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There’s something a little creepy about referring to the maintainers as “ours.”

• akerl_ 4y ago
  Why? They donated to projects that GitHub's code depends on. The person who brings me my mail is accurately referred to as "my mail person". Not because I somehow own them, but because they're the person who provides service to my home. Would you feel the same way if they'd said "We're adding new features for our users"?
  • synu 4y ago
    I think it’s because they are the maintainers of their projects, not maintainers of GitHub. So calling them GitHub’s maintainers sounds off, even if GitHub depends on their projects. It’s a weird application of the transitive property. I suspect the maintainers would definitely say they are a user of GitHub. Most would not say they are a maintainer of GitHub (at least I don’t think so).
    • akerl_ 4y ago
      They are both "maintainers who use GitHub's platform" and "maintainers of software GitHub depends on". "Our maintainers" is just as normal as "Our neighbor" or "Our users". To pick the most adverse example: GitHub could equally talk about Gitlab and say "Our competitor". They're clearly not saying Gitlab belongs to them or giving them some kind of connection that doesn't exist.
      • synu 4y ago
        Still sounds strange to me though I can understand your point. “One of our competitors” to me sounds the same as “one of our users”, and different from “one of our maintainers” when referring to someone who is not a maintainer of GitHub. It’s sounds more (to me) like calling someone else’s kids one of your children because they are visiting your house. Anyway, I can only imagine how uninteresting this conversation must be to anyone else :)