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Why we never thank open source maintainers

windsooon.github.io

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Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#71

Post by stanmancan »

notzorbo3 wrote: post #14
rsync wrote: post #8

Anytime I find a very useful tool[1] or get help from a maintainer or author I always offer them a lifetime, free rsync.net account. A fair number of them have taken me up on it. [1] Some examples of useful tools include: TextBar for OSX, git-annex assistant ... someone wrote a great encfs tutorial ... etc.

That's an awesome way to reward people! I've gotten offers for money, but actually getting to money to me is more of a hassle than it's worth, so I just decline.

Not sure what your market is but given where we are, accepting bitcoin would probably be easy :)

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#72

Post by dictum »

wolfgke wrote: post #68
dictum wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, this exudes arrogance, even if the intention is completely free of ill will. It's better to say a clear NO ("I will not add this feature" or "I cannot implement this at this time"), and let them figure if they want to pay/use something else on their own, than to talk down to users.

> Honestly, this exudes arrogance, even if the intention is completely free of ill will. I would rather say that asking to "implement " for free exudes several more magnitudes of arrogance.

I get what you're saying, but even without the requested feature, the existing code also took time, mental effort and opportunity costs to come into existence — the user sees it and naturally imagines, "there's more where this came from".

Not all users are at the same level of experience as you (a maintainer); this doesn't make them lesser people or even lesser developers (sometimes they're just good in a different problem space than yours), but it makes their expectations a lot less realistic. Don't offload your annoyance on the requester — sometimes they don't know that their request is significantly harder than they think.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#73

Post by hartator »

tomxor wrote: post #69

I thank authors and maintainers and I expect others do too. I just don't do it publicly. I've thanked authors of small projects which are unique and useful to me just by dropping a short email (not en masse) - Not out of some obligation, but because it's an encouraging thing to receive. I want them to know someone is finding utility in what they have done and appreciates it enough to tell them. I don't think the larg…

I maintain a fairly popular repository, and it does brighten my day when I receive an email like this!

Unfortunately, you are getting more random malformated issues (ie. “DOESN’T WORK. WHEN FIX”) than thanks!

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#74

Post by usrusr »

sheetjs wrote: post #38
inglor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Send them quotes back: "I'm glad you liked it, I have X hours to dedicate to project Y this month. If you'd like, I'm willing to work on that feature for you under terms Z". People _pay_. You'd be surprised just how much of Chromium and other open ssource projects is written by consulting companies paid by third parties to solve a use case.

> People _pay_. From our experience ( http://sheetjs.com/ , our major open source library is https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx ), even with multinational corporations, they move heaven and earth to find another free solution, or spend in-house time to hack together a solution and try to sucker you into helping them, but paying is by and large the last option.

Not surprising: every development team has some leeway in manpower allocation that can be used for an in-house cludge, but few have much autonomy in financial spending.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#75

Post by hartator »

naturalgradient wrote: post #5

As the maintainer of a reasonably popular library, I actually get irritated by a lot of 'thanks', because they are in the form of this sentence: 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' Usually from people who have never contributed anything. Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their lazin…

I do receive time to time thanks without an ask! They do feel good.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#76

Post by dictum »

hartator wrote: post #73
tomxor wrote: post #69

I thank authors and maintainers and I expect others do too. I just don't do it publicly. I've thanked authors of small projects which are unique and useful to me just by dropping a short email (not en masse) - Not out of some obligation, but because it's an encouraging thing to receive. I want them to know someone is finding utility in what they have done and appreciates it enough to tell them. I don't think the larg…

I maintain a fairly popular repository, and it does brighten my day when I receive an email like this! Unfortunately, you are getting more random malformated issues (ie. “DOESN’T WORK. WHEN FIX”) than thanks!

Sometimes even a well-formatted, respectful issue feels like a thank you.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#78

Post by icebraining »

gcb0 wrote: post #26
inglor wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Send them quotes back: "I'm glad you liked it, I have X hours to dedicate to project Y this month. If you'd like, I'm willing to work on that feature for you under terms Z". People _pay_. You'd be surprised just how much of Chromium and other open ssource projects is written by consulting companies paid by third parties to solve a use case.

> chromium just like several dev over the years implemented privacy conscious options to restric the referer(sic) header just to have google employees silently remove them later on? well, I guess it can work if the feature you are paying for is not to improve privacy at the expense of google's Ad business.

Do you have a link? I'd figure Google would want to restrict the Referer link, as they were accused in the move to HTTPS (which did break it for a lot of sites linked from Search).

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#79

Post by usrusr »

dictum wrote: post #23
naturalgradient wrote: post #5

As the maintainer of a reasonably popular library, I actually get irritated by a lot of 'thanks', because they are in the form of this sentence: 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' Usually from people who have never contributed anything. Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their lazin…

Done incorrectly, this can sound passive aggressive, but I suggest adding a short notice in your README: - Feature requests should follow ((list your rules)). All requests that don't follow the rules will be ((closed|ignored)) - ((The maintainers of this project)) will only add new features ((at their leisure)). If you cannot contribute a pull request for ((feature X)), make a feature request ((following the rules on…

Reorder to make the second bullet the first: people are prone to feeling entitled to their feature after jumping through all those hoops, don't give them the chance to stop reading at that point.

Re: Why we never thank open source maintainers

#80

Post by Windson »

naturalgradient wrote: post #5

As the maintainer of a reasonably popular library, I actually get irritated by a lot of 'thanks', because they are in the form of this sentence: 'Hi, can you implement ? Thanks!' Usually from people who have never contributed anything. Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their lazin…

I'm agreed. That's not the thanks we need. That just an excuse to ask people for help just like lots of stackoverflow questions. However, not everyone is maintaining a popular library. So I think some kind word may help them to make their library popular.
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