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I once got a mail for a free software I published: "You're product sucks, I don't like it, why are you even doing this? There are much better alternatives out t

I once got a mail for a free software I published: "You're product sucks, I don't like it, why are you even doing this? There are much better alternatives out there.". So what to do with that? I have to admit that this mail really stung for a while. Maybe I should have asked, why it sucked for this person, but then, why should I care about someone rude? It didn't take me long to learn that some percentage of people tend to behave badly, especially on the internet and I can't do anything about it. I don't even exclude myself, I also wrote things to support addresses that I regret now. Overall, when I release something in the open now I do it because either I don't care, it's good for my image or I hope that people like it. I ignore rude comments and enjoy the happy ones. You would hope that people that know about OSS would be more considerate but they just aren't, free-loaders exist everywhere, it's a human problem, but it's also no reason to not stay idealistic. EDIT: typo

userbinator 7y ago
My usual response is "Then go use those alternatives instead of bothering me. It works fine for me." The majority of the things I "throw out there", I know perfectly well will not be useful to a significant number of users, and that's fine. I just do it because it costs very little, and someone might find it useful. (In case you were wondering, I'm not going to show the stuff I've put out here for a variety of reasons, sorry.)
mugsie 7y ago
Those sort of emails are really hard to deal with, especially when it is something you spent a lot of time working on. I like the idea from the talk of just blocking them outright.
- megous 7y ago
  I learened not to engage. It only ever once turned out, that the user actually spent quite a bit of time and contributed something as a result of me engaging futher and not just ignoring the e-mail. I guess some people may just be grumpy for whatever reason, and it will bubble up in the conversation. But I don't usually care for the positive words that much either. I guess it's nice that my sw is helping someone, and whatnot, and great, but it's usually just a preface to some request or issue someone's having, often times solvable by reading the man page, or using --help, or checking if there's a newer version and trying that before bothering the authors. The only people that stand out are those that just send a thank you without anything else. Quite rare. What'd probably be more interesting to receive is just a thank you note and some info about what the user is using the sw for. That might as well be inspirational, at the very least, and perhaps an opener for some collaboration. I think I received such a message 2-3x in the last 15 years. Very rare! Maybe people need a bit of probing in the README to send such messages. :D
  - Isamu 7y ago
    >What'd probably be more interesting to receive is just a thank you note and some info about what the user is using the sw for. Good idea, I will try to start doing that.
fenomas 7y ago
I got a weird reverse one a few years back, to the effect of "your result is great, best I've seen, but the code is awful and I think you're not a good developer". What can you do? I just said something like "thanks, if you have any specific feedback please open an issue". One thing that's nice about getting this via GitHub is, at least the rude comment maybe gets a couple of :thumbsdown:s on it, which can help you brush it off.
- hnlmorg 7y ago
  I used to really care about my own code quality in OSS but these days I just think it's a miracle if I manage to write any code (for the same reasons described in that video: full time job + family and other social obligations, eg I also do volunteer work most weekends). The way I see it, writing working code is more important than writing "good" code most of the time. That's not to say I don't try and follow some degree of standards. My code usually contains a crap load of tests, definitely tries to follow the language idioms, etc. But I just don't try and get clever where I don't need to. Sometimes this means code isn't well optimised - however I can pick that up in a subsequent bug fix if that particular feature proves useful / popular. Thus I have had one or two people comment before saying "it's not very well coded" and I usually just reply "it's very much living project where some code is working POC and other code has been rewritten and improved (sometimes many times over). However if you have any specific concerns or tips, I'd welcome them. Or better yet, chuck me a PR"
  - noonespecial 7y ago
    Funny thing about that: Complainers always seem to think that the code that they could have written but didn't is better than the code that you could write and did. The trifling fact that theirs does not, in fact, exist never seems to register with them.
- jp_sc 7y ago
  My answer would've been "fuck you", followed by blocking said user in all my repos.
- mikekchar 7y ago
sprash 7y ago
> So what to do with that? Negative feedback is the only form of valueable feedback. If you want to make your software better you should listen to negative feedback. Of course negative feedback often comes with emotional baggage but you should be above that kind of thing. The right strategy is actually to ignore positive feedback (because it is mostly worthless) and ask the people that give you negative feedback for more specifics and to be more precise about what they don't like.
- lordgrenville 7y ago
  No, being abused by someone is not valuable and even very mature, confident people find it hard to handle emotionally. Negative feedback is helpful if presented politely or neutrally. Otherwise the form destroys the value of the content. (And by the way, positive feedback can be very valuable as well.)
  - sprash 7y ago
    > even very mature, confident people find it hard to handle emotionally. One of the defining qualities of being "mature" and "confident" is to be able to fade out the emotional components and concentrate on the substance. This is the essential quality that seperates children from adults. If you are fazed by some comments of random people on the internet then you are neither "mature" nor "confident". You either got to grow up or you will have a hard time. > positive feedback can be very valuable as well. Only for marketing, which you won't need if your product is good anyways. For example nobody did any "marketing" for git (except that Linus called his competitors "stupid and ugly" which was actually more like anit-marketing) but git is used by everybody because it is generally really good.
    - mmmrk 7y ago
      > If you are fazed by some comments of random people on the internet then you are neither "mature" nor "confident". You either got to grow up or you will have a hard time. Not sure if you're trying to troll here, but being fazed by negativity is a perfectly normal human response. Framing it as a matter of maturity or confidence seems disingenuous to me. One can be trained to handle it better and turn it around or into something productive (i.e. conflict training for health care professionals) but the response remains.
derekp7 7y ago
I would be happy if I could find an appropriate way to get more visibility for one of my open source projects (a snapshot backup system, called Snebu). My problem is that I don't want to feel spammy by throwing out references whenever an opportunity comes up (like I just did here), however on the flip side the more people that use it, the more support tickets that will come in that may ask for things that are outside of the design scope. And I would feel bad if I can't make something work for everybody.

