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> the tradeoff of marketing freebies versus being viewed negatively as a group is and a society is not worth it. The reputation comes from mediocre youtube tut

> the tradeoff of marketing freebies versus being viewed negatively as a group is and a society is not worth it. The reputation comes from mediocre youtube tutorials, sweatshops like TCS and infosys, bullshit sites like geeksforgeeks, and incidents like this. I am an Indian, and I think I have no right to complain about that reputation.

quadrifoliate 6y ago
> I am an Indian, and I think I have no right to complain about that reputation. I think that we are in agreement regarding that? I have no right to complain about it either. I can offer advice to bypass Open Source contributions altogether, which would have the side effect of stopping incidents like this. And it's not like projects are starved for README contributions either, coding bootcamps or someone else will pick up the slack.
- higerordermap 6y ago
  Then, should we stop writing good code because some shitheads set a bad example? Let me be clear, when you write open source code there are incentives like creating / improving tool for our own use, experimenting, or having a legitimate contribution, even if it is for sake of resume. The software we want to write as OSS is often not the software we can write as proprietary, sell and make money. Should we give up all the advantages of open source for our side projects? Aren't other people contributing to open source and that's making world better? Should we do a disservice to ourselves and open source community because some people among us have created a bad reputation? It's not like anyone says "He is Indian, his contribution is probably worthless" about Sanjay Ghemawat or Vikram Adve, right?
  - quadrifoliate 6y ago
    > Then, should we stop writing good code because some shitheads set a bad example? No, I'm saying that we should write great code, and not open source any of it. I don't understand why the concept is so unpopular? > It's not like anyone says "He is Indian, his contribution is probably worthless" about Sanjay Ghemawat or Vikram Adve, right? Absolutely not. But I think that today, if Ghemawat made a typo fix contribution to 10 random projects for Hacktoberfest, at least one of those project maintainers who didn't know about him would be yelling about "spam". I'm not sure how to prove this; maybe someone who knows him can ask him to try? :) This is HN after all. Also, since you bring it up, I'm guessing that the vast majority of Sanjay's code at Google is proprietary and not available to the world.
    - hombre_fatal 6y ago
      Which of the article examples (or in-the-wild hacktoberfest PR) is a case of a "typo fix contribution" that you think was unfairly rejected?
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    I’d really like epithet to reserve that for people who are actively malicious. There are no signs to the contrary for the people submitting spam PRs being enthusiastic developers looking to get into open source and score some swag while they’re at it but lacking the guidance to really understand that they’re being annoying to other people.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> The reputation comes from mediocre youtube tutorials, sweatshops like TCS and infosys, bullshit sites like geeksforgeeks, and incidents like this. I'm not Indian, and I think the reputation comes largely from the proportion of educated people not behind the Great Firewall of China that are Indian, and people mistaking “the proportion of people who do I see do X thar are from Y background” with “the proportion of people from Y background who do X”.
- higerordermap 6y ago
  The above may be the result of large population (with better contact to outside world than china) too.. But the bullshit is real, and its frustrating.

quadrifoliate 6y ago

> I am an Indian, and I think I have no right to complain about that reputation. I think that we are in agreement regarding that? I have no right to complain about it either. I can offer advice to bypass Open Source contributions altogether, which would have the side effect of stopping incidents like this. And it's not like projects are starved for README contributions either, coding bootcamps or someone else will pick up the slack.

higerordermap 6y ago
Then, should we stop writing good code because some shitheads set a bad example? Let me be clear, when you write open source code there are incentives like creating / improving tool for our own use, experimenting, or having a legitimate contribution, even if it is for sake of resume. The software we want to write as OSS is often not the software we can write as proprietary, sell and make money. Should we give up all the advantages of open source for our side projects? Aren't other people contributing to open source and that's making world better? Should we do a disservice to ourselves and open source community because some people among us have created a bad reputation? It's not like anyone says "He is Indian, his contribution is probably worthless" about Sanjay Ghemawat or Vikram Adve, right?
- quadrifoliate 6y ago
  > Then, should we stop writing good code because some shitheads set a bad example? No, I'm saying that we should write great code, and not open source any of it. I don't understand why the concept is so unpopular? > It's not like anyone says "He is Indian, his contribution is probably worthless" about Sanjay Ghemawat or Vikram Adve, right? Absolutely not. But I think that today, if Ghemawat made a typo fix contribution to 10 random projects for Hacktoberfest, at least one of those project maintainers who didn't know about him would be yelling about "spam". I'm not sure how to prove this; maybe someone who knows him can ask him to try? :) This is HN after all. Also, since you bring it up, I'm guessing that the vast majority of Sanjay's code at Google is proprietary and not available to the world.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    Which of the article examples (or in-the-wild hacktoberfest PR) is a case of a "typo fix contribution" that you think was unfairly rejected?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I’d really like epithet to reserve that for people who are actively malicious. There are no signs to the contrary for the people submitting spam PRs being enthusiastic developers looking to get into open source and score some swag while they’re at it but lacking the guidance to really understand that they’re being annoying to other people.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> The reputation comes from mediocre youtube tutorials, sweatshops like TCS and infosys, bullshit sites like geeksforgeeks, and incidents like this. I'm not Indian, and I think the reputation comes largely from the proportion of educated people not behind the Great Firewall of China that are Indian, and people mistaking “the proportion of people who do I see do X thar are from Y background” with “the proportion of people from Y background who do X”.

higerordermap 6y ago
The above may be the result of large population (with better contact to outside world than china) too.. But the bullshit is real, and its frustrating.