5 ms·

That's a good read. I feel like the "customer is always right" mentality does quite a bit of harm to OSS support. Also reminds me of that dev (who I can't seem

by Y_Y 8y ago

That's a good read. I feel like the "customer is always right" mentality does quite a bit of harm to OSS support. Also reminds me of that dev (who I can't seem to search up) who had their email printed as part of a open-source software license in a car manual and would get ridiculous email from people who had car trouble.

JdeBP 8y ago
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16393228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16393228 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16763618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16763618
ranko 8y ago
You're probably thinking of Daniel Stenberg of curl fame: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/11/14/i-have-toyota-corola/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/11/14/i-have-toyota-corola/
- luhn 8y ago
  Ha, hadn't seen that one before. I did enjoy this related post about him hacking someone's Instagram. https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent-warning/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent-warnin...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
krylon 8y ago
OTOH, way back, when I had a TV receiver card by Hauppage, and a new Linux kernel broke something, I posted a description of my troubles on Usenet, and within 24 hours, the person who had written the Video4Linux subsystem replied asking for more details (which I gladly provided), and a few days later, the bug was fixed. That, I think, was the most awesome "customer support" experience of my life. I did make a point of being polite about it, however, which I consider a ground rule for dealing with people, especially if I want something from them. But it was so awesome to post to a random usenet group about a driver problem and have the person who wrote the driver personally approach you for details. You don't get that with Windows, for sure. ;-)
- kwhitefoot 8y ago
  I had the same experience. Suddenly Emacs Gnus reader stopped working, about 11:00 on a Friday morning. I posted the bug and had a reply from Lars Ingebrigtsen with an explanation and a workaround by 13:00. I think it was fixed by the beginning of the following week. My experience of trying to get help from Microsoft on the other hand is, well let's just say not quite so impressive; they kept me on hold for 45 minutes once and never did solve my problem.
  - undseg 8y ago
    Back in the days Microsoft would have amazing customer support. And I'm talking about "API customers", many times I've seen them go out of their way to fix third party programs not working correctly by adapting their platform, it was a very efficient process. I guess that doesn't work as well at their current scale, or they care less because they're not building up market share.
    - marris 8y ago
      > go out of their way to fix third party programs not working correctly by adapting their platform, it was a very efficient process This kind of thing probably doesn't even scale with itself, since there are only so many acrobatics your code can go through before no one can even understand why it's doing something, let alone add new workarounds. So the first K broken programs get special treatment, and the others face a much higher bar to get the same treatment.
    - TheDauthi 8y ago
      They once shipped my company a custom MSVCRT.DLL to fix a crash bug in a third-party application under heavy load. True, it was a bug in the C runtime itself, but they got us a fix for it about a day after we (along with the third party) got in touch with them. Just a few years later my team had to contact them for a BSOD that kept happening after one of their patches. We were put off for about a week before throwing our hands up on it.
- eithe 8y ago
Alex3917 8y ago
> "customer is always right" mentality does quite a bit of harm to OSS support. It goes both ways. All too often people promote their new library on HN and Reddit, wait until a bunch of people are using it as a dependency, and then abandon it without even telling anyone whether or not it’s abandoned.
- jstarfish 8y ago
  Not using toy libraries for production systems is a lesson every young developer learns early on in their career.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Fortunately every young developer is also schooled extensively in telling toy libraries apart from serious ones.
    - janoc 8y ago
      And why isn't the young developer being mentored by someone more senior before introducing a new dependency into a business critical system? Why is what amounts to a clear project management failure the problem of some open source developer who has published their personal pet project? If dependencies aren't reviewed before being used, how does such organization handle software license compliance (whether OSS or proprietary), for example? A clear cut case of trying to shift blame for own failings onto an unpaid volunteer that has helped to save the commercial developer time and money, IMO.
      - jacquesm 8y ago
        > And why isn't the young developer being mentored by someone more senior before introducing a new dependency into a business critical system? Some critical assumptions: - a more senior dev is available - has time - understand the system well enough to judge the impact - is actually a better developer than the junior (in spite of being older / in the game longer) > Why is what amounts to a clear project management failure the problem of some open source developer who has published their personal pet project? It isn't, that was the point. > If dependencies aren't reviewed before being used, how does such organization handle software license compliance (whether OSS or proprietary), for example? Some critical assumptions: - organizations keep a close eye on developers incorporating code under various licenses - the people keeping an eye on that are qualified to make the calls - the resources to keep an eye on this are available > A clear cut case of trying to shift blame for own failings onto an unpaid volunteer that has helped to save the commercial developer time and money, IMO. Sure. But that doesn't mean these things don't happen just about everywhere, many times per day. It is rare to find a company where all of the assumptions labelled above are true all the time. And that's where the problem lies. It's a clear case of there being no difference between theory and practice in theory but in practice there is, and rather a lot of it. Everybody knows in theory how software should be developed, but in practice hardly anybody actually does it that way. They're either out of time, options or qualifications (or all three) and they will do the job anyway. That doesn't excuse it, but it does help you to understand it.
bsg75 8y ago
An interesting debate: Are _users_ of FOSS "customers" ?
- dhimes 8y ago
  I think "consumers" is the better term.

