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We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

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Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#621

Post by pseudohadamard »

nmz wrote: post #490
mixedbit wrote: post #156

Long time ago Sourceforge and then GitHub promoted into the current default the model of open source distribution which is not sustainable and I doubt it is something that the founding fathers of Free Software/Open Source had in mind. Open source licenses are about freedom of using and modifying software. The movement grew out of frustration that commercial software cannot be freely improved and fixed by the user to…

I've often dreamed of a system where normal users, give money as a promotion for a certain issue to be fixed or even created, if the user wants feature X then he should be able to give an incentive towards that feature to be added into the software that they use, developers do bounties instead, the user doesn't have to give much only a dollar, but if many users want feature X, then the money/donations pool creating h…

That's actually how a number of OSS projects work, we'll give you what we want for free but if you want us to do what you want you'll need to pay us. Having to implement a compatibility mechanism for some company's buggy train wreck from 20 years ago is a lot easier when you know you'll get paid at the end of it. A number of OSS dual licenses have been created to accommodate this.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#622

Post by normie3000 »

ryandrake wrote: post #422
emmaviolet wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub PM here working on how we can make this problem feel better for maintainers. Really appreciate how tiring this can be, especially when even low volume is sustained for many months. Would love your thoughts on some of the things we're thinking about: - Would it help to disable all PRs? All non-contributor PRs? - Would a "close as admin" button help address the issue of not wanting to be rude or discouraging? -…

As someone on the other side of the PR, the current situation makes things awkward for me, too. Occasionally, I'll make an actual fix to scratch some particular itch I have with the software, and I'm hesitant to even open a PR, because it's just going to 1. pile yet another PR onto the maintainer, and 2. might get dismissed out of hand because it's mistaken for AI slop or other low-effort spam that these attackers ar…

> I'm hesitant to even open a PR, because...

For me the answer to this is to let go of all expectations. Fix things for your own purpose, and then open PRs to give the maintainers the option to engage or ignore.

Obviously from my post above, with my maintainer hat on I often fail to let go of the emotions. But it's a goal.

The lowest-stress PRs to handle are the ones with clearest test cases, and minimal incidental changes. Don't refactor, reformat or rename things to your own preferences and then expect a maintainer to engage.

Reducing changes to the meaningful minimum will also make your fork easier to maintain if the PR is refused, or ignored for months+ as the upstream project continues to evolve.

Ultimately, opening a PR is in part self-serving - best case is my change is upstreamed, worst case is I have taken time to streamline it, and simplify integration of future upstream changes into my fork.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#623

Post by snowmobile »

boca_honey wrote: post #539
snowmobile wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is software support, it is a job, it should be paid. What's stopping any open source maintainer from charging for their work?

Irrelevance. The moment you paywall a project, it’s a death sentence. Unless you have a unique and highly sought-after product (top 1%), someone else will just make a free alternative.

Well yes, but that accomplishes the goal of not working for free. Either you get money for your work, or your users move on, freeing you of the burden of supporting the software.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#624

Post by neoromantique »

latexr wrote: post #601
on_the_train wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He rubs me the wrong way, too. Curl is overhyped and a pain to work with. And he's getting high on the "success" while crying about not being paid for something he offers for free. I think Americans have a nice phrase about having cake and eating it, too.

Not only is cURL not overhyped, it’s absolutely false that Daniel “[cries] about not being paid for something he offers for free”. He does get paid for cURL support. https://daniel.haxx.se/job.html He does criticise rich companies who don’t do anything to support cURL and demand preferential support, but that’s not the same thing (and does warrant criticism).

Daniel is also not an american

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#625

Post by regenschutz »

gosub100 wrote: post #405
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Could be fiat or some sort of crypto currency that requires the submitter to have a vested interest in the outcome. Honestly, I would love it if I could front some money in order to have the devs look at my PRs. Half my PRs just go into the void and nobody looks at them until some staleness bot inevitably closes it. This is a similar problem to resume spam. I always wish I could pay $5 when submitting a resum…

I want to extend this idea to email. Use encryption, but for proof that the email can't be read, instead of for security/privacy (not that I'm against either of those). Update the email protocol so that all messages must be encrypted. Not "by default", but by necessity. The server rejects them if they aren't encrypted and signed in a way that proves the decryption key is on a block chain. The only way to put the key…

Unfortunately, I doubt that would work. Email is so popular because it's sort of a universal messaging protocol that so many old but critical pieces of infrastructure require. If this "Email 2.0" released, it would take years, if not decades, for critical infrastructure to switch over.

