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It's not even about "badly written". Sometimes it's just really hard to get a patch into the shape the maintainer wants (tests, architecture, general feel, how

It's not even about "badly written". Sometimes it's just really hard to get a patch into the shape the maintainer wants (tests, architecture, general feel, how it slots into a longer term vision that may not be clearly defined, but the maintainer knows it when they see it) and takes a lot of back and forth. I don't begrudge that, after all, it's their project. But it would be nice if there's a way to say "look, it is what it is, and while I'm willing to make an effort, I'm not living and breathing this codebase, and I'm not planning to become a major contributor going forward, much as I like the project. Playing 20 questions is exhausting on both ends and if you'd rather just take it and completely recast it how you want, I honestly don't mind and won't take offense" without sounding like "here's some random code, IDK if it works really, good luck, lol". I don't even care about the authorship, I'd rather have the fix than get credit for a moribund PR. Half the time I contribute pseudonymously anyway.

deleted 5y ago
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Aeolun 5y ago
Yeah, this is how I feel. When I make a PR, I do not do it for the credit, it’s because I really need/want a specific fix/change in the codebase without the overhead of having to maintain a fork myself.
puffoflogic 5y ago
I think that way to say that is open a PR, and just let it sit open. Eventually the repo owner will either merge it, close it, or sometimes ask you to do something to it. In the last case, I often just politely decline. It's the flip side of the idea that publishing an open source project doesn't obligate you to support it — likewise, submitting a PR to a project doesn't obligate you to do any more work on it.
- adhesive_wombat 5y ago
  Right, but the point is I don't want the maintainer to avoid or delay handling it because they would like to change something, but either don't want to offend or don't want to go through the tedious rigamarole of editing the file as they want by using the ensemble of GitHub, the Internet, me and my text editor as a very slow and inefficient text editor (especially as I probably don't understand all their comments at first because they know the system inside out, and I don't). It's not that I will refuse to make changes, I will, within reason, it's that I'm also fine with the maintainer just taking over at any point and finishing it however they want, without any further back-and-forth. And I don't even care whose name is on it.

deleted 5y ago

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Aeolun 5y ago

Yeah, this is how I feel. When I make a PR, I do not do it for the credit, it’s because I really need/want a specific fix/change in the codebase without the overhead of having to maintain a fork myself.

puffoflogic 5y ago

I think that way to say that is open a PR, and just let it sit open. Eventually the repo owner will either merge it, close it, or sometimes ask you to do something to it. In the last case, I often just politely decline. It's the flip side of the idea that publishing an open source project doesn't obligate you to support it — likewise, submitting a PR to a project doesn't obligate you to do any more work on it.

adhesive_wombat 5y ago
Right, but the point is I don't want the maintainer to avoid or delay handling it because they would like to change something, but either don't want to offend or don't want to go through the tedious rigamarole of editing the file as they want by using the ensemble of GitHub, the Internet, me and my text editor as a very slow and inefficient text editor (especially as I probably don't understand all their comments at first because they know the system inside out, and I don't). It's not that I will refuse to make changes, I will, within reason, it's that I'm also fine with the maintainer just taking over at any point and finishing it however they want, without any further back-and-forth. And I don't even care whose name is on it.