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For me it was very stressful to learn how to cope with that, and fortunately I'm paid at least to do the bulk of the work I do (that is, all the work on Redis i
by antirez 10y ago
For me it was very stressful to learn how to cope with that, and fortunately I'm paid at least to do the bulk of the work I do (that is, all the work on Redis is paid). However once you learn the mental attitude to have towards this issues, they disappear magically. It's you VS many people, and as the user base increases, there is no way you can handle issues and PRs. The contributors need to adapt in order to make your work as simple as possible, otherwise their issues/PRs will get ignored. I personally cherry-pick among the ones that are easy to read, understand, general. There is always who will say, don't you feel ashamed?!!11 Redis has tons of open PRs / Issues! When people tell you this, always focus on what you did of good and not on what you can't do well enough. In case of unpaied OSS work, the attitude should be to do it only to have fun and learn. There are no other justifications: IMHO it's very wrong to donate time to OSS like if it was a charity, OSS is used by companies doing tons of money and startups that sold for billions. Nobody cared about redistributing back money to authors of the OSS that permitted them to create (alonside with their great product) this result, so you as an OSS maintainer should only care to have fun.
EDIT: I think it is very important to outline how in my experience 99% of the user base is wonderful, splendid human being, nice, willing to help. It's just that the wrong 1% is very verbal and if you focus on that one is terrible, but I believe it is hard to find an environment like the "Underground IT/OSS" scene from the POV of people quality. It's just that's impossible to get zero-assholes-environments.
EDIT 2: To other OSS maintainers, a trick is to be super gentle with harsh people. You'll feel much, much better compared to using their own tones.
- drvdevd 10y agoThe author mentioned receiving an email personally requesting a bugfix due to the requestors' deadline. Now, I don't have any projects as big as Redis I'm building, or even Python - my OSS contributions are here and there small things mostly just for fun and learning and I've been into it for a long time, and I can say I feel it's perfectly reasonable to tell such a person, "Sure. If you send me X BTC at the following address, I will prioritize this for you." In fact I think this should be a common response. [edit] the significance of my being into OSS for such a long time is I can say I don't think the environment used to be so hostile for maintainers as it is now
- jpablo 10y agoAs I read it, he was offered money to fix it. But he said he didn't had the time.
- drvdevd 10y agoAh OK, I missed that. Well I suppose even with such an offer, the onus is still on the person making such a request to remain civil if "No" is still the answer.
- antirez 10y agoIt happens to me, and there are two consequences: 1) your email becomes kinda of a Twitter timeline, you from time to time cherry-pick emails to reply to, because they are too many that require a personal direct reply, and it is impossible to cope. 2) You have to make a decision, if you want to prioritize for money, you are likely not going to do the best for the user base: it is perfectly reasonable but not my pick since I'm already sponsored to do my work. However it is very likely that you get a money offer to put into the project something you don't like, and this is going to be actively bloating the project. Not an easy one.
- drvdevd 10y agoNow that does sound like a difficult situation to handle. I'd like to think I'd always choose the high road and say, "code quality first!" But personally I probably would not always do that when there's a strong financial incentive on the line (if I'm going to be honest with myself).
- Matthias247 10y ago> Sure. If you send me X BTC at the following address, I will prioritize this for you That sounds like a good recipe for getting into trouble because of tax fraud if it gets public. And even you are in the position to accept the money (e.g. by being self employed) it would not be worth the effort. If you charge a low sum the overhead will make it not pracitable and if it's a large sum no individual will want to pay you and companies will often not be able to pay you.
- ensignavenger 10y agoWell, scratching you own itch seems like a pretty good reason to contribute to OSS even if unpaid, uneducational, and unfun.
