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When I started with open source, I was hyped to get any feedback, bug reports, feature requests, and such, and I always tried to do my best to address these. A

When I started with open source, I was hyped to get any feedback, bug reports, feature requests, and such, and I always tried to do my best to address these. After 10+ years of maintaining popular projects (e.g., https://nodemailer.com/ https://nodemailer.com/) and going through thousands of tickets in the process, I mostly ignore the incoming issues and requests now. Is it a clear bug I didn't know about – sure, I'll take it up as soon as possible. Anything else - I'll ignore it, don't even respond anything, and the stalebot will close that ticket in 30 days unless something additional comes up (usually it does not). No one pays me for it, so I find my responsibilities to end at the point where the software is maintained and works on every supported platform. If someone does not like that, they can always fork the project.

rvnx 4y ago
Is it a product made by employees of EmailEngine or how does it work ? Intuitively I would find it super rude if commercial companies just ignore or send people away for open-source tooling that is directly used for their commercial product. Like when there are Google APIs Python Client bugs and they don't care and just say "no clue, ask someone else at Google"
- andris9 4y ago
  Nodemailer is a project I started 11+ years ago with no backing. It gets millions of download every week and is used by hundreds of thousand of projects and developers around the world. EmailEngine is a commercial project I started a year ago and now I use the Nodemailer’s homepage to drive traffic to it. Both are my solo projects, no one else is involved.
  - rvnx 4y ago
    Understood. Your projects are so well done that they gave me the impression that EmailEngine was a VC-backed opportunistic/shark startup that had eaten an open-source project and enslaved its maintainer. So that's a big compliment I guess :)
    - andris9 4y ago
      Thanks :D
bjourne 4y ago
You are free to do whatever you want, but why not explain in your contributing guidelines that this is how you operate? https://github.com/nodemailer/nodemailer/blob/0b78689e5a8641dffb361dca4081c07b68d42498/CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/nodemailer/nodemailer/blob/0b78689e5a8641... The text starts with: "First, thank you for considering contributing to nodemailer! We welcome any type of contribution, not only code. You can help with QA: file bug reports, the more details you can give the better (e.g. screenshots with the console open)" It is completely is incongruent with what you have written here. Again, your project, your time, but this is almost tricking people into expecting something that they shouldn't expect. Personally, I have no problem with maintainers using stale bots, but please tell me about it so I can avoid wasting my time on those projects.
- andris9 4y ago
  Oh, good point, I should probably update it or remove it. That guide was last updated 5+ years ago, I didn’t even rember that it exists and haven’t been following it for years.

rvnx 4y ago

Is it a product made by employees of EmailEngine or how does it work ? Intuitively I would find it super rude if commercial companies just ignore or send people away for open-source tooling that is directly used for their commercial product. Like when there are Google APIs Python Client bugs and they don't care and just say "no clue, ask someone else at Google"

andris9 4y ago
Nodemailer is a project I started 11+ years ago with no backing. It gets millions of download every week and is used by hundreds of thousand of projects and developers around the world. EmailEngine is a commercial project I started a year ago and now I use the Nodemailer’s homepage to drive traffic to it. Both are my solo projects, no one else is involved.
- rvnx 4y ago
  Understood. Your projects are so well done that they gave me the impression that EmailEngine was a VC-backed opportunistic/shark startup that had eaten an open-source project and enslaved its maintainer. So that's a big compliment I guess :)
  - andris9 4y ago
    Thanks :D

bjourne 4y ago

You are free to do whatever you want, but why not explain in your contributing guidelines that this is how you operate? https://github.com/nodemailer/nodemailer/blob/0b78689e5a8641dffb361dca4081c07b68d42498/CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/nodemailer/nodemailer/blob/0b78689e5a8641... The text starts with: "First, thank you for considering contributing to nodemailer! We welcome any type of contribution, not only code. You can help with QA: file bug reports, the more details you can give the better (e.g. screenshots with the console open)" It is completely is incongruent with what you have written here. Again, your project, your time, but this is almost tricking people into expecting something that they shouldn't expect. Personally, I have no problem with maintainers using stale bots, but please tell me about it so I can avoid wasting my time on those projects.

andris9 4y ago
Oh, good point, I should probably update it or remove it. That guide was last updated 5+ years ago, I didn’t even rember that it exists and haven’t been following it for years.