In the meantime, you'd still need an Email 1.0 client. So now you have a mix of your most important emails from critical infrastructure and just spam from bots who don't want to pay money for sending spam in your inbox.

You'll still need to deal with spam, but if anything it'll be even worse because now you have to double the amount of inboxes you have.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#626

Post by cynicalpeace »

My instinct to this was: "This is literally patronizing"

Threats are what every parent tells their child: "If you do X, I'll take away Y"

For parenting, a limited form of this probably makes sense, because the parent has an authority over the child given by The Nature of Things.

But between adults this mode of communication is grotesque, and it is more and more common.

Especially amongst redditors, forum moderators, and other geeks of the ilk.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#627

Post by emmaviolet »

ohyoutravel wrote: post #524
emmaviolet wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub PM here. From what we've seen, you're right about the motivation; I've also seen plenty of job ads where "significant contribution to open source" is something that's called out explicitly as a valid substitute for professional experience in the area. While that's always well-intentioned and creates many benefits for the OSS community, the flip side is that it can also lead to the kind of problems you're seein…

Thanks a lot for taking this seriously. I regularly contribute but am not a “maintainer” so can’t really turn off PRs or anything, nor do I think that’s the right thing in this case. But some signal to spot these accounts at a glance before I go through and try to repro their issue or spend time engaging would be cool. Or immediate signal on “new accounts” (on HN usernames are green for like 30 days), or “account age…

Yep, totally get this. We're going to try and provide some quick solves first for the most affected maintainers, and then go back and make sure we can also help with the kind of nuance you describe.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#628

Post by vladms »

em-bee wrote: post #291
vladms wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why no go the other direction and make it hard to identify a user, so people do not do it for fame. Open source worked before people were using it as self advertisement. Might even be good for Microsoft - they would be the only one knowing who is who.

the berne convention copyright defines inalienable authors rights that can not be sold or taken away from the author. the author of any copyright works always has the right to identify themselves with the work, and therefore your suggestion is not legally possible.

I am not a lawyer, so can't propose the best way to implement this, but the Berne convention contains provisions for "anonymous and pseudonymous works", see Art 15.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#629

Post by Rooster61 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #589
Rooster61 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's clear the source comment was referencing end users. It's patently obvious at this point that a large number of people who directly use Windows are frustrated with it, and perceive it to be degrading rather than improving over time.

A corporate end user isn't a customer. The customer is the corporate department of purchases. What I mean in my original comment is that if you as an end user purchase software, then you will be listened to by developers.

Yours was not the source comment I was referring to.

Re: We will ban you and ridicule you in public if you waste our time on crap reports

#630

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

Arainach wrote: post #615
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't pay my rent or server bills in "bitcoins". I need to leverage my bitcoins in some way to get "dollars" that I can then pay my bills with. Non-monetary payment is still payment. Rare pokémon cards are payment too. Also, in fact, people get things that otherwise cost money all the time based on prestige.

You absolutely can, because you can sell the bitcoins and turn them directly into money in your savings account. There are exchanges that declare their exact value. You can't do that with prestige. There's no exchange and no market. Crucially, money, bitcoin, and pokemon cards are all transferrable . You can't transfer prestige to someone else, so it has no value in financial transactions.

Transference doesn't matter, because exchange is not a requirement for gain. People get things merely from having prestige/influence/power all the time. It's sometimes called an award, and sometimes called tribute, and sometimes called currying favor.

> you can sell the bitcoins

Prestige is influence, and you can absolutely sell the use or effects of influence.

> There are exchanges that declare their exact value.

Payment does not need to have exact value, just non-zero expected value, which prestige definitely has. There is no exact value to startup equity either, but it's still rightly considered to be compensation for investment of labor and money.

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