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

Sorry everybody, I failed with you

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 357 posts

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#341

Post by hnlmorg »

matkoniecz wrote: post #297
hnlmorg wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Pragmatically I think you're right that developers should put that but it feels like such a hostile comment to make that I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable publishing it.

There's probably a better way of phrasing it than I had though -- a way that is less standoffish.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#342

Post by rad_gruchalski »

ericb wrote: post #340
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a graph showing the fork activity. Also, the setting you are thinking if is probably “archive”.

A fork having activity doesn't imply it is a publicly maintained fork that people can rally around. Many of forks are made for personal purposes, experiments, one offs to patch bugs, to keep an eye on a project, or other reasons. I'm thinking of the opposite of "archive" -- a setting that means "I nominate myself to become the lead repo for the community to rally around should the community be interested. On this rep…

All valid points. I do miss some sort of guidance every now and then on some repos. The most difficult bit starts when multiple forks have different features one wants to have in their own fork.

It would be awesome if there was a way on github to say "give me the upstream with this repo cherry pick, this repo cherry pick". But that might be pretty difficult to implement.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#343

Post by account42 »

wrycoder wrote: post #130
glangdale wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SaaS or something explicitly that people know will 'phone home' is one thing, but putting unexpected telemetry into a library would be staggeringly unprofessional.

There is the Debian popularity contest: popcon.debian.org , which tracks how many Debian users have a given package installed.

popcon is intirely opt-in though, quite different from automatic telemetry that the user doesn't even knwo about

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#344

Post by gowld »

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…

> Much as I dislike those wacky "free for non-commercial use, otherwise, give me a call" licenses,

Why? Disliking someone not giving you free money seems rude.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#345

Post by account42 »

cheph wrote: post #243
jckahn wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very true. Even when collaborating with very skilled engineers, it takes a lot of time and energy to respond to ideas, questions, and review PRs. It’s like a regular programming job to a certain degree, but you’re typically not paid for doing it.

Software can be shitty garbage in many ways. It can be shitty garbage by having lots of bugs, and it can be shitty garbage by having a maintainer which cares more about bottlenecking all changes than about the future of a project. But everyone is free to make shitty software, so have at it.

Wow, calling people's software shitty because they care enough about it to want to vet contributions?

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#346

Post by account42 »

ericb wrote: post #262
onion2k wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can just do it. They literally can't though. Only the owner or a maintainer has permission to merge PRs in to the main branch. Anyone can fork a repo, write a patch, and PR it, but that's where outside contributions stop. It still takes someone from the original team to accept a contribution. Forking a project and then maintaining that fork as a separate project is an option, but it's divisive one that a lot o…

This is a serious shortcoming in github's current UI. There's no easy discovery for which forks are active. It would be useful if there was a checkbox "Actively Publicly Maintained" in forked repos that defaults to Off. That way, on the forks page of a repo, if someone is offering an alternative, an "actively maintained" check mark (and perhaps a date) can be shown and it can bubble to the top of the "forks" list.

Even just finding out which forks have any changes compared to the main repo is difficult on GitHub.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#347

Post by loup-vaillant »

mumblemumble wrote: post #209
snth wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think getting your name and work out in the world with open source work is a career _advancing_ move.

I've honestly never been at a job interview where people gave a crap about my open source contributions. They're typically much more interested in hearing war stories from the closed source projects I've worked on. The thing about open source projects is, they tend to be slightly generic things like "file format," "widget library," or "machine learning algorithm" that most companies see as the kind of thing they can…

> I've honestly never been at a job interview where people gave a crap about my open source contributions.

They gave a crap about mine, I believe for two reasons: first, I put it in the middle of my CV, at the same level as my regular job. This basically forces everyone to talk about it. Second, Monocypher is a crypto library, and cryptography tends impress people.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#348

Post by account42 »

detaro wrote: post #76
c-cube wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Shouldn't it be BTD? Somehow that word order feels better.

With the concerns of the next maintiner going rogue, maybe the ambiguity in TBD is called for.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#349

Post by johnnyanmac »

apocalypstyx wrote: post #308
johnnyanmac wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Without full control over their tools, human beings cannot be free/autonomous. this assumes humans want to be free/autonomous. modern society already hunts and provides power/water/shelter to most of the middle class and above populace. How many truly want that full control over their resources to begin with?

Yes, in general humans often do everything they can to escape from freedom. Or, as the serpent said to Eve: "Here's Looking at You, Kid."

you force goodwill onto humans and you push them to the serpent even faster. The whole topic here is based on making people do more work for less rewards, after all. More work billionaires benefit most from.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#350

Post by WalterBright »

pjmlp wrote: post #336
WalterBright wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication is that the OSS contributor has to be good. The same with street musicians. I once had the pleasure of encountering some street musicians that were very, very good. I bought their CD out of their suitcase. It remains one my favorite CDs. Pludo's "The Only Thing Certain Is The Future". Sadly, they never made it. The large majority of street musicians are worthy of a tip, but I'll pass on their CD. P.S.…

Only if living in tier 1 countries, I can assure you there are countries where both professions have equal chances of success, and probably the musicians get the upper hand on opportunities. In many of such places you will probably live better from tourist tips than trying to make it as programmer.

That's no longer true in these days of working remotely.
Post reply on HN