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Don't be that open-source user, don't be me

jacobtomlinson.dev

41–50 of 173 posts

Re: Don't be that open-source user, don't be me

#41
post #10

I kinda blame Github for all this. In the past, there was just a bit of friction before filing a bug or dropping a comment on a project. You had to sign up for bugzilla. You had to sign up for the mailing list. Something. Anything. It was just enough friction that you had to want to post that comment or file that bug. You weren't going to waste your time just to be a shit. With everything on Github, it's simply too e…

If you want to do some harm, you’ll jump through any hoops, including signing up for mailing lists. But if you want to make a meaningful contribution, and you’re faced with too many absurd requirements, you might just give up.

Re: Don't be that open-source user, don't be me

#42
post #31

Sometimes you can just go fix the software yourself. Maintainers always seem to say you should file an issue before working on a PR. However, I find for features you really need, you should just fork the software yourself[0] and implement what you need, then put up a quick PR with your changes. The worst they can do is reject your changes, in which case...well, you're using your fork anyway. [0] Github forks are ligh…

A couple of times I’ve come across issues in OSS and gone to raise a bug report while digging through the code to see if I can fix it or propose a solution. But when I opened the issue and saw it required me to write a novel I’ve just closed it, worked around or patched it and moved on. It’s too much of a hassle.

Re: Don't be that open-source user, don't be me

#43
For better or worse, open source software is competing with paid software, so expectations for basic support and maintenance need to exist. If there is not enough capacity for this, the maintainers should make it clear upfront in very visible ways so people can use that information when deciding what to use.

Re: Don't be that open-source user, don't be me

#44
post #28
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Nevermind, we're saying the same thing since you're talking about commenting with a +1 not reactions. > Adding a +1 comment really does nothing - it's just one more useless notifications for everyone I don't think reactions trigger notification emails.

They are talking about a literal comment saying something like "+1", which is very common. Not a thumbs up reaction.

The thumbs up was added only a few years ago. +1 is quite common in older treads.

Re: Don't be that open-source user, don't be me

#45
> While some open source projects are created by large companies in a structured and planned way I think it is fair to say that most grow organically.

> Coming back to the Grafana example, I was one of those open source users

Well, Grafana is definitely a large company. They recently devoured Prometheus community, that was really open source before.

Re: Don't be that open-source user, don't be me

#46

Grafana is a bad example. They switched to agpl and pushing companies in paying for it. Which is okay of course but grafana labs is no longer a free open source project. Of course potentially feature request might come in by key account manager or other hidden business agreements but I myself still comment on the opensource front like GitHub issues. When my company now pays money for it, my expectation definitely cha…

How is AGPL not FOSS as defined by both OSI and FSF?

AGPL has been accepted as libre by all of OSI, FSF and Debian.

Some folks and types of companies don't like it due to the extra code distribution provisions that trigger for modified versions that users interact with over a network.

Re: Don't be that open-source user, don't be me

#47
post #26

Regarding adding +1 to issues - rather than doing this, up-vote the issue on GitHub (thumb up). This can be useful to maintainers because they can sort by thumb up and see the most popular ones. Adding a +1 comment really does nothing - it's just one more useless notifications for everyone, and it won't allow filtering or sorting issues. People might even unwatch the issue because of this and thus missing useful comm…

> This can be useful to maintainers because they can sort by thumb up and see the most popular ones. TIL, but I also think it's not really clear what a reaction does. Does adding a reaction to a comment in an issue thread bump the whole issue, does it have to be added to the top issue to show up in sorting? I think a global "Vote for this issue" button would make this a bit more clearer than just a reaction within th…

> Does adding a reaction to a comment in an issue thread bump the whole issue, does it have to be added to the top issue to show up in sorting?

Yes it needs to be added to the top post. It's not really an official thing I guess, but for popular projects these reactions add up, and it helps getting a clearer picture of what matters to users.