by Y_Y 8y ago

JdeBP 8y ago

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16393228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16393228 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16763618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16763618

ranko 8y ago

You're probably thinking of Daniel Stenberg of curl fame: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/11/14/i-have-toyota-corola/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/11/14/i-have-toyota-corola/

luhn 8y ago
Ha, hadn't seen that one before. I did enjoy this related post about him hacking someone's Instagram. https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent-warning/ https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent-warnin...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

krylon 8y ago

OTOH, way back, when I had a TV receiver card by Hauppage, and a new Linux kernel broke something, I posted a description of my troubles on Usenet, and within 24 hours, the person who had written the Video4Linux subsystem replied asking for more details (which I gladly provided), and a few days later, the bug was fixed. That, I think, was the most awesome "customer support" experience of my life. I did make a point of being polite about it, however, which I consider a ground rule for dealing with people, especially if I want something from them. But it was so awesome to post to a random usenet group about a driver problem and have the person who wrote the driver personally approach you for details. You don't get that with Windows, for sure. ;-)

kwhitefoot 8y ago
I had the same experience. Suddenly Emacs Gnus reader stopped working, about 11:00 on a Friday morning. I posted the bug and had a reply from Lars Ingebrigtsen with an explanation and a workaround by 13:00. I think it was fixed by the beginning of the following week. My experience of trying to get help from Microsoft on the other hand is, well let's just say not quite so impressive; they kept me on hold for 45 minutes once and never did solve my problem.
- undseg 8y ago
  Back in the days Microsoft would have amazing customer support. And I'm talking about "API customers", many times I've seen them go out of their way to fix third party programs not working correctly by adapting their platform, it was a very efficient process. I guess that doesn't work as well at their current scale, or they care less because they're not building up market share.
  - marris 8y ago
    > go out of their way to fix third party programs not working correctly by adapting their platform, it was a very efficient process This kind of thing probably doesn't even scale with itself, since there are only so many acrobatics your code can go through before no one can even understand why it's doing something, let alone add new workarounds. So the first K broken programs get special treatment, and the others face a much higher bar to get the same treatment.
  - TheDauthi 8y ago
    They once shipped my company a custom MSVCRT.DLL to fix a crash bug in a third-party application under heavy load. True, it was a bug in the C runtime itself, but they got us a fix for it about a day after we (along with the third party) got in touch with them. Just a few years later my team had to contact them for a BSOD that kept happening after one of their patches. We were put off for about a week before throwing our hands up on it.
eithe 8y ago

Alex3917 8y ago

> "customer is always right" mentality does quite a bit of harm to OSS support. It goes both ways. All too often people promote their new library on HN and Reddit, wait until a bunch of people are using it as a dependency, and then abandon it without even telling anyone whether or not it’s abandoned.

jstarfish 8y ago
Not using toy libraries for production systems is a lesson every young developer learns early on in their career.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Fortunately every young developer is also schooled extensively in telling toy libraries apart from serious ones.
  - janoc 8y ago
    And why isn't the young developer being mentored by someone more senior before introducing a new dependency into a business critical system? Why is what amounts to a clear project management failure the problem of some open source developer who has published their personal pet project? If dependencies aren't reviewed before being used, how does such organization handle software license compliance (whether OSS or proprietary), for example? A clear cut case of trying to shift blame for own failings onto an unpaid volunteer that has helped to save the commercial developer time and money, IMO.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      > And why isn't the young developer being mentored by someone more senior before introducing a new dependency into a business critical system? Some critical assumptions: - a more senior dev is available - has time - understand the system well enough to judge the impact - is actually a better developer than the junior (in spite of being older / in the game longer) > Why is what amounts to a clear project management failure the problem of some open source developer who has published their personal pet project? It isn't, that was the point. > If dependencies aren't reviewed before being used, how does such organization handle software license compliance (whether OSS or proprietary), for example? Some critical assumptions: - organizations keep a close eye on developers incorporating code under various licenses - the people keeping an eye on that are qualified to make the calls - the resources to keep an eye on this are available > A clear cut case of trying to shift blame for own failings onto an unpaid volunteer that has helped to save the commercial developer time and money, IMO. Sure. But that doesn't mean these things don't happen just about everywhere, many times per day. It is rare to find a company where all of the assumptions labelled above are true all the time. And that's where the problem lies. It's a clear case of there being no difference between theory and practice in theory but in practice there is, and rather a lot of it. Everybody knows in theory how software should be developed, but in practice hardly anybody actually does it that way. They're either out of time, options or qualifications (or all three) and they will do the job anyway. That doesn't excuse it, but it does help you to understand it.

bsg75 8y ago

An interesting debate: Are _users_ of FOSS "customers" ?

dhimes 8y ago
I think "consumers" is the better term.