4 ms·

This is such an insightful post/question. I hope it gains traction and discussion here on HN, Thanks for posting it. As an open source lurker/consumer I someti

by Pick-A-Hill2019 6y ago

This is such an insightful post/question. I hope it gains traction and discussion here on HN, Thanks for posting it. As an open source lurker/consumer I sometimes take a dive in to a projects' bug tracker if something glitches at a reproducible level and some of the tickets I've seen have been appalling. The sense of entitlement in those has left me slack jawed on more than one occasion. I've pondered on this a few times when debating whether or not to open source some of the stuff I work on from time to time and the conclusion has been a massive 'Nope'. Not because I don't want to share for the good of humanity but because of this exact issue. Criticism I can take (). The open tickets that either DEMAND that something be changed, those that have hit a valid bug (but failed to check the repo for open issues before raising a ticket) and then say that it is costing them $$$$ in downtime and (again) DEMANDING that it be fixed make me weep for the maintainers. As to what the solution is – I’ve heard (via the grapevine & IRC chats) that receiving an email saying ‘Hi, thanks for making this.’ with a subject line like ‘Thanks dude’ makes a world of difference when having a bad day™. Yet this is not enough to properly thank those that do Open Source. Somehow I think that browsing an open source repo and searching for the ‘Help Wanted’ tags is something that all should do if they use an open source program regularly. Not all of it is CODING stuff. Sometimes it is a translation request (no coding skills needed), A request for ‘Does anyone else see this happening? If not will mark as ‘Closed’ etc. Also most will have a metric that maintainers can monitor about how many viewed which pages. Seeing a ‘help wanted’ bug be unviewed for months on end while being confronted with ‘WHY UR PROJECT NOT DO THIS?’ level of tickets is ….. depressing. Hopefully others here on HN can chip in with what would make them feel valued and appreciated.

PaulHoule 6y ago
In general I do nothing pro bono or on spec anymore even if it seems promising or fun because people who are not paying feel an unlimited entitlement to waste your time. I find people who can do math are usually victimized in situations like that. The business bullshitters can say what they want and get away from it but for me the business value of something that is 95% right is zero. I'll do the hard work to get to 100% and in a fit of mindlessness they wreck it and then deny that they did. Business folks use this phrase 'get your hands dirty' when it comes to fleshing out ideas in a framework where contradictions will be exposed. The underlying mindset is how people thought about blacks in pre civil war america, how they thought about Chinese people in the 1890s us or how they think about dailies in India today. You can intimidate people to say 2 + 2 = 3 cause the party says so, but aspies and computers can't do it. I remember a person on hacker news that thought open source software wasn't well documented enough who went ballistic when I told him he could fix passages he wanted to improve (e.g. you are going to research it to solve your immediate problem, maybe even write private notes about it. Why not put your notes where you can find them later?)

PaulHoule 6y ago

In general I do nothing pro bono or on spec anymore even if it seems promising or fun because people who are not paying feel an unlimited entitlement to waste your time. I find people who can do math are usually victimized in situations like that. The business bullshitters can say what they want and get away from it but for me the business value of something that is 95% right is zero. I'll do the hard work to get to 100% and in a fit of mindlessness they wreck it and then deny that they did. Business folks use this phrase 'get your hands dirty' when it comes to fleshing out ideas in a framework where contradictions will be exposed. The underlying mindset is how people thought about blacks in pre civil war america, how they thought about Chinese people in the 1890s us or how they think about dailies in India today. You can intimidate people to say 2 + 2 = 3 cause the party says so, but aspies and computers can't do it. I remember a person on hacker news that thought open source software wasn't well documented enough who went ballistic when I told him he could fix passages he wanted to improve (e.g. you are going to research it to solve your immediate problem, maybe even write private notes about it. Why not put your notes where you can find them later?)