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I don't owe you scala-tools.org

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Re: I don't owe you scala-tools.org

#3

Post by earl »

tl;dr:

David Pollack created lift. He also created and ran scala-tools.org, a maven repo and documentation host for scala stuff. He's recently decided to transition off much of his scala involvement, in part because his new startup visi.pro uses neither scala nor the jvm.

Several months ago he asked for help taking over scala-tools. There was not much response, and amongst the handful of people who stepped up, there was some sort of personality conflict.

In response, he temporarily shut it down and is transitioning the site to new hosts and maintainers. The internet is pitching a tantrum. Pollack is put out, since all the whiners where invisible when he was asking for new maintainers several months ago. Also, whiners who neither helped then and aren't stepping up to help now reek of entitlement: what right do they enjoy to Pollack's continued donation of time and money, just because he historically provided something the community liked?

Re: I don't owe you scala-tools.org

#4

Post by icebraining »

TL;DR - The internet is full of ungrateful dicks.

It often bothers me the vitriol that open source projects get for not fixing some bug or even add some feature that certain user considers important. But I don't see a best course of action than simply ignoring them. There's no upside to wasting your time and mental energy replying.

(By the way, I agree with the author. I just think this post is preaching to the choir. The targeted people will just disregard it).

Re: I don't owe you scala-tools.org

#7

Post by mark_l_watson »

I find David's position to be reasonable. Also, if he feels that Haskell (with a little Objective-C glue code) meets his current business and technical needs better than Scala, that is his decision to make, and based on his technical abilities I would bet that he made a good decision.

Re: I don't owe you scala-tools.org

#8

Post by shinratdr »

This is a great example of why large parts of the open source community are complete clusterfucks. There have been some amazing programs and services that emerge from this model, but by and large all projects have the same caveats: Nobody takes overall responsibility, everybody contributor is an unquestionable Jesus character, every contribution is a donation with strings attached, expecting the status quo to be maintained on a popular project is unabashed entitlement.

It's not like his standpoint is wrong, or incorrect, even selfish or unreasonable. Yet it does still damage the community and nobody will take responsibility for said damage. This is why people get paid for things. No matter how altruistic your intentions and actions, if people come to rely on your service then they will be upset and frustrated when it disappears.

TL;DR - He's right, he doesn't owe anyone anything. That doesn't make his actions any less damaging though, and simply glossing over this as "user entitlement" is ignoring a systemic problem with unfunded open source projects.

Re: I don't owe you scala-tools.org

#9

Post by christkv »

icebraining wrote: post #4

TL;DR - The internet is full of ungrateful dicks. It often bothers me the vitriol that open source projects get for not fixing some bug or even add some feature that certain user considers important. But I don't see a best course of action than simply ignoring them. There's no upside to wasting your time and mental energy replying. (By the way, I agree with the author. I just think this post is preaching to the choir…

A name and shame site for dicksinopensource.com would be nice to nominate the biggest troll of the year.

Re: I don't owe you scala-tools.org

#10

Post by kstenerud »

It's about managing user expectations, which David has done rather poorly.

People have short memories. When you're going to shut something down, you really should put up a HUGE javascript timer at the top of the page saying:

83 days, 14 hours, 23 minutes, 11 seconds until this site shuts down. Contact me if you can take over maintenance.

Unless it's constantly in their face, they won't feel the urgency, and so they won't act.

However, now that Dave's said "time's up", the urgency is felt, but there's nothing people can do, thus their frustration.

You can say "The users should have known" till you're blue in the face, but so long as you fight against human nature rather than guiding them in ways reinforced by their nature, you have only yourself to blame for the fallout. Such is the responsibility that comes with leadership.

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