6 ms·

> if I see you approaching a door, I am under no obligation to open it just because I'm physically able to, but if I open a door for you, I'd better hold it unt

by mabbo 7y ago

> if I see you approaching a door, I am under no obligation to open it just because I'm physically able to, but if I open a door for you, I'd better hold it until you're finished walking through, or I'm a jerk. By holding the door open, I've made an implicit promise that I'm not going to close it on you. This reminds me of an incident years ago. I was on a city bus, very full of people, and we were just about to leave a stop. There's a woman maybe 150 feet away running towards the bus. The driver sees her running and re-opens the door, waiting. Inconvenience to all of us on the bus, but hey, she's running. The woman, seeing the bus has waited for her, stops running and starts slowly walking instead. Driver sighs, closes the door, drives away. I'm not sure what the moral lesson I take from it is, but mainly "if I go out of my way to help you, don't take advantage of my generosity". Maybe that partially applies to situations like this one. Or maybe just "don't annoy transit operators". That's a good one too.

saagarjha 7y ago
In this case, the maintainer made an active and conscious decision to do something that did nothing but hurt everyone using the project. There are no passengers who might benefit here, sadly.
- tastroder 7y ago
  Since this seems to be a constant point in this thread but I don't see it: How exactly did that person hurt anybody? They maintained this project for 3(?) years and the code is readily available elsewhere on github now. If there's really that many people being inconvenienced by that, surely somebody else will take over that fork instead.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    This person killed the momentum that this project had, much of which was only partly their work. Forks fracture a project’s community and pit the pieces against each other: occasionally they work out, but often they all just fizzle into nothingness. Keeping a project together has value. (Also, note that associated GitHub metadata such as issues has been wiped.)
    - tastroder 7y ago
      Reading the description in the root of that project, the community and user base might just as well be attributed to "killing the momentum" if you like (if that's even the case, this seemed to have happened literally hours ago). The issues seem to be intact on the maintainers personal copy of that repository. I mean, yes, keeping a project together has value, I just don't see where the assumption here comes from that this maintainer has to do that indefinitely or even has to be involved in actively searching for successors in a community they don't feel good about. The maintainer even states being open to suggestions. If nobody steps up, momentum can't have been that great, if somebody does, a fork will live on. That's still in the realm of mild inconvenience, other projects have survived much larger controversy. edit: the frontpage is currently topped by a more balanced write-up by Steve Klabnik that weighs up, among others, both of these views https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22075076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22075076
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        > I just don't see where the assumption here comes from that this maintainer has to do that indefinitely or even has to be involved in actively searching for successors in a community they don't feel good about Of course they don’t. But I don’t see why they couldn’t have made an issue along the lines of “I’m stepping down, I’d like someone else to take over the project”. (Still reading through the other writeup.)
    - dunnock 7y ago
      What do you mean wiped? It was moved to personal account https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-web https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-web.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        I was under the impression that that repository was probably going to be deleted at some point.
- rossjudson 7y ago
  I think you are confused. The maintainer made an active and conscious decision to protect himself. That's clearly not "nothing", and a perfectly legitimate reason.
  - nindalf 7y ago
    They're referring to the maintainer's conscious decision to reject a patch made in good faith, that fixed the issues that had been pointed out. It was rejected with the statement "this is boring." Do you think this behaviour is justifiable? > I think you are confused You sure?
    - jackinloadup 7y ago
      It is if your the one maintaining it. It's not like people are paying the person to accept their patches. If they want their patch applied they can fork the project. The maintainer isn't a slave to others. Under what obligation does the maintainer NEED to accept any patch? It's his project he built. He can build or destroy his work as he sees fit. If you have an issue fork it. This is how things like libreoffice, mariadb, and countless other projects have come to exist.
    - rumanator 7y ago
      > They're referring to the maintainer's conscious decision to reject a patch made in good faith, that fixed the issues that had been pointed out. You're misrepresenting the problem. There was never a bug or an issue, only a bunch of opinionated and vocal users who thought that bullying a maintainer is an acceptable way to get him to accept their patches. The maintainer rejected the bullies' actions and in turn the bullies ramped up their attacks, which ultimately convinced the maintainer that closing up shop is the best way to stop having to deal with these bullies.
      - useragent86 7y ago
        > You're misrepresenting the problem. There was never a bug or an issue The story originated from the author of this article [0] posting a bug report issue [1]. Why are you accusing others of misrepresenting the problem while doing so yourself? 0: https://medium.com/@shnatsel/smoke-testing-rust-http-clients-b8f2ee5db4e6 https://medium.com/@shnatsel/smoke-testing-rust-http-clients... 1: https://archive.is/BEqfM https://archive.is/BEqfM
geofft 7y ago
I think that's fair - especially the part about not taking advantage of generosity. But I don't think that's what happened here. Someone reported a soundness bug. Someone else (IIRC) posted a patch fixing it by switching from a custom Cell type to the standard library one, which is what the maintainer called uncreative and boring. Fixing a soundness bug is a perfectly reasonable, non-advantage-taking thing to do in a PR. (I agree that in general there is a problem with open-source users feeling entitled to support/features and maintainers not feeling comfortable saying no, but that doesn't seem to be the type of incident that triggered this, and more generally it is difficult for me to see how a patch would count as that - at least a patch that isn't "please maintain this pile of new code," which this one wasn't.)
- rumanator 7y ago
  > Someone reported a soundness bug. Your description starts off on the wrong foot because a) there was no bug, and b) although the library used unsafe code extensively, its maintainer argued that was not a problem and that didn't meant the code was unsafe. So in the end we only have issues being reported by opinionated users trying to force their personal opinions on a project maintainer, who due to the content and tone of said issue reporters decided not to accept the reports or patches. Once some bad apples in the community started to increase the unpleasantness of the whole experience, the maintainer said enough is enough.
Sachaniman 7y ago
Well put!
lonelappde 7y ago
Yeah, people who aren't in perfect running form don't deserve help.

