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Homebrew is an awesome, super useful piece of software that people put in tonnes of effort to maintain, for free. Your complaint was indeed worded rudely. Also,

by yashap 9y ago

Homebrew is an awesome, super useful piece of software that people put in tonnes of effort to maintain, for free. Your complaint was indeed worded rudely. Also, re: the “why” behind this commit, “to avoid copious workarounds in formulae” is already a pretty good description, I can see why he didn’t feel the need to elaborate. Remember that maintainers of projects like Homebrew have to deal with an endless stream of complaints and feature requests, and don’t get paid to do so. If this commit is a big deal for you, just make the effort to bring it up in a nice, thoughtful way. Or, don’t use the software if you don’t like it/the maintainers.

eridius 9y ago
It wasn't my complaint. And no, that's not a good description, because it gives me literally zero information to go on in order to find out what the workarounds were, how many formula actually needed them, and what the problems were that necessitated this. > Remember that maintainers of projects like Homebrew have to deal with an endless stream of complaints and feature requests Yeah, that's what happens with popular open source projects. Good projects are able to handle this in a way that doesn't alienate the community or future contributors. The fact that MikeMcQuaid is doing this for free does not remove the obligations he has to the community.
- cakes 9y ago
  > the obligations he has to the community. There isn't an obligation though. You could fork or pick an alternative as much as a maintainer/owner can abandon a project. They aren't obligated to do anything for you and you aren't obligated to do anything for them. If you don't like a project because of personalities involved, avoid them. I have personally done this without problem. It can be a pain but I have no actual pull in the matter.
- kelnos 9y ago
  > And no, that's not a good description, because it gives me literally zero information to go on in order to find out what the workarounds were, how many formula actually needed them, and what the problems were that necessitated this. Why do you feel that you're entitled to this information? And/or that providing this information is a good use of the maintainer's unpaid volunteer time (and that it's immediately obvious to the maintainer that it would be)? > Good projects are able to handle this in a way that doesn't alienate the community or future contributors. Homebrew is one such project. Empirically, they have an active community and sufficient contributions to keep the project robust and growing. That doesn't mean that they're going to be perfectly nice and polite to everyone, bending over backward to every user's whim. Sometimes someone is going to feel off-put as you have. But, clearly, most of the time people have positive experiences, so I'm sure they're satisfied with their performance. > ... doing this for free does not remove the obligations he has to the community. The only obligations I expect from an OSS maintainer is that they won't be negligent or malicious -- that is, they will work hard to avoid catastrophic bugs that destroy data or open security holes. Even given that, I accept that those sorts of things may happen due to innocent mistakes. Beyond that, I pay nothing, so I expect nothing. This sort of thing reminds me of really the only negative I've experienced as an open source maintainer: users with feelings of entitlement.
  - eridius 9y ago
    If you don’t want to engage with the community, then don’t. But if you do it behooves you to behave in a manner that respects your users and the community. Doing otherwise is how you lose that community. It’s not “entitlement” to expect the Homebrew maintainers to be good stewards of the project and the community.
    - kelnos 9y ago
      Sure it is. It's entitlement to expect literally anything for free. You and I, personally, have not done anything to deserve Homebrew, and yet we have it (well, ok, you do; I haven't run macOS in a few years, so I haven't had need of it). It's a net good, and we, personally, did not have to do anything for it to come into being. I'm not saying you should revere and prostrate yourselves before the people who gave it to you, but you should also not expect any more from them. You should also give them the benefit of the doubt and cut them a bit of slack when they don't behave exactly as you'd think that you would. (I say "think" because it's all well and good to take the moral high ground in theory, but unless you're actually in that person's shoes, it's hard to speak in absolutes.) I've said this elsewhere, but: perhaps you hit the edges of a long drawn-out discussion that took place out of your sight, a discussion that was tiring and draining, and he just didn't feel like rehashing for you. Or maybe he simply just got out of an argument with a friend or family member, or just had a bad day. That may not excuse his behavior in polite society, but it makes it understandable. You had a one-off bad interaction with someone. Boo hoo. It happens. Give people the benefit of the doubt, and, unless you have very strong evidence to the contrary, assume your experience was an unfortunate outlier. Homebrew is obviously a successful, robust project, with lots of contributors, so maybe, just maybe, your negative experience isn't typical, and perhaps most people who he interacts with actually come away with a positive impression. We can't all always have our best faces on, 100% of the time. Generalizing your single interaction as the norm is arrogant, ignorant, and selfish. Apply the principle of charity, and move on. If a person/community is truly toxic, then that needs to be addressed, but you seem to be assuming that your single bad experience is the norm, without taking the time to actually do any research... and feel the need to repeatedly trash-talk here for some reason. If you met this guy in person and said "hey, I had a bad experience interacting with you online", and he didn't talk it out and apologize, then that would speak poorly for his character. But you have one tiny insignificant data point to go on, and I think it's incredibly disheartening that you've chosen to take that as representative to such a vehement degree.
- yashap 9y ago
  I checked out some of the closed issues/PRs, and yeah, seems like Mike McQuaid can be a little brusque at times, but I didn't see anything that made me think he was a "real jerk". I'll say again that it's worth remembering that the maintainers are putting in a tonne of work, dealing with huge volumes of issues and PRs, and doing it all for free, while also working full time jobs and having lives outside of programming. It's necessary for them to write short/quick replies, and if people are being rude (as the one guy was in the PR comments), it's pretty reasonable for the maintainers to be dismissive. Also, I disagree strongly with this sentence: "The fact that MikeMcQuaid is doing this for free does not remove the obligations he has to the community." None of the maintainers have obligations to the community.

