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My boundaries as an open source developer

joeldenning.com

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Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#41

Post by lamontcg »

inglor wrote: post #18
lamontcg wrote: post #5

Once again I wish github would allow the ability to limit who could open issues and PRs in order to do development in the open with a trusted/vetted set of collaborators without being subject to every zero-effort bug report from users.

You can already turn on repository interaction limits limiting issues/PRs to collaborators. It needs to be re-enabled every 6 months https://docs.github.com/en/communities/moderating-comments-a...

That isn't the same thing. It is temporary. You can also only limit to existing users (blocking only new GH users which is useless), or limit to contributors (people who have merged commits in the main branch), or limit to users with write access. I want to retain sole write access but allow issues to be cut by trusted users who have never submitted PRs or code. I also want it permanent and not temporary.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#42

Post by mtlynch »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #20
lamontcg wrote: post #5

Once again I wish github would allow the ability to limit who could open issues and PRs in order to do development in the open with a trusted/vetted set of collaborators without being subject to every zero-effort bug report from users.

It would be nice to make the "open source, but closed to contributions/collaborators" model like SQLite and others (lightstream, etc) follow more of a first class citizen on github.

Small sidenote: Litestream loosened their contribution policy, and they now accept bugfixes but not new features:

https://github.com/benbjohnson/litestream#contribution-polic...

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#43

Post by lamontcg »

akvadrako wrote: post #19
lamontcg wrote: post #5

Once again I wish github would allow the ability to limit who could open issues and PRs in order to do development in the open with a trusted/vetted set of collaborators without being subject to every zero-effort bug report from users.

You don't need to use github, especially when you don't want the public making issues.

800# gorilla. don't think gitlab supports this either. that probably leaves self-hosting and all the brittleness and pain around that.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#44

Post by [deleted] »

woah wrote: post #34

I totally get where they are coming from but it does make it sound like unsupported software. After reading that, I would not use it without completely understanding the code as if I had written it myself (and maybe that's what you should do for every dependency anyway). I would probably look for another open source project to use instead. There seems to be a constant supply of people starting open source projects wh…

[deleted]

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#45

Post by TheCoelacanth »

lawn wrote: post #28
lmilcin wrote: post #3

I only have one rule: I only contact an open source developer if I believe resolving the problem would make the product better unless I am willing to offer them reasonable money to do it.

A counterpoint: You may view this feature as making the product better, but it might not fit the vision of the owner/developer and to them it will only generate a maintenance burden and bloat.

You can't know that before you contact them, though.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#46

Post by TheCoelacanth »

GoToRO wrote: post #38
cweagans wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about honesty or fame. The author does not and can not know if the code is going to be good for your use case. Only you can know that. Evaluate it yourself and see if it works for you. If it doesn't, don't use it. It's really that simple.

If they can not know their software is good or bad just please choose another profession.

If you want assurances about the quality of software you're using, pay for a support contract. You can't expect assurances like that on something you got for free.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#47

Post by bachmeier »

brunoborges wrote: post #27
inglor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can already turn on repository interaction limits limiting issues/PRs to collaborators. It needs to be re-enabled every 6 months https://docs.github.com/en/communities/moderating-comments-a...

It's not the same thing, because of the flow: - developer finds a cool project - developer consumes the cool project - developer finds opportunity for bug fix or enhancement - developer forks and starts working on the enhancements - developer spends hours/days writing code - developer submits a PR - developer gets a notification (upon filling the PR, or after, from a bot) - developer is now extremely frustrated - dev…

I don't understand. You have "developer forks". Everything after that is irrelevant. That's the whole point of open source.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#48

Post by unionpivo »

GoToRO wrote: post #38
cweagans wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about honesty or fame. The author does not and can not know if the code is going to be good for your use case. Only you can know that. Evaluate it yourself and see if it works for you. If it doesn't, don't use it. It's really that simple.

If they can not know their software is good or bad just please choose another profession.

Your view of software seems to be very limited.

There is plenty of good software out there, that is only useful in limited.

I wrote code for small drone. If you don't know what you are doing you can easily burn down your house, with one of those (lipo are no joke).

SQLlight is great software, but if you try using it in wrong situation, you are going to have a problem.

In my experience for most of the software, the only answer is: it depends on what you are doing.

And sometimes even not so good software is best solution for a problem.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#49

Post by FooBarWidget »

woah wrote: post #34

I totally get where they are coming from but it does make it sound like unsupported software. After reading that, I would not use it without completely understanding the code as if I had written it myself (and maybe that's what you should do for every dependency anyway). I would probably look for another open source project to use instead. There seems to be a constant supply of people starting open source projects wh…

> but it does make it sound like unsupported software

Pretty much every open source license contains a section along the lines of "there is absolutely no warranty". Older projects make this crystal clear in their readme. Newer, hipper projects don't, but that's only because they don't state it as explicitly.

Open source software is unsupported software unless you paid for a support contract. If you still get support despite not having paid for such a contract, then that support is an incidental gift that can go away at any time for any reason.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#50

Post by kccqzy »

bachmeier wrote: post #47
brunoborges wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same thing, because of the flow: - developer finds a cool project - developer consumes the cool project - developer finds opportunity for bug fix or enhancement - developer forks and starts working on the enhancements - developer spends hours/days writing code - developer submits a PR - developer gets a notification (upon filling the PR, or after, from a bot) - developer is now extremely frustrated - dev…

I don't understand. You have "developer forks". Everything after that is irrelevant. That's the whole point of open source.

On GitHub a fork is a lightweight thing. People fork the repo in order to contribute because they can't push to the original repo. It's not like you are philosophically against Emacs and decide to fork it to produce XEmacs.
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