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Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

joshbeckman.org

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Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#61

Post by palata »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #37
palata wrote: post #29

I have done a lot of open source and I disagree. The problem being that as a maintainer, I refuse most contributions. Not only because they are low-quality (it happens), but also because they are often out of scope, or I just disagree with the direction. It's my project, I maintain it, I choose what goes in it. But you're free to fork it with your changes, that's exactly why I made it open source. If you make an inte…

Surely the value of patching upstream is so you don't have merge conflicts for eternity?

Oh yeah, that's for sure.

But my experience has been that most managers are not competent in that regard. If you have a good manager that understands that, then that's great. But it's rare. Most of the time, it works better to bullshit them with the legal consequences of not allowing you to upstream your changes.

Again, that's my experience.

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#62

Post by lukan »

pdonis wrote: post #60
lukan wrote: post #20

As a moral obligation, yes. But as a law? I see so many ways this will go wrong and not be helpful.

> As a moral obligation, yes. So you think that, for example, every single person who uses LibreOffice is morally obligated to contribute code to the project? Even though the vast majority of them don't even know how to code?

No. Not obviously not every person is obliged to give back to every project they ever remotely used.

But in general, yes. One receives and one can give back.

And contributions can be way more than code. Documentation, testing, good bug reports, moderating forums, hosting events for a coding session, ... or just money.

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#63

Post by dataflow »

samdoesnothing wrote: post #52
dataflow wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do think that mandatory road duty is about as direct a violation of the purpose of the 13th Amendment as anything else the state could do. Let me make sure I'm getting this right. You're making a serious claim that if the state required you to, say, clean the road by your house every morning, you'd feel like your experience would rival those of 19th-century slaves? You genuinely think that was the kind of thing t…

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Obviously the experience wouldn't rival one of a 19th century slave and nobody is making that claim. However, forced labor for no compensation is slavery, by definition.

> Obviously the experience wouldn't rival one of a 19th century slave and nobody is making that claim.

This was literally the comment:

>> I do think that mandatory road duty is about as direct a violation of the purpose of the 13th Amendment as anything else the state could do.

The state could bring back 19th-century-style slavery, too. Wouldn't that be a more direct violation of the purpose of the amendment? Because eliminating that sort of thing was kinda the purpose of the amendment, no? The purpose of the amendment clearly wasn't to prevent the government from requiring you to maintain the road around your home... right?

This isn't my interpretation, I'm reading what you guys are writing as-is. You're trying to add more context and explanation that wasn't there, weakening (and frankly contradicting) their argument.

It's especially ironic given you're both simultaneously trying to read the amendment so blindly and disregarding the context or purpose (the original purpose emphatically was not to prevent you from having to do a bit of upkeep around your neighborhood), yet somehow you don't like it when your own writing is read literally?

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#64

Post by samdoesnothing »

dataflow wrote: post #63
samdoesnothing wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Obviously the experience wouldn't rival one of a 19th century slave and nobody is making that claim. However, forced labor for no compensation is slavery, by definition.

> Obviously the experience wouldn't rival one of a 19th century slave and nobody is making that claim. This was literally the comment: >> I do think that mandatory road duty is about as direct a violation of the purpose of the 13th Amendment as anything else the state could do. The state could bring back 19th-century-style slavery, too. Wouldn't that be a more direct violation of the purpose of the amendment? Because…

Systematic widespread slavery is obviously different from using the threat or application of violence to compel unpaid labor in smaller-scale scenarios, but both are de facto slavery and both are direct violations of the amendment. If you wanna argue that there is a concept of a "lesser violation" and that it makes some forms of slavery OK, be my guest but even children don't buy arguments like that.

It's like trying to argue that a little murder is fine because really, the laws are set up to prevent mass murder.

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#65

Post by dataflow »

samdoesnothing wrote: post #64
dataflow wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously the experience wouldn't rival one of a 19th century slave and nobody is making that claim. This was literally the comment: >> I do think that mandatory road duty is about as direct a violation of the purpose of the 13th Amendment as anything else the state could do. The state could bring back 19th-century-style slavery, too. Wouldn't that be a more direct violation of the purpose of the amendment? Because…

Systematic widespread slavery is obviously different from using the threat or application of violence to compel unpaid labor in smaller-scale scenarios, but both are de facto slavery and both are direct violations of the amendment. If you wanna argue that there is a concept of a "lesser violation" and that it makes some forms of slavery OK, be my guest but even children don't buy arguments like that. It's like trying…

> Systematic widespread slavery is obviously different from using the threat or application of violence to compel unpaid labor in smaller-scale scenarios,

Eh? Violence? For refusing mandatory upkeep around your home and neighborhood? Are you writing this from North Korea or something? How is fining you such a foreign concept where you live that your government has to resort to violence to get you to do some upkeep as a homeowner?