by mabbo 7y ago

saagarjha 7y ago

In this case, the maintainer made an active and conscious decision to do something that did nothing but hurt everyone using the project. There are no passengers who might benefit here, sadly.

tastroder 7y ago
Since this seems to be a constant point in this thread but I don't see it: How exactly did that person hurt anybody? They maintained this project for 3(?) years and the code is readily available elsewhere on github now. If there's really that many people being inconvenienced by that, surely somebody else will take over that fork instead.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  This person killed the momentum that this project had, much of which was only partly their work. Forks fracture a project’s community and pit the pieces against each other: occasionally they work out, but often they all just fizzle into nothingness. Keeping a project together has value. (Also, note that associated GitHub metadata such as issues has been wiped.)
  - tastroder 7y ago
    Reading the description in the root of that project, the community and user base might just as well be attributed to "killing the momentum" if you like (if that's even the case, this seemed to have happened literally hours ago). The issues seem to be intact on the maintainers personal copy of that repository. I mean, yes, keeping a project together has value, I just don't see where the assumption here comes from that this maintainer has to do that indefinitely or even has to be involved in actively searching for successors in a community they don't feel good about. The maintainer even states being open to suggestions. If nobody steps up, momentum can't have been that great, if somebody does, a fork will live on. That's still in the realm of mild inconvenience, other projects have survived much larger controversy. edit: the frontpage is currently topped by a more balanced write-up by Steve Klabnik that weighs up, among others, both of these views https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22075076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22075076
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > I just don't see where the assumption here comes from that this maintainer has to do that indefinitely or even has to be involved in actively searching for successors in a community they don't feel good about Of course they don’t. But I don’t see why they couldn’t have made an issue along the lines of “I’m stepping down, I’d like someone else to take over the project”. (Still reading through the other writeup.)
  - dunnock 7y ago
    What do you mean wiped? It was moved to personal account https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-web https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-web.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      I was under the impression that that repository was probably going to be deleted at some point.
rossjudson 7y ago
I think you are confused. The maintainer made an active and conscious decision to protect himself. That's clearly not "nothing", and a perfectly legitimate reason.
- nindalf 7y ago
  They're referring to the maintainer's conscious decision to reject a patch made in good faith, that fixed the issues that had been pointed out. It was rejected with the statement "this is boring." Do you think this behaviour is justifiable? > I think you are confused You sure?
  - jackinloadup 7y ago
    It is if your the one maintaining it. It's not like people are paying the person to accept their patches. If they want their patch applied they can fork the project. The maintainer isn't a slave to others. Under what obligation does the maintainer NEED to accept any patch? It's his project he built. He can build or destroy his work as he sees fit. If you have an issue fork it. This is how things like libreoffice, mariadb, and countless other projects have come to exist.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > They're referring to the maintainer's conscious decision to reject a patch made in good faith, that fixed the issues that had been pointed out. You're misrepresenting the problem. There was never a bug or an issue, only a bunch of opinionated and vocal users who thought that bullying a maintainer is an acceptable way to get him to accept their patches. The maintainer rejected the bullies' actions and in turn the bullies ramped up their attacks, which ultimately convinced the maintainer that closing up shop is the best way to stop having to deal with these bullies.
    - useragent86 7y ago
      > You're misrepresenting the problem. There was never a bug or an issue The story originated from the author of this article [0] posting a bug report issue [1]. Why are you accusing others of misrepresenting the problem while doing so yourself? 0: https://medium.com/@shnatsel/smoke-testing-rust-http-clients-b8f2ee5db4e6 https://medium.com/@shnatsel/smoke-testing-rust-http-clients... 1: https://archive.is/BEqfM https://archive.is/BEqfM

geofft 7y ago

I think that's fair - especially the part about not taking advantage of generosity. But I don't think that's what happened here. Someone reported a soundness bug. Someone else (IIRC) posted a patch fixing it by switching from a custom Cell type to the standard library one, which is what the maintainer called uncreative and boring. Fixing a soundness bug is a perfectly reasonable, non-advantage-taking thing to do in a PR. (I agree that in general there is a problem with open-source users feeling entitled to support/features and maintainers not feeling comfortable saying no, but that doesn't seem to be the type of incident that triggered this, and more generally it is difficult for me to see how a patch would count as that - at least a patch that isn't "please maintain this pile of new code," which this one wasn't.)

rumanator 7y ago
> Someone reported a soundness bug. Your description starts off on the wrong foot because a) there was no bug, and b) although the library used unsafe code extensively, its maintainer argued that was not a problem and that didn't meant the code was unsafe. So in the end we only have issues being reported by opinionated users trying to force their personal opinions on a project maintainer, who due to the content and tone of said issue reporters decided not to accept the reports or patches. Once some bad apples in the community started to increase the unpleasantness of the whole experience, the maintainer said enough is enough.

Sachaniman 7y ago

Well put!

lonelappde 7y ago

Yeah, people who aren't in perfect running form don't deserve help.