Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sorry everybody, I failed with you

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 357 posts

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#61

Post by radicalbyte »

andrewstuart wrote: post #34

The pattern is familiar: * open source project * success * no monetary reward, maybe just cost * burnout * project abandoned This is why I don't try to make any open source projects - what's the gain? I'd only do it if it paid money. If people aren't willing to pay then I'm not willing to work.

I'm exactly the same - I choose not to open source things because it's more hassle than it's worth.

Also as someone who works in a Microsoft language, I get really tired of silly immature Go/PHP/Python developers who seem to get off on hating on Microsoft and have this strange desire to preach that opinion everywhere.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#62

Post by jbverschoor »

antran22 wrote: post #16
robin_reala wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the worry of handing projects over stems from a couple of fairly high-profile events when projects were handed over to theoretically trust-worthy people who went rogue and used them as a platform for malware or spear phishing. Suddenly, even just relinquishing control can be a bad thing for the community.

The thing is, if the new project maintainers go against the community, but the community really need to use it, the community will just fork out a new path and move on. If the project is really open source.

Nobody forks anymore. Almost nobody contributes anymore.

People have no idea that's it's mainly charity. And even then people demand, get angry, don't read any docs, etc, etc.

Bigtech sometimes helps by employing these guys. What is really needed is a service, which does the moderation and filtering. Kind of like oss communication management as a service. For example by github.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#63

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

antran22 wrote: post #50
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that really happens, anymore. Twenty years ago, they would have done that, but these days, someone would just write a replacement from scratch (quite possibly, proprietary), or everyone would abandon it, along with their own projects that depend on it. Most open-source (and closed-source) APIs and SDKs are “Swiss Army knife” projects, with many functions that serve many purposes. Most API consumers use…

I think we are straying from the point of FOSS once we talk about money. If I start a new open source project, it will be my gift to the world, and I expect to gain nothing from it financially. If Google make a billion bucks from my project then I'm sure some other dudes running a startup is using it too, and if my project helps them then I'm happy. If my help is not appreciated, lotsa luck gentlemen ;) As I have mad…

Preaching to the choir, here. Take a gander at my work.

But making things that other people depend on is an obligation; not just a vocation.

I liken writing an SDK/API/library to having children. Once they are there, they aren't really my "property" anymore, and I am under an obligation to maintain and support them, so I need to keep that in mind, when I publish them. I need to play the long game.

I've written a system that is used by thousands, around the world, and is the backbone infrastructure for a particular demographic. It is not hyperbole to say that lives depend on it. I worked on it for ten years, before transferring it.

The best thing that I ever did for that system was toss the keys to a new team, and walk away. Nowadays, I'm just the dorky old man that chips in his two cents' worth, from time to time.

I'm not particularly interested in getting into religious battles, which is fairly common in the [F]OSS community. I mostly code for the love of the craft. Delivering and supporting open-source projects helps me to have a purpose, but I also take my obligations quite seriously.

One of those obligations is to go to great lengths to deliver very high-quality software. I'm quite aware that it is not commercially feasible to write software that meets my personal Quality bar, so I give it away for free,

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#64

Post by inbx0 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #34

The pattern is familiar: * open source project * success * no monetary reward, maybe just cost * burnout * project abandoned This is why I don't try to make any open source projects - what's the gain? I'd only do it if it paid money. If people aren't willing to pay then I'm not willing to work.

I think it's worth noting that it doesn't seem like the author here sees it quite the same way as you do. Burnout is obviously bad, but it also seems to me that he genuinely enjoys writing open source software, so I guess that enjoyment (plus some "opportunities" he got) is the gain.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#65

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

antran22 wrote: post #56
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that really happens, anymore. Twenty years ago, they would have done that, but these days, someone would just write a replacement from scratch (quite possibly, proprietary), or everyone would abandon it, along with their own projects that depend on it. Most open-source (and closed-source) APIs and SDKs are “Swiss Army knife” projects, with many functions that serve many purposes. Most API consumers use…