by yashap 9y ago

eridius 9y ago

It wasn't my complaint. And no, that's not a good description, because it gives me literally zero information to go on in order to find out what the workarounds were, how many formula actually needed them, and what the problems were that necessitated this. > Remember that maintainers of projects like Homebrew have to deal with an endless stream of complaints and feature requests Yeah, that's what happens with popular open source projects. Good projects are able to handle this in a way that doesn't alienate the community or future contributors. The fact that MikeMcQuaid is doing this for free does not remove the obligations he has to the community.

cakes 9y ago
> the obligations he has to the community. There isn't an obligation though. You could fork or pick an alternative as much as a maintainer/owner can abandon a project. They aren't obligated to do anything for you and you aren't obligated to do anything for them. If you don't like a project because of personalities involved, avoid them. I have personally done this without problem. It can be a pain but I have no actual pull in the matter.
kelnos 9y ago
> And no, that's not a good description, because it gives me literally zero information to go on in order to find out what the workarounds were, how many formula actually needed them, and what the problems were that necessitated this. Why do you feel that you're entitled to this information? And/or that providing this information is a good use of the maintainer's unpaid volunteer time (and that it's immediately obvious to the maintainer that it would be)? > Good projects are able to handle this in a way that doesn't alienate the community or future contributors. Homebrew is one such project. Empirically, they have an active community and sufficient contributions to keep the project robust and growing. That doesn't mean that they're going to be perfectly nice and polite to everyone, bending over backward to every user's whim. Sometimes someone is going to feel off-put as you have. But, clearly, most of the time people have positive experiences, so I'm sure they're satisfied with their performance. > ... doing this for free does not remove the obligations he has to the community. The only obligations I expect from an OSS maintainer is that they won't be negligent or malicious -- that is, they will work hard to avoid catastrophic bugs that destroy data or open security holes. Even given that, I accept that those sorts of things may happen due to innocent mistakes. Beyond that, I pay nothing, so I expect nothing. This sort of thing reminds me of really the only negative I've experienced as an open source maintainer: users with feelings of entitlement.
- eridius 9y ago
  If you don’t want to engage with the community, then don’t. But if you do it behooves you to behave in a manner that respects your users and the community. Doing otherwise is how you lose that community. It’s not “entitlement” to expect the Homebrew maintainers to be good stewards of the project and the community.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    Sure it is. It's entitlement to expect literally anything for free. You and I, personally, have not done anything to deserve Homebrew, and yet we have it (well, ok, you do; I haven't run macOS in a few years, so I haven't had need of it). It's a net good, and we, personally, did not have to do anything for it to come into being. I'm not saying you should revere and prostrate yourselves before the people who gave it to you, but you should also not expect any more from them. You should also give them the benefit of the doubt and cut them a bit of slack when they don't behave exactly as you'd think that you would. (I say "think" because it's all well and good to take the moral high ground in theory, but unless you're actually in that person's shoes, it's hard to speak in absolutes.) I've said this elsewhere, but: perhaps you hit the edges of a long drawn-out discussion that took place out of your sight, a discussion that was tiring and draining, and he just didn't feel like rehashing for you. Or maybe he simply just got out of an argument with a friend or family member, or just had a bad day. That may not excuse his behavior in polite society, but it makes it understandable. You had a one-off bad interaction with someone. Boo hoo. It happens. Give people the benefit of the doubt, and, unless you have very strong evidence to the contrary, assume your experience was an unfortunate outlier. Homebrew is obviously a successful, robust project, with lots of contributors, so maybe, just maybe, your negative experience isn't typical, and perhaps most people who he interacts with actually come away with a positive impression. We can't all always have our best faces on, 100% of the time. Generalizing your single interaction as the norm is arrogant, ignorant, and selfish. Apply the principle of charity, and move on. If a person/community is truly toxic, then that needs to be addressed, but you seem to be assuming that your single bad experience is the norm, without taking the time to actually do any research... and feel the need to repeatedly trash-talk here for some reason. If you met this guy in person and said "hey, I had a bad experience interacting with you online", and he didn't talk it out and apologize, then that would speak poorly for his character. But you have one tiny insignificant data point to go on, and I think it's incredibly disheartening that you've chosen to take that as representative to such a vehement degree.
yashap 9y ago
I checked out some of the closed issues/PRs, and yeah, seems like Mike McQuaid can be a little brusque at times, but I didn't see anything that made me think he was a "real jerk". I'll say again that it's worth remembering that the maintainers are putting in a tonne of work, dealing with huge volumes of issues and PRs, and doing it all for free, while also working full time jobs and having lives outside of programming. It's necessary for them to write short/quick replies, and if people are being rude (as the one guy was in the PR comments), it's pretty reasonable for the maintainers to be dismissive. Also, I disagree strongly with this sentence: "The fact that MikeMcQuaid is doing this for free does not remove the obligations he has to the community." None of the maintainers have obligations to the community.