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I imagine readers who've never babysat open source projects think that you "get contributions" and "free OSS patches, workers" but those things, for 99.9% of pr
by ericb 4y ago
I imagine readers who've never babysat open source projects think that you "get contributions" and "free OSS patches, workers" but those things, for 99.9% of projects are 1-illusory, 2-when and if they materialize, usually more cost than benefit.
- cowl 4y agoPatches are not the only contribution, although I am sure that while not every OSS projects get many, the most visible ones do get also Patches. Anyway whatabout the early testing, bugfiling, documentation and helping others to understand how to use these projects. A lot of people get involved with these activites because they want to support an OSS Project and often these, (especially testing early releases and Developer advocacy) are more important than a patch contribution for the success of the project and the chance for it to become profitable.
- ericb 4y agoI've never seen those provide value anywhere that's anywhere close to matching the costs incurred. They get diluted by: - bugs that are actually free support - feature requests for things that some company needs, but won't pay them to create - pull requests you can't accept, need to review, etc.
- ipaddr 4y agoThis is so true. I don't really want people to contribute because it takes more time to assess what they did vs just mindlessly doing it yourself. If I had the time to review I would rather implement the feature or fix.