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The person going to clean the park is the maintainer of some Open source software, offered for the public good. The monk handing over the book is the person wh

The person going to clean the park is the maintainer of some Open source software, offered for the public good. The monk handing over the book is the person who has done the work to write a pull request and gift it to the maintainer. The request for a donation is the cultural expectation of reciprocity. A maintainer now feels pressure to accept the work of reviewing the PR. Yes, they can say no, but it feels bad and can motivate someone to stop maintaining open source software.

Ensorceled 6y ago
That makes no sense, the analogy is wrong on all counts. An open source project I initiate is not a "public good". I'm sharing it; I still own the copyright. The monk handing over the book in the park has done no work on the park, they are a user NOT a contributor. In fact, probably a bunch of the trash I'm picking up are those pamphlets. I'm an atheist so the pamphlet is equivalent, at best, to a spam pull request. > The request for a donation is the cultural expectation of reciprocity. This is a completely different expectation that the open source expectation. I, personally, feel no guilt at all for telling people proselytizing to go away as I've done nothing to give them the expectation that their proselytizing would be welcome and most people proselytizing expect to be rejected constantly. Contributing back to open source is expected and usually desirable so the expectation that the contribution will be accepted. Also, the monk is ASKING FOR A CONTRIBUTION not giving one.