Also to refute your point here, I would say that there's not really that many project maintainers that just totally go rogue and kill the whole project. An event that was most similar to what I describe here is the Freenode boogaloo, and you can see that users started to move to Libera.Chat. If you advertise your product as community oriented and do stuff that your community despises then you basically have just shoo…

TBH, I'm not exactly sure how that "refutes my point." I apologize for mentioning money. I think that may have raised some hackles.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#66

Post by pteraspidomorph »

fxtentacle wrote: post #45
bawolff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is a back-firing of the push for people to be "nice" and "professional". Open source maintainers used to have the sterotype of being rather harsh, and basically telling people to f off if they had stupid questions, didn't RTFM or didn't follow cultural norms. And dont get me wrong, there's a lot wrong with that, but maybe it was also that way for a reason.

Agree. I'm active in some communities that are unfriendly if not outright hostile towards newcomers. I'm sure they lose a good amount of potential contributers that way. But the few newcomers that remain are highly motivated.

Now that I think of it, that's also my experience. If I really need a project to do whatever (and can't implement the feature myself), I shut up, let the horrible attitude wash over me and put hours of effort into testing and providing helpful information, and maintainers usually mellow out eventually. If I hadn't done all of that work, the maintainer would have had to do it. Sure, they're much better equipped to do it and can probably do it in a quarter of the time it takes me, but multiplied by fifty tickets... Oof.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#67

Post by fsflover »

ulzeraj wrote: post #21
intricatedetail wrote: post #6

That's the dark side of open source. Companies think these projects grow on trees and they use them without paying anything. We need law changes to ensure that open source can be sustainable and companies pay the fair share of revenue they make by using it.

> We need law changes to ensure that open source can be sustainable and companies pay the fair share of revenue they make by using it. We don't need more laws. There is something called a License Agreement. However if you publish your stuff on GPL and other permissive licenses you can't really complain about Amazon, Google and Microsoft making millions on your code while you beg for donations on your Github page.

> We don't need more laws. There is something called a License Agreement.

We just need UBI.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#68

Post by mattgreenrocks »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #26
danbmil99 wrote: post #2

This may be an obvious point but how can you say you failed when due to the fact that it's open source, anybody could check out the code and start supporting it?

Agreed, I would never write such a message. I have zero responsibility toward the users of my open source code, and my license does reflect that fact, unless they pay me. You're not satisfied with my open source work? Fork and fix it. You can't fix it? Hire somebody who can. You don't have the money to hire somebody who can? Then find other users, do a fundraiser and hire somebody who can fix the code. This culture o…

What bugged me the most was how unwilling users were to dive into code to make small edits. They’d rather spend 3X the time filing issues, writing emails, and tweeting about it. And if you tell them, “maybe you should just not use this,” then you’re seen as unreasonable.

The entitlement drove me out. The market is more about chasing shiny things than using things that are the best fit.

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#69

Post by progx »

fxtentacle wrote: post #49
throw_m239339 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe people shouldn't start software projects if there isn't a "can leave it here unmaintained" milestone within sight. It's because these projects have tons of dependencies and moving parts which tend to break themselves (often for very little reasons) so of course it's going to affect upstream. The software you listed are usually mostly self-contained or rely on stable projects. There is no such thing as "stabil…

I think you just said exactly what the parent comment meant. Nodejs is the new Java jar dependency hell. Maybe package the entire project into a docker container so that people can download and run the pile of dependencies in one step.

`entire project into a docker container `, like Linux Flatpak.

It is not a nodejs specific problem, every software with dependencies has it. (some more, some less)

Re: Sorry everybody, I failed with you

#70

Post by mattgreenrocks »

fock wrote: post #22

and of course: it's javascript! because literally every other community would have no problem if their doc-generator got unmaintained, because it would probably run for another ten years...

There’s also a defective culture meme that believes software that hasn’t been updated in the past week is dying.

This is a conceptual hack to avoid considering the state of the ecosystem.

Post reply on HN