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

drmaciver.com

351–360 of 364 posts

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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids make you happy, but only when they move out as as long as they don’t break the bank. Truth is having kids is a kiss of death for your creative and professional career. E: Of course downvotes. Truth hurts. Let’s see how grey my comment gets.

Your edit got under my skin way more than your comment did. Kiss of death seemed melodramatic at best though. Every CEO, CTO, and CFO I've worked with had kids. Guess they were the lucky few who didn't have their professional career ruined by those goblin children?

We’re not impressed by the same caliber of people obviously. Don’t pretend tech is a meritocracy. It’s all nepotism.

I get under everyone’s skin here. Just seeing my username is enough to get ppl riled up in HN

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying this to be pedantic. And I’m not denying that there is some social expectations when living in society. If you say that there is no obligations, but also that you should follow some social expectations, then you’re contradicting yourself. It’s just a nicer way to say that people should behave according to what you consider to be acceptable. Btw, which society rules do you mean? Because you have a lot o…

Ok, so the problem here is that “obligation” has two meanings, and they’re being conflated here. One is pretty close to “being courteous to others” and the other is “you must do this”. When people say “maintainers have no obligation to anyone”, the point to the license where it usually says something like “THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS-IS WITH NO WARRANTY” and you can tell that it’s the legal “must” definition because…

I don’t think there is a conflation before your own comment. There is no reason to discuss legal obligations because that part is covered by licenses.

The entire discussion is at the level of social expectations.

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so the problem here is that “obligation” has two meanings, and they’re being conflated here. One is pretty close to “being courteous to others” and the other is “you must do this”. When people say “maintainers have no obligation to anyone”, the point to the license where it usually says something like “THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS-IS WITH NO WARRANTY” and you can tell that it’s the legal “must” definition because…

I don’t think there is a conflation before your own comment. There is no reason to discuss legal obligations because that part is covered by licenses. The entire discussion is at the level of social expectations.

> There is no reason to discuss legal obligations because that part is covered by licenses.

Correct, I think we agree on that.

> The entire discussion is at the level of social expectations.

No, this statement:

> No, there is no obligation. But there’s a thing called courtesy.

Is actually “No, there is no legal obligation. But there’s a thing called courtesy.“ And here the contradiction falls away and the discussion turns to whether there is a social expectation to be courteous. On that point my (and the above commenter, I suspect) would say that yes, of course there is an expectation of social courtesy. There’s one in every other setting too, so why not here?

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

#354
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…

Nice

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think there is a conflation before your own comment. There is no reason to discuss legal obligations because that part is covered by licenses. The entire discussion is at the level of social expectations.

> There is no reason to discuss legal obligations because that part is covered by licenses. Correct, I think we agree on that. > The entire discussion is at the level of social expectations. No, this statement: > No, there is no obligation. But there’s a thing called courtesy. Is actually “No, there is no legal obligation. But there’s a thing called courtesy.“ And here the contradiction falls away and the discussion…

You are not "gingerlime" who said that, I understand the original as "moral/social obligation" and not "legal obligation" but you seem to be putting the word "legal" on the users' mouth by saying what they "actually" mean?

As a Spaniard living in Japan, what social rules should I use to apply my social courtesy on Github?

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

#356
post #105

Github can help with this situation a lot. Yes, people are free to write and abandon whatever they want, but once a library has had hundreds of dependent users, and the primary repo is abandoned / unmaintained, Github could do a lot to guide dependent users away to a better fork. Today though, every popular repo has hundreds of forks and there is no easy way to identify forks that are more actively maintained. I unde…

Heck, GitHub could stard with filtering out "forks" that don't have any changes at all.

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

#357

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…

Nowadays, I don't feel anymore like I need to compete professionally. I've got a decent savings account, half my house is paid off, my family is healthy, and work is interesting. Why would I need to compete with anyone?

Because they're bidding on the same house as you, and can push for slightly more cash at work, presumably. But it's amazing what a paid-off house does for your assertiveness at work.

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

#358
post #35
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also different "shitty"'s. Some are only aesthetic/architecture features like bad CSS or a kooky object model or API or performance problems or something, but some have security vulnerabilities.

Absent an audit for a specific version of a library, you probably shouldn’t assume any random package you use is secure.

Well there's audit-insecure and then there's FormMail.pl insecure. I'm talking more about the latter.

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

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays, I don't feel anymore like I need to compete professionally. I've got a decent savings account, half my house is paid off, my family is healthy, and work is interesting. Why would I need to compete with anyone?

Because they're bidding on the same house as you, and can push for slightly more cash at work, presumably. But it's amazing what a paid-off house does for your assertiveness at work.

I didn't think about that part of the competition, that's true.

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

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your edit got under my skin way more than your comment did. Kiss of death seemed melodramatic at best though. Every CEO, CTO, and CFO I've worked with had kids. Guess they were the lucky few who didn't have their professional career ruined by those goblin children?

We’re not impressed by the same caliber of people obviously. Don’t pretend tech is a meritocracy. It’s all nepotism. I get under everyone’s skin here. Just seeing my username is enough to get ppl riled up in HN

?

That entire first line seems entirely unrelated the the words I typed. Did you respond to the correct person?

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