6 ms·

Personally I'd be quite excited to see a bug I reported fixed the same-day - of course people's expectations are different it's not always easy to balance thes

Personally I'd be quite excited to see a bug I reported fixed the same-day - of course people's expectations are different it's not always easy to balance these things.

dorfsmay 11y ago
One of the rewards of participating in OSS is to make your name visible, this can then be used as creds to gain commit rights or to talk at conferences as well as proof of competence when looking for a job. Interestingly, I've had the same experience when reporting and asking how to contribute to Python 3, not by a core dev but somebody "stealing" my bug and quickly submitting a patch!
- eptcyka 11y ago
  The open source community is not there to provide you with cred and visibility. It's there to so software can be developed in a way that certain people think is the best way to develop software.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  Something similar happened that left me with mixed feelings recently. I recently came up with a new feature idea for Python, and a core dev ran with it. I was very happy at first, but then he wrote a pep, implemented it, and got all the congrats. I had hoped to help, and put something on my resume, but was shut out. "Thanks for improving my pep" on a mailing list is all the credit I got (and work I was able to do on it). Kind of disappointing, though I will enjoy the feature.
  - elcct 11y ago
    Sometimes person reporting an issue along with the code, doesn't get it quite right and core dev can immediately see correct solution and can't make himself to wait until original reporter makes it right... of course it doesn't happen often but it does.
    - dorfsmay 11y ago
      One of the project I participated the most was ansible, and in a case like this, @mpdehaan2 would just push back and comment until your PR was acceptable, which was encouraging and making you contribute more.
MatthewWilkes 11y ago
I can understand that, I certainly would have been stoked about a bug report being fixed on the same day; I hadn't reported the bug though. I was working on providing a bug report with a patch alongside it and (perhaps foolishly) mentioned the bug informally as context as to why I was doing this.
- Zancarius 11y ago
  Without being privy to the entire context, what I think might've happened is that your discussion caught the interest of a core developer who then picked it up and ran with it. I doubt they intended to step on your toes as a consequence of fixing the problem. Hackers tend to be intrigued by problems, including small ones, and especially ones that cause software behavior to deviate from expectations. The other side of the coin is that without a patch, the developers have no idea what your motives or capabilities are. They can't read minds, so if you pique their interest sufficiently, they're very likely to take it upon themselves to do the legwork. No malice intended. I should hope you'll change your mind about contributing to FOSS projects after reading this thread, because I think it's counterproductive to take this sort of thing personally (I don't know if you are, but it appears to me that you're unhappy about this at the very least). That said, there aren't many projects that post credits or thanks to people who have discovered bugs or whose line of questioning has lead to fixing application behavior. While it's extra work and isn't always feasible, it can encourage users to pitch in if they know their name might appear in some credits (even if it's only per-release). Then there's the question of how big the problem needs to be to credit someone...
  - MatthewWilkes 11y ago
    I'm a long-term FLOSS contributor, but I've also served on the boards of 501(c)(3)s, I've been a mentor for Google Summer of Code for most of the times the programme has run and I've run workshops at my local university about getting involved in open source. I know what is involved in making a community welcoming to new contributors. If a project is putting an explicit call for contributions in updates that implies they're not getting as many as they'd like, which fits my experiences. What you say about hackers getting nerd-sniped is true, but "that's just how coders are" certainly isn't. If you're a core developer for a project and you want the community to grow rather than diminish it's your responsibility to make it socially welcoming as well as having a low technical barrier to entry. I personally have spent many hours responding to emails about problems I could have fixed trivially, but if I'd done that the potential new contributor may not have grown into someone that's regularly fixing bugs I can't fix trivially. I'm not taking the unwelcoming attitude personally, I'm acting accordingly. If I can't get the information from a community I need to participate but I can get them to do the work by just throwing it over the fence I'd be crazy to continue to try and help them unless I have a very strong reason to outside of requiring fixes. As to your point about reading minds, this is specifically mentioned in my initial comment. I asked about a problem running tests, and when I provided the context that I was asked for (I'm trying to put together a patch for this bug) there should have been no question as to motivation.