- TAForObvReasons 10y agoWhat I found (I wrote a pretty large open source project and receive hundreds of emails every day about it) is that most people are only willing to contribute to open source to the extent that it scratches their itch. They feel that their obligation ends as soon as the code is written, and the maintenance of their code falls on you. So from a maintainer perspective, you have to act like people's contributions are your contributions. You have to evaluate the code as if you have to maintain it later, you have to understand the circumstances surrounding it, etc. You have to be aware of everyone's concerns at the same time and make sure you don't end up messing up other people's use cases without good reason. And more often than not PRs reflect a "selfishness" of sorts wherein it solves their problem but breaks the general case. In four separate occasions, people tried to take control of my github organization and npm repos by complaining to github and npm support, because they disagreed with the trajectory of the project. Some people seem to have no respect for OSS.
- GrinningFool 10y ago> In four separate occasions, people tried to take control of my github organization and npm repos by complaining to github and npm suppo THat blows my mind a bit. Particularly since forking a repository is not exactly a difficult thing.
- drvdevd 10y agoThis just sounds like an attempt to take control of a popular project. An attack. [edit] an interesting vector: open source politics
- beachstartup 10y agorunning a company results in many of the same kinds of situations. lots of people are crazy. they walk among us!
- why-el 10y agoSalvatore, for what's worth, every time someone complains about how one shouldn't use project X because it has too many open issues, I just point them to Redis as a counter example: Works wonders; majority of issues peripheral ;)
- antirez 10y agoThanks :)
- koolba 10y agoOpen issues aren't a problem. Anything with a sizable user base will have a continuous stream of issues. That's the mark of being popular! People only complain and open issues about things they actually use. A "bad sign" would be increasing or stagnant issues with no resolution. Say if a project has a single maintainer and said maintainer decides to stop all work on it. There's plenty of examples of projects like that and if you're choosing a library or backend, you need to know what you're getting into. (For the record, Redis doesn't fall into that category at all!)
- skybrian 10y agoIf issues are being opened faster than they are closed, the number of open issues is going to grow without bound. That's just basic queuing theory. It's also the case that the average age of open issues will grow without bound. (As the number of open issues grows, eventually you get to a point where more issues are untouched in any given period than are either opened or closed.) So, it's very easy to get into the state where there are lots of stagnant issues. It's going to happen automatically unless you do something to fix it. Something needs to happen so that either fewer issues are opened or more issues are closed.
- skybrian 10y agoNot getting the downvotes. Have I made some logical error?
- 10y ago
- orderlyoctopus 10y agoDo you think there's room for contributors to OSS outside filing bugs and making pull requests? I'm a technical product/project manager by day and a hobby programmer by night. Things like writing documentation, triaging issues, coordinating teams, and planning releases is my bread and butter. I'd like the idea of spending time on an OSS project(s) that I find interesting, but I wonder if this is the kind of thing that would be welcome or even considered helpful. OSS projects are passion projects, and it feels like trying to help out uninvited with management tasks would come across as asserting ownership. I do try to contribute what I can, but they're small hit and runs -- update deprecated information in documentation or add some examples, add more information to bug reports, etc., but I'd like to do more. Just without offending anyone :)
- spikej 10y agoI think it totally depends on the lead/project. I've been invited to do so on a project, and I felt I didn't have the time (or deep enough knowledge) to do so. I would say all help is welcome in successful projects -- it has to be, for longevity
- secure 10y agoYes! Yes! Yes! I see so many opportunities for contribution where a project manager could make such a big difference. This starts with simple things like “I had an hour to spare and the contributor documentation was non-existant, so I did something else” and goes to “this issue would be good to fix, but I don’t have the energy to get little fixes upstreamed into five different projects”. I’m sure many projects would be lucky to have your help.
- gsnedders 10y agoWhile I think I know some people who'd take it as trampling on their toes for the reasons you mentioned, I for one would absolutely overjoyed if someone was willing to help with such things—though obviously I have my opinions about them too! Triaging issues especially can be a big time-sink, and is something that is relatively easy. How do you tell who you'd be trampling on it and who else would be shouting "YES!" excitedly? I'd just drop an email!
- 10y ago
- wslh 10y agoI genuinely ask: don't you think that for the people which needs a specific solution and/or are too pushy, you should move to the professional services route and charge accordingly? I am not talking about the random guy but the company which is making money and know that work should be paid.