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

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

#51

Post by freedomben »

franciscop wrote: post #22
nerdbaggy wrote: post #2

I had a GitHub project that got a few hundred stars. The amount of mean, crazy, and entitled people is crazy. I have no idea how the bigger projects can deal with it.

I have few projects on 1k+ stars; the ones that are more beginner-friendly are normally where I get most unrelated requests. I used to help people where possible, but now I just don't have the time (or TBH, motivation). So I closed the issues on those two projects that got most low-quality issues. People started to open PR to tell me I was wrong and I should open the issues. This cemented my decision, oh the entitlem…

Did you tell them why you were closing the issues as #WONTFIX? I maintain a few projects in the "hundreds of stars" range, and I also send PRs to numerous projects with regularity (I make a point to fix typos and such in documentation when I find them). Of course some people are low effort issuers, but some people put time and effort into opening an issue on a project. When the maintainer closes it without even taking 60 seconds to type a quick message why, it shows me that the maintainer is the entitled dick, not the user. It certainly goes both ways. I hope you don't just close issues without an explanation. If people disagree and complain, that's one thing, but at least attempt to articulate your reasons.

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

#52

Post by bredren »

I just picked up maintainership of django-address. It is a set of models and methods for dealing with postal addresses in Django.

The product is dominant in seo and many django beginners and intermediate install it without looking at it.

But it has also languished for years and failed to get an important model rearchitecture after the author had to stop work on it.

Still, I see it as a great turnaround opportunity and I’ve already learned a lot about OS and the pressure of knowing people want code fixed.

I think this article is for the author, Luke, who made this for himself for Australian addresses when django was still a smaller framework.

But it is also for me as someone trying to get context on how it has languished so long, and motivation to steer this thing into a place where it into helping more people without undue pressure.

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

#53

Post by freedomben »

laurentdc wrote: post #39
nerdbaggy wrote: post #2

I had a GitHub project that got a few hundred stars. The amount of mean, crazy, and entitled people is crazy. I have no idea how the bigger projects can deal with it.

I agree it's an audience problem. I had a Wordpress plugin up and I'd get all sorts of entitled requests, borderline "plz fix my website you broke it". But also had some C libraries for Arm STM32 and only ever got solid pull requests and people eager to help. You see the same thing in IRC / Discord channels of those technologies.

At the risk of stereotyping a bit here (from personal experience), Wordpress users tend to be a lot less technical than C programmers, and I find the less technical the audience, the more entitled they tend to be. My theory is that because they don't sling code themselves, they just don't understand how much work and effort goes in to making good software. Because they don't understand it, they tend to not appreciate it.

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

#54

Post by j88439h84 »

tych0 wrote: post #44

I've used and been the maintainer of a "shitty" open source window manager off and on for the last 10 years. I love the project. People at my last few companies joke about it. But it's so fun. Who cares if it's shitty. Ride bikes and write code.

Been using it for years, I really appreciate your work!

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

#55

Post by bdcravens »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #21
andrewstuart wrote: post #16

But when potential employers come looking at your work they'll say "hey this code is shitty! It's not a work of art with 100% code coverage tests and perfect in every way. We can't possibly give you a job. Every line of code in our corporate repo is Mona Lisa quality, we can't let rubbishy developers like you in."

The first thing you learn when you're proud of your Github profile is that nobody is actually clicking into your projects and reading code, with few exceptions. Sure, at small companies where developers interview you, or maybe if you link to a specific relevant project in your cover letter, you might get a pair of eyeballs. But I think people vastly overestimate the readership of their repos when looking for jobs.

When I've interviewed developers, I will look at their profile if they include it in their resume, but only give it a cursory look, to maybe ask some high level questions in the interview. If I had a lot of time to do in-depth code reviews of projects that aren't my job, we wouldn't be needing to hire :-)

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

#56

Post by matttb »

andrewstuart wrote: post #16

But when potential employers come looking at your work they'll say "hey this code is shitty! It's not a work of art with 100% code coverage tests and perfect in every way. We can't possibly give you a job. Every line of code in our corporate repo is Mona Lisa quality, we can't let rubbishy developers like you in."

Since there are comments refuting you, I'll provide an anecdote the other way. My coworkers absolutely do this to every single potential interviewee.

On multiple occasions I've had to talk them out of not wanting to even interview based on one random file in a random repo by the interviewee.

Because of this, when I start applying I hide all my repos that I'm not mostly proud of.

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

#57

Post by Jesus_piece »

freedomben wrote: post #51
franciscop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have few projects on 1k+ stars; the ones that are more beginner-friendly are normally where I get most unrelated requests. I used to help people where possible, but now I just don't have the time (or TBH, motivation). So I closed the issues on those two projects that got most low-quality issues. People started to open PR to tell me I was wrong and I should open the issues. This cemented my decision, oh the entitlem…

Did you tell them why you were closing the issues as #WONTFIX? I maintain a few projects in the "hundreds of stars" range, and I also send PRs to numerous projects with regularity (I make a point to fix typos and such in documentation when I find them). Of course some people are low effort issuers, but some people put time and effort into opening an issue on a project. When the maintainer closes it without even takin…

I think that's the point. Maintainers have no obligation to do anything for anyone

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

#58

Post by dnautics »

lumost wrote: post #30
dnautics wrote: post #5

As the author of shitty open source libraries I agree, but a bit of a disclaimer in the readme should be expected.

When I find an open lib on github that looks to solve the problem I have, and it has a "warning! don't use" on it - I assume this means the author has no intention of maintaining the library, accepting patches, or preserving backwards compatibility. Contrast this with the standard assumption - I'm using random code off the internet with a good faith effort by a maintainer not to break my stuff. If I find things broke…

That's right, but you can be more specific. "Warning: code quality isn't great. PRs accepted". Or "warning, experimental" etc.

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

#59

Post by DangitBobby »

saurik wrote: 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…

I need to publish it publicly to install it via pip, npm, cargo, etc. for public use.

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

#60

Post by sgillen »

noitsnot wrote: post #43
franciscop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have few projects on 1k+ stars; the ones that are more beginner-friendly are normally where I get most unrelated requests. I used to help people where possible, but now I just don't have the time (or TBH, motivation). So I closed the issues on those two projects that got most low-quality issues. People started to open PR to tell me I was wrong and I should open the issues. This cemented my decision, oh the entitlem…

I think that's understandable. You closed issues for bugs you didn't resolve.

Maybe you know the OP, but in my experience a lot of issues are not bug reports but very low quality, uninformed or unreasonable requests or questions. Like questions made about basic functionality that is answered in the documentation/faq, or requests for features that are completely outside the scope of the project. Another popular category is requests for basic education e.g. “how does DQN work?”. That’s fine if it’s one person but when it’s 100 it gets overwhelming.
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