Personally I'd be quite excited to see a bug I reported fixed the same-day - of course people's expectations are different it's not always easy to balance these things.

dorfsmay 11y ago

One of the rewards of participating in OSS is to make your name visible, this can then be used as creds to gain commit rights or to talk at conferences as well as proof of competence when looking for a job. Interestingly, I've had the same experience when reporting and asking how to contribute to Python 3, not by a core dev but somebody "stealing" my bug and quickly submitting a patch!

eptcyka 11y ago
The open source community is not there to provide you with cred and visibility. It's there to so software can be developed in a way that certain people think is the best way to develop software.
mixmastamyk 11y ago
Something similar happened that left me with mixed feelings recently. I recently came up with a new feature idea for Python, and a core dev ran with it. I was very happy at first, but then he wrote a pep, implemented it, and got all the congrats. I had hoped to help, and put something on my resume, but was shut out. "Thanks for improving my pep" on a mailing list is all the credit I got (and work I was able to do on it). Kind of disappointing, though I will enjoy the feature.
- elcct 11y ago
  Sometimes person reporting an issue along with the code, doesn't get it quite right and core dev can immediately see correct solution and can't make himself to wait until original reporter makes it right... of course it doesn't happen often but it does.
  - dorfsmay 11y ago
    One of the project I participated the most was ansible, and in a case like this, @mpdehaan2 would just push back and comment until your PR was acceptable, which was encouraging and making you contribute more.

MatthewWilkes 11y ago

I can understand that, I certainly would have been stoked about a bug report being fixed on the same day; I hadn't reported the bug though. I was working on providing a bug report with a patch alongside it and (perhaps foolishly) mentioned the bug informally as context as to why I was doing this.

Zancarius 11y ago
Without being privy to the entire context, what I think might've happened is that your discussion caught the interest of a core developer who then picked it up and ran with it. I doubt they intended to step on your toes as a consequence of fixing the problem. Hackers tend to be intrigued by problems, including small ones, and especially ones that cause software behavior to deviate from expectations. The other side of the coin is that without a patch, the developers have no idea what your motives or capabilities are. They can't read minds, so if you pique their interest sufficiently, they're very likely to take it upon themselves to do the legwork. No malice intended. I should hope you'll change your mind about contributing to FOSS projects after reading this thread, because I think it's counterproductive to take this sort of thing personally (I don't know if you are, but it appears to me that you're unhappy about this at the very least). That said, there aren't many projects that post credits or thanks to people who have discovered bugs or whose line of questioning has lead to fixing application behavior. While it's extra work and isn't always feasible, it can encourage users to pitch in if they know their name might appear in some credits (even if it's only per-release). Then there's the question of how big the problem needs to be to credit someone...
- MatthewWilkes 11y ago
  I'm a long-term FLOSS contributor, but I've also served on the boards of 501(c)(3)s, I've been a mentor for Google Summer of Code for most of the times the programme has run and I've run workshops at my local university about getting involved in open source. I know what is involved in making a community welcoming to new contributors. If a project is putting an explicit call for contributions in updates that implies they're not getting as many as they'd like, which fits my experiences. What you say about hackers getting nerd-sniped is true, but "that's just how coders are" certainly isn't. If you're a core developer for a project and you want the community to grow rather than diminish it's your responsibility to make it socially welcoming as well as having a low technical barrier to entry. I personally have spent many hours responding to emails about problems I could have fixed trivially, but if I'd done that the potential new contributor may not have grown into someone that's regularly fixing bugs I can't fix trivially. I'm not taking the unwelcoming attitude personally, I'm acting accordingly. If I can't get the information from a community I need to participate but I can get them to do the work by just throwing it over the fence I'd be crazy to continue to try and help them unless I have a very strong reason to outside of requiring fixes. As to your point about reading minds, this is specifically mentioned in my initial comment. I asked about a problem running tests, and when I provided the context that I was asked for (I'm trying to put together a patch for this bug) there should have been no question as to motivation.