't the most optimized implementation, it wasn't a "click-grabbing" project of the sort saurik was positing. It solved the problem the name suggested it would solve. The fallout around it really didn't have anything to do with "resume-driven development" EDIT: Not sure why this was downvoted, maybe people forgot that padStart and friends appeared in ES2015, long after left-pad was create…

off-topic: I still don't understand the use case that left-pad solved. I'm not into js at all but why do you need a dependency to add space to text? I'm asking honestly, I just don't get what the use for this was.

[deleted]

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

#273

Post by UncleMeat »

ljm wrote: post #180
mattlondon wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often act very entitled about open source I've found. You'll often get angry irate emails/issues raised demanding you help them or add a new feature or whatever. Some people are just clueless and need help, others are just dicks. It is often not worth the hassle in my opinion, but then everyone's circumstances and motivations are different and I am glad that a lot of people do think it is worth it.

If anyone is in any doubt about this, I would like to point them towards this github issue: https://github.com/mrc-ide/covid-sim/issues/165

Yup. This whole experience was immensely frustrating. First people complain that the code isn't open source and as soon as it is available suddenly there are piles of people swooping in to shit on everything. That's not going to make scientists write better code. It is going to make scientists refuse to open their code.

The only thing more frustrating is when I see people swoop into open source code with "security vulns" that are based on nonsense threat models.

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

#274

Post by UncleMeat »

Chris2048 wrote: post #266
fovc wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wholeheartedly disagree. Vetting a possible maintener or fork is >0 work, and you don't owe us anything. If you had to go to the trouble of creating your library in the first place, it means either A) "the community" had not met your specific need, so why would they start now? Or B) you did this for fun/learning/visibility/coping with a mania, in which case you still don't owe us any favors. That said, doing either o…

> Vetting a possible maintener or fork is >0 work Who said anything about vetting?

Because people also complain when new maintainers are added and those maintainers cause problems or even abuse the project to insert malware. You can't win.

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

#275

Post by watwut »

dunkelheit wrote: post #232
asadjb wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If I've built a small library that does something useful for my set of needs , it's not crap software. It works perfectly well for my needs. If someone then goes ahead and uses my library, without understanding what needs it satisfies and what it does not, how is that on me? I release it to the world with the understanding that someone else might have the same requirements that I had when I built it. Why…

Most of the time yes, but it is not so simple. There is a common resource that can be described as "attention of people who are looking for a library for X" and every time you publish a library for X you use up a bit of this resource. Most of the time this effect is small and more than offset by the value of your code, but it is not zero and overusing this common resource is a dick move. As an extreme example conside…

I find this standard ridiculous. We dont apply similar standards to blogs nor videos nor art - them being crappy is not "taking away our attention resource".

Publishing them is not using someone elses attention. And I dont go around hating on eHow. I do expect google to put them down in ranking over time and I do structure my queries so that I dont hit them.

Also, small one time open source project is not tweaking SEO like content farms. That comparison does not work either.

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

#276

Post by nayuki »

Daniel Compton: Open Source Is Free As in Baby: https://danielcompton.net/2014/11/19/dependencies

> I think of someone releasing open source software as a gift to the world, not as claiming a responsibility to maintain it for you. Some projects do claim that responsibility, but it’s not automatically conferred just because someone released a project on GitHub. I think much more of the responsibility falls on the person using it.

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

#277

Post by nicoburns »

fovc wrote: post #259
nicoburns wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

Wholeheartedly disagree. Vetting a possible maintener or fork is >0 work, and you don't owe us anything. If you had to go to the trouble of creating your library in the first place, it means either A) "the community" had not met your specific need, so why would they start now? Or B) you did this for fun/learning/visibility/coping with a mania, in which case you still don't owe us any favors. That said, doing either o…

Vetting a maintainer is non-zero work. But it's also not all that much. Especially if said maintainer has already contributed meaningful PRs against your repository.

While you're technically correct that people don't owe anyone anything, I've often had the experience of using an open source library that was otherwise excellent, except that it had critical bugs that hadn't been patched, or that it hadn't been updated to work with the latest versions of it's dependencies. Popular repositories like this often have tens of high-quality pull-requests fixing these issues, but using them is non-trivial because you'd have to merge everything. These PRs pile up for a few months until someone realises that the repo is unmaintained and forks. At which point you have two versions of the project (often with the same name), and everyone is left to figure out which one they should use.

It would save everyone a lot of bother if maintainers of these repositories took half an hour to update everyone that they didn't have time to maintain the repository and pass the baton on to someone / some people who do.

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

#278

Post by watwut »

ex_amazon_sde wrote: post #182
matheusmoreira wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it also can simultaneously be not OK for you to publish it in a package directory with a generic name and a description Package repositories can be open to all developers or curated by software distribution maintainers. Being able to publish an open source project without dealing with Linux distribution maintainers is a major selling point of programming language package managers. Why even let people publish packag…

> Being able to publish an open source project without dealing with Linux distribution maintainers is a major selling point of programming language package managers. This is how disasters like leftpad happen. The bar for publishing software is extremely low and we pay the price every day in terms of security, bloat and complexity.

Left pad disaster happened because 1.) npm took away another authors project 2.) npm makes it overly easy to unpublish already published projects. That is ridiculous.

It has nothing to do with how easy it is to publish things. Also, adding own left-pad once disaster happened is quite easy in node.js modules system.

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

#279

Post by fudged71 »

saurik wrote: post #8

I agree: it is OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty. However, it also can simultaneously be not OK for you to publish it in a package directory with a generic name and a description talking about how awesome it is as a trap for other people to run into, and that is really the core problem: it isn't that you didn't spend an unreasonable amount of time and money to make a good product that no one paid for…

Do package directories have moderators? The naming problem has always interested me

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

#280

Post by danjac »

mattlondon wrote: post #155
yuribro wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you feel bad? The whole point of open source is they could have done it themselves, if they wanted some integration they needed and you didn't. And then they could either contribute it back, fork your project or just keep it to themselves, if the license allows it. At any rate, you already helped them...

People often act very entitled about open source I've found. You'll often get angry irate emails/issues raised demanding you help them or add a new feature or whatever. Some people are just clueless and need help, others are just dicks. It is often not worth the hassle in my opinion, but then everyone's circumstances and motivations are different and I am glad that a lot of people do think it is worth it.

The funniest ones are those who need your thing for their professional work, yet treat you as if you were a fully paid contractor at their beck and call.
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