Sorry everybody, I failed with you • Hacker News Board

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#291

Post by 533474 » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 10:19 PM UTC

swat535 wrote: post #238

fartcannon wrote: post #171

Don't use MIT. Use a GPL.

How does that exactly address the core issue of the post which is OSS maintainers are simply burning out due to a lack of support.. ?

The support structure is different if you go with the FSF - someone can takeover the project and big corps that use the code must contribute back. My take is, choose MIT if u want to give developers convenience (and u don't care if you r flooded with request and lack of attribution). Or choose GPL and the FSF if you care about legacy, organized support structure and end-user value. I even think dual license GPL version / paid version is a better choice than just releasing under MIT...I feel sorry but this story keeps repeating itself, we've been at it for decades and people are just realizing that open source is pointless without organized support groups or monetisation plan that respects developers and users freedoms

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#292

Post by Nition » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

young_unixer wrote: post #282

And Github still doesn't allow you to disable pull requests or issues in a repository. If I had an open source project, I would not publish it on Githib precisely for this reason. Open source doesn't necessarily imply open development, or horizontal organization, or constant support, or anything. It just implies that the source is open. Plus, on the Internet it's very hard to tell when someone is demanding something…

You actually can disable issues now; I'm glad they finally added it as an option.[1]

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/github/administering-a-repository...

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#293

Post by okareaman » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

It seems like some open source maintainers need to learn the power of "no" and how to say it without guilt. My life improved when I learned I could say no without explanation. Like everyone says whenever this topic comes up, you don't owe anyone anything.

Edit: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+say+no+without+feelin...

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#294

Post by mook » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

jbverschoor wrote: post #62

antran22 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, if the new project maintainers go against the community, but the community really need to use it, the community will just fork out a new path and move on. If the project is really open source.

Nobody forks anymore. Almost nobody contributes anymore. People have no idea that's it's mainly charity. And even then people demand, get angry, don't read any docs, etc, etc. Bigtech sometimes helps by employing these guys. What is really needed is a service, which does the moderation and filtering. Kind of like oss communication management as a service. For example by github.

I think that was always the case — the majority of people don't contribute meaningfully, and was quite demanding. I had an old open source project that got a few users, and eventually too many support requests for me to handle. Somebody stepped up and helped maintain things until I lost interest, but that was a very tiny fraction of the people involved. I was lucky there and (as far as I know) they never went rouge.

Outsourced moderation would probably end up something like Stack Overflow — useful things will be closed because non-subject-experts can't tell the difference between invalid questions and valid questions that look like invalid questions.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#295

Post by spockz » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 10:42 PM UTC

gamerDude wrote: post #249

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'm curious. Is there a reason to not build in some sort of ping for the software being used? Essentially doing analytics for open source usage so you can monitor how many people use it? Obviously there are some potential privacy issues here, but adding it to the README and doing a single ping on use seems like not too bad a compromise to keeping open source projects alive. It won't be 100% accurate due to offline us…

Generally apps that send telemetry get a lot of flak here. Even if mentioned in the docs/faq.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#296

Post by andrenatalbr » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

altf4 wrote: post #115

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 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…

Github allows any repo owner to adda donation button. That should be a more widespread practice.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#297

Post by matkoniecz » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

hnlmorg wrote: post #131

cheph wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, is it just me or has it become rarer for open source project maintainers to feel free to let projects go? I think it has always been rare. I generally avoid projects which are under a person's own github account because to me it is a massive red flag that they will kill the project by failing to maintain it and failing to hand it over at some point in time. When you build a project the most important part is t…

In an ideal world you're right. But most people don't create projects expecting -- or even wanting -- huge success. 1. Sometimes people create a project for themselves but use Github as a convenient place to store the code. I've done that before and found people filing issues against those projects. 2. Sometimes people create a project to scratch a personal itch and put it online in case it helps anyone else. Not in…

> Maybe there should be (maybe there already is) a software license that should better explain the "wrote this for myself. You're free to use it but don't expect support".

Put that in the readme?

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#298

Post by notriddle » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

c-cube wrote: post #71

radarsat1 wrote: post #7

Of course it's terrible to become burnt out and it feels awful not having enough time to work on an open source project that you love. But, is it just me or has it become rarer for open source project maintainers to feel free to let projects go? I don't mean to let them die, I mean, to find like-minded individuals to which you can defer some or all of the work? I realize that as the original author one feels a sense…

A temporary BDFL... Would that be called a TBD (temporary benevolent dictator)? :)

Benevolent Dictator Pro Tempore

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#299

Post by hinkley » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

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 think Richard Stallman's cynicism about licenses was misplaced 30 years ago, but that the tide is turning.

I do prefer to work on libraries that are available for commercial work. But I also cannot get my employers to pay for said libraries. Which is how many of us started using OSS in the first place - because nobody could smack us with a checkbook and say no.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#300

Post by johnnyanmac » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 11:21 PM UTC

gkilmain wrote: post #167

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…

"stars", at least from my perspective, doesn't map to usage. I've stared plenty of projects I don't use. I like the latter two metrics - thank you for sharing!

Devil's advocate: no action short of landing your own project will prove that you use a library. I've donated to stuff like Godot (which I have yet to open myself) and Blender (which I only know the bare basics of; I haven't even tried the new UI overhaul) years back because they are projects I appreciate an open source alternative for these very complex problems.

of course, giving cash is a much bigger gesture than just pressing a star button, but it sounds like the star button is closer in vein to the kinds of acknowledgement people are asking for here.