> but both are de facto slavery and both are direct violations of the amendment. If you wanna argue that there is a concept of a "lesser violation" and that it makes some forms of slavery OK, be my guest but even children don't buy arguments like that.

This was the "strongest plausible interpretation" of what I've been saying this whole time?

Children buy perfectly well the idea that requiring homeowners to do some upkeep around them is not even remotely "slavery". Just like how they understand perfectly well that making them clean their rooms is not "slavery" either. They understand it's not only ridiculous, but outright insulting to human dignity to suggest that these are comparable to slavery. Adults on HN are the ones who somehow struggle with this, not children.

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#66

Post by jama211 »

olivia-banks wrote: post #47
munchler wrote: post #31

User: Please suggest the most absurd, over-the-top blog post title that will nonetheless get me to the top of Hacker News. System: "Contributing to Open-Source Should be Required, Like Jury Duty"

I'm bound to get downvoted here, but I ran this by my own local model. > No One Understands Software Because No One Understands Time > All Programming Languages Converge to English Eventually > The Best Database Is Just Two People Talking > Stop Writing Code. Start Legislating Software And my personal favorite: > AI Safety Is Just the New Gluten-Free

It’s depressing how good these would be at getting clicks. Perhaps all article titles should be banned!

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#67

Post by bloppe »

darkamaul wrote: post #53

I think most of the comments here miss that contributions is not equal to code. Contributions to the documentation, translations, or helping managing the community are also extremely valuable and do not require the same technical skills.

That's true, but even those non-technical roles are in a totally different league of scope than jury duty.

A jurist has an extremely narrow role: deciding whether the defendant is guilty. The jurist has zero input on the laws or court procedure or sentencing or anything else. The judge is supposed to explain how all those things work to the jury, and hold their hands pretty much the whole time up until the part at the very end, where the jury go off to deliberate and deliver the verdict. The jury is completely passive even when it comes to examining the case itself, which is the job of the lawyers. It's a pretty good system because essentially the whole process is handled by seasoned professionals, except that one crucial part of saying guilty or not guilty.

That's fundamentally different from contributing to open source. Nobody's holding your hand from start to finish, because that would kinda defeat the point of contributing.

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#68

Post by jqpabc123 »

evantbyrne wrote: post #23

Congratulations, you just reinvented slavery. But if you take the government out of the equation, and instead mandate contribution via project licenses, that might be worth a try.

They're just trying to work around a fundamental flaw of all "communal" organizational structures --- freeloaders, aka human nature.

Forced labor is typically a last ditch effort to prop up a system that is inherently unsustainable.

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#69

Post by samdoesnothing »

dataflow wrote: post #65
samdoesnothing wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systematic widespread slavery is obviously different from using the threat or application of violence to compel unpaid labor in smaller-scale scenarios, but both are de facto slavery and both are direct violations of the amendment. If you wanna argue that there is a concept of a "lesser violation" and that it makes some forms of slavery OK, be my guest but even children don't buy arguments like that. It's like trying…

> Systematic widespread slavery is obviously different from using the threat or application of violence to compel unpaid labor in smaller-scale scenarios, Eh? Violence? For refusing mandatory upkeep around your home and neighborhood? Are you writing this from North Korea or something? How is fining you such a foreign concept where you live that your government has to resort to violence to get you to do some upkeep as…

> Eh? Violence? For refusing mandatory upkeep around your home and neighborhood? Are you writing this from North Korea or something? How is fining you such a foreign concept where you live that your government has to resort to violence to get you to do some upkeep as a homeowner?

What happens when you don't pay the fine? What happens when you resist the armed men at your door?

> outright insulting to human dignity to suggest that these are comparable to slavery

What's outright insulting to human dignity is authoritarians justifying slavery on the basis of "other forms are worse".

Re: Contributing to open-source should be required, like jury duty

#70

Post by leothetechguy »

I remember a few open source projects struggling with hundreds of merge request of people simply adding their name to the README because they want to add "open-source" contributor to their resume as part of some bootcamp.

Any mandatory service will result in at worst malicious compliance and at best in low quality work. And I'd rather take quality over quantity.

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