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"In practice, I rarely reply to emails or GitHub issues, even if the sender sounds sincere. I've found that once you start being nice, some people will keep ask

"In practice, I rarely reply to emails or GitHub issues, even if the sender sounds sincere. I've found that once you start being nice, some people will keep asking for more and then get angry when you don't keep volunteering your time. Silence is the only scalable solution. I know that not making myself available feels unwelcoming and not inclusive; but I'm paid in my day job to serve students at my own university, not strangers on the internet who are using free software that I maintain in my spare time." An interesting comment given past discussions on Hacker News about how demanding some users are about open source software (these users often tend to be other developers too).

2sk21 7y ago
I agree with the author - given the sense of entitlement among users, this is the only real option for a sole maintainer like him.
grandinj 7y ago
I completely agree. Silence is indeed the most useful solution. I routinely block, ignore or otherwise disassociate myself from issues/features/users/etc that I am not interested in. It is just a whole lot less emotionally demanding than trying to interact with even very polite, but insistent people. There are just too many of them, and only one of me.
bachmeier 7y ago
Warning: Critical remarks coming "Python Tutor's large international user base provides a unique platform for my research. This work has collectively led to almost a dozen research papers and several major grants so far." In other words, he wants the (extremely large) benefits of an open source project but doesn't want to waste his time on those that don't have value to him. He's running a startup with a $0 price tag rather than an open source project. He doesn't deserve to get any credit, it's something he does purely for his own benefit, and he's giving open source projects in general a bad reputation. Nothing that he's said is a justification for ignoring communication.
- UncleEntity 7y ago
  > In other words, he wants the (extremely large) benefits of an open source project but doesn't want to waste his time on those that don't have value to him. No, he benefits millions of users and is intentionally not taking "the (extremely large) benefits of an open source project" by stating he hasn't the time to deal with outside input. If the source was closed and people could just use the (free) website nobody would care but since its open source he suddenly owes the world something?
  - bachmeier 7y ago
    > No, he benefits millions of users and is intentionally not taking "the (extremely large) benefits of an open source project" by stating he hasn't the time to deal with outside input. I have no idea what this means. He wrote in his post that he does it for his benefit, and that he ignores most people because it doesn't benefit him to respond. > If the source was closed and people could just use the (free) website nobody would care but since its open source he suddenly owes the world something? Ignoring sincere communication has nothing to do with a software license. That's being a jerk. The choice of software license doesn't give you a right to be a jerk. This is yet another one of those situations where someone is well known in the open source world and his fans think that excuses being an asshole.
    - pgeorgi 7y ago
      > He wrote in his post that he does it for his benefit He benefits from the software existing. He benefits from deriving a paper or two from running the platform. Neither has to do with it being open source. The open source aspect benefits users only. > The choice of software license doesn't give you a right to be a jerk. It doesn't give anybody the right to contact the author, either. Since "jerk" in this context means "not responding to sincere communication": if you send a sincere email to the CEO of IBM because you have proposals on how to improve SPSS (a tool that, as economist and professor, you're certainly familiar with), do you expect a substantial answer that isn't driven by the CEO's extensive staff and PR department? Give that man a secretary and PR department and I'm sure he'll answer all communication.

2sk21 7y ago

I agree with the author - given the sense of entitlement among users, this is the only real option for a sole maintainer like him.

grandinj 7y ago

I completely agree. Silence is indeed the most useful solution. I routinely block, ignore or otherwise disassociate myself from issues/features/users/etc that I am not interested in. It is just a whole lot less emotionally demanding than trying to interact with even very polite, but insistent people. There are just too many of them, and only one of me.

bachmeier 7y ago

Warning: Critical remarks coming "Python Tutor's large international user base provides a unique platform for my research. This work has collectively led to almost a dozen research papers and several major grants so far." In other words, he wants the (extremely large) benefits of an open source project but doesn't want to waste his time on those that don't have value to him. He's running a startup with a $0 price tag rather than an open source project. He doesn't deserve to get any credit, it's something he does purely for his own benefit, and he's giving open source projects in general a bad reputation. Nothing that he's said is a justification for ignoring communication.

UncleEntity 7y ago
> In other words, he wants the (extremely large) benefits of an open source project but doesn't want to waste his time on those that don't have value to him. No, he benefits millions of users and is intentionally not taking "the (extremely large) benefits of an open source project" by stating he hasn't the time to deal with outside input. If the source was closed and people could just use the (free) website nobody would care but since its open source he suddenly owes the world something?
- bachmeier 7y ago
  > No, he benefits millions of users and is intentionally not taking "the (extremely large) benefits of an open source project" by stating he hasn't the time to deal with outside input. I have no idea what this means. He wrote in his post that he does it for his benefit, and that he ignores most people because it doesn't benefit him to respond. > If the source was closed and people could just use the (free) website nobody would care but since its open source he suddenly owes the world something? Ignoring sincere communication has nothing to do with a software license. That's being a jerk. The choice of software license doesn't give you a right to be a jerk. This is yet another one of those situations where someone is well known in the open source world and his fans think that excuses being an asshole.
  - pgeorgi 7y ago
    > He wrote in his post that he does it for his benefit He benefits from the software existing. He benefits from deriving a paper or two from running the platform. Neither has to do with it being open source. The open source aspect benefits users only. > The choice of software license doesn't give you a right to be a jerk. It doesn't give anybody the right to contact the author, either. Since "jerk" in this context means "not responding to sincere communication": if you send a sincere email to the CEO of IBM because you have proposals on how to improve SPSS (a tool that, as economist and professor, you're certainly familiar with), do you expect a substantial answer that isn't driven by the CEO's extensive staff and PR department? Give that man a secretary and PR department and I'm sure he'll answer all communication.