userbinator 7y ago

My usual response is "Then go use those alternatives instead of bothering me. It works fine for me." The majority of the things I "throw out there", I know perfectly well will not be useful to a significant number of users, and that's fine. I just do it because it costs very little, and someone might find it useful. (In case you were wondering, I'm not going to show the stuff I've put out here for a variety of reasons, sorry.)

mugsie 7y ago

Those sort of emails are really hard to deal with, especially when it is something you spent a lot of time working on. I like the idea from the talk of just blocking them outright.

megous 7y ago
I learened not to engage. It only ever once turned out, that the user actually spent quite a bit of time and contributed something as a result of me engaging futher and not just ignoring the e-mail. I guess some people may just be grumpy for whatever reason, and it will bubble up in the conversation. But I don't usually care for the positive words that much either. I guess it's nice that my sw is helping someone, and whatnot, and great, but it's usually just a preface to some request or issue someone's having, often times solvable by reading the man page, or using --help, or checking if there's a newer version and trying that before bothering the authors. The only people that stand out are those that just send a thank you without anything else. Quite rare. What'd probably be more interesting to receive is just a thank you note and some info about what the user is using the sw for. That might as well be inspirational, at the very least, and perhaps an opener for some collaboration. I think I received such a message 2-3x in the last 15 years. Very rare! Maybe people need a bit of probing in the README to send such messages. :D
- Isamu 7y ago
  >What'd probably be more interesting to receive is just a thank you note and some info about what the user is using the sw for. Good idea, I will try to start doing that.

fenomas 7y ago

I got a weird reverse one a few years back, to the effect of "your result is great, best I've seen, but the code is awful and I think you're not a good developer". What can you do? I just said something like "thanks, if you have any specific feedback please open an issue". One thing that's nice about getting this via GitHub is, at least the rude comment maybe gets a couple of :thumbsdown:s on it, which can help you brush it off.

hnlmorg 7y ago
I used to really care about my own code quality in OSS but these days I just think it's a miracle if I manage to write any code (for the same reasons described in that video: full time job + family and other social obligations, eg I also do volunteer work most weekends). The way I see it, writing working code is more important than writing "good" code most of the time. That's not to say I don't try and follow some degree of standards. My code usually contains a crap load of tests, definitely tries to follow the language idioms, etc. But I just don't try and get clever where I don't need to. Sometimes this means code isn't well optimised - however I can pick that up in a subsequent bug fix if that particular feature proves useful / popular. Thus I have had one or two people comment before saying "it's not very well coded" and I usually just reply "it's very much living project where some code is working POC and other code has been rewritten and improved (sometimes many times over). However if you have any specific concerns or tips, I'd welcome them. Or better yet, chuck me a PR"
- noonespecial 7y ago
  Funny thing about that: Complainers always seem to think that the code that they could have written but didn't is better than the code that you could write and did. The trifling fact that theirs does not, in fact, exist never seems to register with them.
jp_sc 7y ago
My answer would've been "fuck you", followed by blocking said user in all my repos.
mikekchar 7y ago

sprash 7y ago

> So what to do with that? Negative feedback is the only form of valueable feedback. If you want to make your software better you should listen to negative feedback. Of course negative feedback often comes with emotional baggage but you should be above that kind of thing. The right strategy is actually to ignore positive feedback (because it is mostly worthless) and ask the people that give you negative feedback for more specifics and to be more precise about what they don't like.

lordgrenville 7y ago
No, being abused by someone is not valuable and even very mature, confident people find it hard to handle emotionally. Negative feedback is helpful if presented politely or neutrally. Otherwise the form destroys the value of the content. (And by the way, positive feedback can be very valuable as well.)
- sprash 7y ago
  > even very mature, confident people find it hard to handle emotionally. One of the defining qualities of being "mature" and "confident" is to be able to fade out the emotional components and concentrate on the substance. This is the essential quality that seperates children from adults. If you are fazed by some comments of random people on the internet then you are neither "mature" nor "confident". You either got to grow up or you will have a hard time. > positive feedback can be very valuable as well. Only for marketing, which you won't need if your product is good anyways. For example nobody did any "marketing" for git (except that Linus called his competitors "stupid and ugly" which was actually more like anit-marketing) but git is used by everybody because it is generally really good.
  - mmmrk 7y ago
    > If you are fazed by some comments of random people on the internet then you are neither "mature" nor "confident". You either got to grow up or you will have a hard time. Not sure if you're trying to troll here, but being fazed by negativity is a perfectly normal human response. Framing it as a matter of maturity or confidence seems disingenuous to me. One can be trained to handle it better and turn it around or into something productive (i.e. conflict training for health care professionals) but the response remains.

derekp7 7y ago

I would be happy if I could find an appropriate way to get more visibility for one of my open source projects (a snapshot backup system, called Snebu). My problem is that I don't want to feel spammy by throwing out references whenever an opportunity comes up (like I just did here), however on the flip side the more people that use it, the more support tickets that will come in that may ask for things that are outside of the design scope. And I would feel bad if I can't make something work for everybody.