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Terraform is currently not reviewing community pull requests

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Re: Terraform is currently not reviewing community pull requests

#41

Post by robocat »

jen20 wrote: post #25
electroly wrote: post #14

Props to them for being honest, but it's still not a good look for Hashicorp. Their stewardship of Terraform leaves a lot to be desired. For years now I've watched Terraform PRs just wither on the vine. You get the impression that nobody is working on the AWS provider at all. Every PR to the AWS provider that I've ever cared about has taken years to be reviewed and merged despite lots of thumbs-ups and comments from…

A few years ago, there used to be community reviewers of pull requests to the AWS provider - indeed I reviewed dozens after leaving HashiCorp. My own access for this got removed in (IIRC) late 2018, and I’d assume this was across the board. I don’t think it’s conceivable that any reasonable number of employees could satisfy the demand of maintaining the first-party provider set in the current form, without leveraging…

> I for one will not sign a CLA that allows proprietary relicensing

Why the objection?

For it to have a material effect, both (a) Hashicorp would need to take Terradorm proprietary within a few years while your use actively need updates, and (b) there would have to be no one else maintaining a fork based on the existing MPL2[3] code.

They say[2] why they need a CLA, which doesn’t seem deceptive.

From the CLA[1] “you reserve all right, title, and interest in and to Your Contributions”, which is unlike the FSF which demands copyright assignment[4] “Put simply, this is the legal transfer of copyright on a program from the developers to the Free Software Foundation.”[5].

[1] https://www.hashicorp.com/cla

[2] https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/introducing-a-cla

[3] https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/main/LICENSE

[4] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html

[5] https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2014/spring/copyright-assignmen...

Re: Terraform is currently not reviewing community pull requests

#42

Post by akdor1154 »

Notanothertoo wrote: post #23
OJFord wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a good review at least as hard as a good PR?

No, reading code is far easier than writing it. Either way both have go be done regardless of the author.

> No, reading code is far easier than writing it.

I'm gonna say I think that's flat out wrong in most cases.

Obviously there's a grey area for trivial stuff.

Re: Terraform is currently not reviewing community pull requests

#43

Post by dharmab »

arthurcolle wrote: post #20
jdavis703 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, just use our own forked version.

So then when your upstream repo diverges would you just rebase and manually add in anything you want from the forked development tree on the upstream side? Not sure what's best practice so... just curious how people have handled this - I usually leave my forks of stuff pretty stale and focus on my own little sub-pieces to achieve what I want but not too much else.

Yes, we would branch from upstream again and apply the patch set against the new branch. Normally it is trivial but once in a while there are manual changes necessary.

Re: Terraform is currently not reviewing community pull requests

#44

Post by acidbaseextract »

arthurcolle wrote: post #20
jdavis703 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, just use our own forked version.

So then when your upstream repo diverges would you just rebase and manually add in anything you want from the forked development tree on the upstream side? Not sure what's best practice so... just curious how people have handled this - I usually leave my forks of stuff pretty stale and focus on my own little sub-pieces to achieve what I want but not too much else.

Maintaining the fork as a stack of patches using something like Stacked Git can make it a little easier than rebasing: https://stacked-git.github.io/

Re: Terraform is currently not reviewing community pull requests

#45

Post by mpd »

danpalmer wrote: post #2

These things happen, props to Hashicorp for communicating about it. It would be easy to say that this is a failure of open-source in some way, but to do so would be unfair to the huge amount of work that companies put into tools like this, and the stewardship that they offer, both of which take a lot of time and money. If periods of low activity while teams change are the cost the community needs to pay for that, I t…

I think it's the likely reality of far more projects than just terraform, and I don't fault the project completely for reaching this state - attrition is a brutal thing.

It's distressing personally though, that it's an issue unknown to me before I read this post, and affects a product I use and champion.

Re: Terraform is currently not reviewing community pull requests

#46

Post by sergiotapia »

leetrout wrote: post #6
danpalmer wrote: post #2

These things happen, props to Hashicorp for communicating about it. It would be easy to say that this is a failure of open-source in some way, but to do so would be unfair to the huge amount of work that companies put into tools like this, and the stewardship that they offer, both of which take a lot of time and money. If periods of low activity while teams change are the cost the community needs to pay for that, I t…

I had a conversation with my coworkers when I worked there about being upfront with folks that we wouldn't review or accept their PR and stop leaving people hanging (this was on the TFE provider). I'm glad this was added. I stand by my statement then and now: there is nothing worse than contributing to something open source and then have your PR completely ignored.

I disagree, when someone opens a PR on my project it's an imposition of my time. I appreciate the help but I will review when I have time and feel like it's a good time to do it.

Re: Terraform is currently not reviewing community pull requests

#47

Post by makeitdouble »

mrtweetyhack wrote: post #8
jdavis703 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve made PRs because I need the change for my day job. By the time I’ve traced an issue down to a third party library the cost of making a PR is minimal. But if they don’t want to take the changes, it doesn’t bother me. Of course I don’t work on open source out of passion, so I could imagine this is different for the true believers.

If you spent the time and effort to hunt down the problem for them, the least they could do is look into it. repos that don't care enough are a waste of time.

TBF, even if your PR solves an actual issue a number of users have, it still might not be a good fit for the project's future, and starting a discussion about it might not be worth anyone's time.

More importantly, as you disclosed your solution, other affected by the issue can rely on your code in the meantime (= the rest of the project's life in some cases. I've been there). If it really is a critical issue that isn't solved, your fix can always be used in a different fork with better maintenance.

All in all, the upstream repo not responding to a PR isn't the end of the world I think, and the openness of the system makes it an acceptable state in many ways IMHO.

Re: Terraform is currently not reviewing community pull requests

#48

Post by void_mint »

benatkin wrote: post #11
danpalmer wrote: post #2

These things happen, props to Hashicorp for communicating about it. It would be easy to say that this is a failure of open-source in some way, but to do so would be unfair to the huge amount of work that companies put into tools like this, and the stewardship that they offer, both of which take a lot of time and money. If periods of low activity while teams change are the cost the community needs to pay for that, I t…

They don't happen to community projects like Node.js, Rust, Vue, or Debian. Perhaps this is apples and oranges, but I'm most interested in open source projects that are governed by a foundation.

Comparing programming languages to individual open source projects is silly. Lots of Node and Rust projects are behind on PRs. Also Vue just doesn't allow community development, which makes everything much easier.

Re: Terraform is currently not reviewing community pull requests

#49

Post by void_mint »

braddeicide wrote: post #10

Surely community patches are such a good return on investment they should be pulling devs off other areas to keep someone on reviewing public prs. I've always been confused by companies that aren't over the moon to spend minimal review time to get the benefit of hours of work by free employees.

I would guess that the signal to noise ratio is pretty poor on community submitted patches. You'd rather just submit a bug to an employee and then get a more consistently correct solution than sift through potentially poor PRs.

Re: Terraform is currently not reviewing community pull requests

#50

Post by geerlingguy »

leetrout wrote: post #38
qbasic_forever wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people think that just doing unsolicitied work and pressing a button means the people on the other side are obligated to spend time reviewing and integrating it. GitHub has weirdly unbalanced open source contributions with a heavier burden and burnout on maintainers. Contributing to a project doesn't mean just slinging code and calling it good. Communicate--talk to the people maintaining the co…

To be explicit: I agree. But I still think it's basic decency to close the PR and tell them No. Or if you plan to leave it around make a comment to that effect.

There are many projects where just doing that would be the equivalent of a full time position. Even saying no requires a skilled review.
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