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I was introduced to open source software in 1996 and have been a huge advocate since. About five years ago, I decided to quit my job and, shortly thereafter, we
by jlgaddis 10y ago
I was introduced to open source software in 1996 and have been a huge advocate since. About five years ago, I decided to quit my job and, shortly thereafter, went out in search of a project I could contribute to in my spare time (which was now much more abundant).
I quickly discovered that a particular piece of software I used daily wasn't really being maintained all that well, despite the fact that there were several contributors listed on its home page. A few dozen bugs reports (some even including patches!) had come in, yet only a few had even been acknowledged.
This seemed like exactly the type of project I was looking for -- something that I used every day and could help improve. I sent an e-mail to the developers stating that I was going to be devoting some time to the project, sending patches in for the bugs, etc., and asking if there was "anything I should know" before jumping in. I spent a lot of time reviewing the previous discussions on the mailing lists, examining their previous commits to see how they did things, and so on.
One of the developers finally replied -- about a week later -- and asked for my SSH key. I sent it to him and he quickly gave me commit access, thanked me for the assistance, yadda yadda.
I closed out umpteen bugs, responded to previously unanswered messages on the mailing lists, and sent patches to the developers list asking for feedback before I committed anything. Having received no responses, eventually I committed all the changes and pushed them into the master branch. Questions that I had to the other developers went unanswered, just like all the previous bug reports and user-submitted patches had.
After a while, I just quit spending any time on it. Perhaps a month after my latest fix, I look at my e-mail one day to see a flood of notification e-mails about commits. The lead developer had reverted every single commit I had made. I was looking for -- expecting -- some explanation but never received one, even after I finally directly asked, "WTF did I do wrong!?".
Nothing. No response, to this day. I eventually said "fuck it", deleted my private key, unsubscribed from the lists, and moved on. I just looked and there are still bugs open today that were open back then.
The sad part is that this piece of software is fairly widespread and a part of all of the major Linux distributions, installed by default on many of them. I think there's been one, maybe two, "releases" in the last five years.
- sverige 10y agoWow, talk about some passive-aggressive behavior on the devs' part! I think there are hazards on projects where nothing seems to be happening, like you described, and others that are fairly active. At least with the active projects, you can usually get a feel for how you might be received by reading the mailing lists. I hope it didn't put you off looking for another project to help.
- chris_wot 10y agoYou really should tell us what the software is so we can know to avoid it or perhaps find your changes, fork the project and reapply them then push to have distorts switch to this new version. Worked well for a number of projects where developers are jerks and don't allow other talented and dedicated contributors to participate.
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoAgree. This is an open source project and I'd like to know the name of it. Not for public shaming but so I can know what to avoid.
- chris_wot 10y agologcheck?
- OMGWTF 10y agohttps://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/logcheck/logcheck.git/log/?ofs=50 https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/logcheck/logcheck.git/log/?o... august, september 2011
- chris_wot 10y agoDamn, what a dick move. Who is this Hannes von Haugwitz?
- OMGWTF 10y agoI have found 8 commits (https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/logcheck/logcheck.git/log/?qt=author&q=gaddis https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/logcheck/logcheck.git/log/?q...). Seven of those change 1-2 lines, the other updates the copyright file. As far as I can see: - 6a4bf69 has not been reverted - d4a97c5 has been reverted in 8050b2d - 5f7da05 has been reverted in ccc183d (webmin) - cf5e9d3 has been reverted in 792a996 (webmin) - c6634da has not been reverted, he is still listed in debian/copyright. - 82f8600 has not been reverted (was extended in f24650f) - 7f8efa8 has not been reverted - e4f4889 has not been reverted So, out of 8 commits, 3 have been reverted. The 2 webmin reverts were followed by deletion of the whole webmin file the same day (5785901). I don't see how three reverts are "a flood of notification e-mails" or that "The lead developer had reverted every single commit I had made." But I agree that the commit messages of those reverts should have contained a reason. Obviously something went wrong. But I don't have enough information to call it a dick move.
- justinclift 10y agoUgh, that kind of dev behaviour is extremely lousy, and not at all the norm for Open Source projects. Hopefully you've found places/projects more receptive to your time/effort since then. :)
- jorgecastillo 10y agoOut of curiosity, why didn't you make a fork?