Re: Don't be that open-source user, don't be me

#48
post #31

Sometimes you can just go fix the software yourself. Maintainers always seem to say you should file an issue before working on a PR. However, I find for features you really need, you should just fork the software yourself[0] and implement what you need, then put up a quick PR with your changes. The worst they can do is reject your changes, in which case...well, you're using your fork anyway. [0] Github forks are ligh…

> The worst they can do is reject your changes, in which case...well, you're using your fork anyway.

Actually the worst result is ignoring the PR for years. I've seen this happen quite a lot, and it puts me in an uneasy spot where I don't know whether it's something with the PR or the way I communicated it or what.

After having this experience one too many times, I've started opening issues and if I'm really serious about getting it into the project, disucssing with people in the related IRC/forum/whatever before starting to work on it. This helps notify people that hey, I'm doing a bit of effort and I'd love to at least get a "sorry I'm too busy/uninterested in this feature to look at your PR".

Re: Don't be that open-source user, don't be me

#49
post #31

Sometimes you can just go fix the software yourself. Maintainers always seem to say you should file an issue before working on a PR. However, I find for features you really need, you should just fork the software yourself[0] and implement what you need, then put up a quick PR with your changes. The worst they can do is reject your changes, in which case...well, you're using your fork anyway. [0] Github forks are ligh…

Your quick PR becomes the maintainer's burden, and rejecting a pull request can also come with a substantial time cost. It's best to conform to the contribution process described by the maintainer to avoid wasting their time as much as possible.

Re: Don't be that open-source user, don't be me

#50

This is a thoughtful and important article for anyone who uses or creates open-source software, which is everyone. But, if we follow this advice? If some more thoughtful and considerate users kindly reduce their input into support conversations to avoid overwhelming developers, doesn't this mean that support conversations will become dominated by users who are not thoughtful and considerate?

I don't know what the best answer to that potential problem is: I think users should continue to be allowed to comment on any issue.

However I do think that the amount of analysis and effort that the user has done for each comment is relevant.

Silly hypothetical example: if a project is a Fibonacci function that (incorrectly) prints nothing but repeated "1" values, then the potential range of comments may include:

- "it's wrong"

- "it's printing the wrong output"

- "expected to see 1 1 2 3 ... but found 1 1 1 1 ..."

- "line two is missing an addition operator near character five"

- "please see #3 for a pull request to add an addition operator on line two"

(roughly in order of estimated "most frequent" to "least common" comment volume -- and not coincidentally, also ordered from "least analysis" to "most analysis" performed)

Not all participants have the same level of analysis and development ability - and for many projects there's a lot of surrounding domain knowledge (and/or history) required to post more valuable comments.

Also worth noting: high-frequency, low-analysis comments along the lines of "it's broken" can still be useful - they're often an indicator that a bug has been introduced, and can be the equivalent of comment storms on Twitter asking whether a service is down after a website/API has an outage.

Coming back to the problem: it's difficult to scale the ability of small groups of maintainers to respond to large volumes of comments - as the article alludes to, it can become a kind of "time denial of service" attack. I'd guess that problem is most pronounced for developer-and-end-user-facing projects (web frameworks, for example).

One solution could be tools that help maintainers cluster and categorize comments -- customer support tools are often designed to do this.

Another idea is whether it'd be possible to challenge the commentor gently to check whether they've provided all the relevant information. This could theoretically be conversational (human or automated) -- and that's similar to tech support in traditional IT.

Finally, a structural solution is to attempt to choose software architectures that distribute the support load and allow clusters of maintainers and developers to develop expertise in particular areas. This is, to a large extent, naturally the way that open source evolves. If one project becomes too heavyweight, then frequently we'll see smaller libraries emerge that provide the core functionality elements with a smaller code surface. If development slows unacceptably or moves in problematic directions, then motivated actors generally step in to fork or create an alternative.

In summary: I think that these ticket entitlement issues have likely existed in closed environments for a long time, and there are patterns and tools for dealing with them that may be valuable. Also it's a software-and-organizational architecture issue (in an evolutionary environment with no central authority).

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