6 ms·

It's definitely time for him to let this project go, working on it is a literally thankless task and the level of entitlement shown towards his work has been in

It's definitely time for him to let this project go, working on it is a literally thankless task and the level of entitlement shown towards his work has been infuriating to watch. The outrage towards him daring to ask the community for help, something done in an act of desperation, is a real wake up call for open source maintainers - the community doesn't give a fuck about you, they want your code and they want it free. The psychological burden of carrying such an important but relatively unknown project has trapped him in this state of desperation for years now. It's tunnel vision and sunk loss thinking, time to quit.

green_on_black 4y ago
The guy literally went to prison when he didn't have to. Holy shit.
- xigency 4y ago
  I definitely feel bad. He’s had a really tragic set of circumstances.
- __m 4y ago
  At least that's how he frames it
  - 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
    The court documents on that case are publicly available if you're willing to look for them (and can read Russian). I haven't read everything, but I didn't see anything contradicting his side of the story.
    - sgammon 4y ago
      he said he was "driving home at 3am," you know, as one does, and two girls were "crawling on the highway." i am honestly not sure i've ever heard a less believable story
      - Jcowell 4y ago
        I can envision many ways that can happen in America.
        runnerup 4y ago
        I have a friend who went through almost exactly the same driving event as this guy. Hit a man wearing all black on a country road at 1AM. Could have driven away but called 911, rendered first aid, and stayed through the ordeal. He also ended up spending several years in US prison for it. Really fucked up.
      - chao- 4y ago
        I have been driving home after midnight, coming from my where my parents live, a long distance away, and encountered a man who had climbed up into the elevated highway. It was straight and well-lit, but the best I could make out was that he was running at cars wielding a cardboard box (?). I began to decelerate and moved into the lane furthest from him, at the time, and after another car in front of me passed him, he moved into my lane. I'm still braking to slow down, and I change lanes to avoid him again, swerving and praying the lights in my rear view are slowing too and don't hit me as I try to avoid this man. As I pass him, I manage to be one lane to his left, and he makes a lunge to try and jump in front of my vehicle. With some frequency, to this day I wonder how fucked I would have been if he succeeded in jumping in front of my car. The story I tell myself is that he was mentally unwell and thought he was heroically "tilting at windmills". It is more likely he was belligerently drunk, or was suicidal and wanted some help in it. I don't know what makes something believable or unbelievable in your mind, but these are the details of an almost-incident that happened to me.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - NoInkling 4y ago
        Drunk people lying down in the street is definitely something I've seen several times in my life.
    - NoInkling 4y ago
      I think the part he left out is that (if I recall correctly) he was allegedly speeding to some degree.
  - danjac 4y ago
    Russia does not have a "justice system" in the way that we would understand it in the West. Instead it has (and indeed, always had) a system of patronage and bribery, where your status within the system determines your sentence. If you are an oligarch, or the son of an oligarch, you will walk free, unless you cross Putin. If you are a nobody, you pay off the right people or you go to prison or end up freezing to death in a foxhole in the Donbass (Wagner recruits directly from prison, just as Stalin emptied the gulags for his cannon-fodder in WWII). That's just how Russia is and always has been, and unfortunately, very likely always will be. Is Denis guilty? Perhaps, but he will not have had a fair trial by any Western standard, and so we have to presume innocence.
- mylidlpony 4y ago
  I mean, that part isn't really surprising or noteworthy. Lots of people in russian prison don't deserve to be there (the ones detained on protests, political cases etc).
wpietri 4y ago
Agreed, but I think it goes beyond tunnel vision and sunk costs. He clearly likes helping developers! He is a good-hearted person who will feel bad screwing over a bunch of people who depend upon him. The main thing that's getting him to shift is that now he has a spouse and a child who depend upon him much more directly, and so he's even less willing to disappoint them.
ricardobeat 4y ago
> the community doesn't give a fuck about you, they want your code and they want it free That's a pretty polarizing mindset. The community wants to be a community - you take, and give as you can. Nobody owes anyone else anything.
- jay-barronville 4y ago
  Pretty easy to say when you’re not the guy stressing out about paying bills while six-figure earners whose jobs are made significantly easier because of you trash you. I generally agree with the idea that nobody owes anyone else anything, but in this case, I think he should’ve been let it all burn to the ground — maybe then the ingrates would be able to understand how critical his library is.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ricardobeat 4y ago
    Babel has four paid developers, an almost $200k/year budget and hundreds of contributors. I'm sure that's enough to maintain the polyfills, if someone else wasn't already doing it for free - not to throw shade on them, but that's reality (not one I particularly like). I do agree with that second statement. It is unfortunate that he got into this situation, but there is absolutely no reason to continue if it's not working out. He has the choice to go make six figures too, and doesn't owe anyone maintaining this library either.
    - karlshea 4y ago
      If you would have read the article, you would have seen the image from a Babel maintainer saying they won't fork because they don't have the resources to maintain it.
      - jabl 4y ago
        If the coreJS maintainer stops working on it and it bitrots for a year or two, maybe the babel people will magically find the manpower to maintain it then. As it stands, why should they spend their time maintaining a fork of a project that is still maintained and in good shape?
duxup 4y ago
> the community doesn't give a fuck Well there are some backers out there: https://www.npmjs.com/package/core-js https://www.npmjs.com/package/core-js
matheusmoreira 4y ago
> the community doesn't give a fuck about you, they want your code and they want it free This is why I'm skeptical about non-free software licenses. Maybe we should all be applying AGPLv3 to our free software code instead of stuff like MIT or BSD. That way anyone who just wants to exploit people's work at their jobs to make a killing while simultaneously hating them for it will have to look elsewhere. This old post's made a huge impression on me: https://web.archive.org/web/20091210171517/https://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html https://web.archive.org/web/20091210171517/https://zedshaw.c... > “Hey your software is awesome! Can I get it for free so I can use it at work and make money or please my boss? That’d rock! (for me).” > I want people to appreciate the work I’ve done and the value of what I’ve made. > Not pass on by waving “sucker” as they drive their fancy cars.

green_on_black 4y ago

The guy literally went to prison when he didn't have to. Holy shit.

xigency 4y ago
I definitely feel bad. He’s had a really tragic set of circumstances.
__m 4y ago
At least that's how he frames it
- 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
  The court documents on that case are publicly available if you're willing to look for them (and can read Russian). I haven't read everything, but I didn't see anything contradicting his side of the story.
  - sgammon 4y ago
    he said he was "driving home at 3am," you know, as one does, and two girls were "crawling on the highway." i am honestly not sure i've ever heard a less believable story
    - Jcowell 4y ago
      I can envision many ways that can happen in America.
      - runnerup 4y ago
        I have a friend who went through almost exactly the same driving event as this guy. Hit a man wearing all black on a country road at 1AM. Could have driven away but called 911, rendered first aid, and stayed through the ordeal. He also ended up spending several years in US prison for it. Really fucked up.
    - chao- 4y ago
      I have been driving home after midnight, coming from my where my parents live, a long distance away, and encountered a man who had climbed up into the elevated highway. It was straight and well-lit, but the best I could make out was that he was running at cars wielding a cardboard box (?). I began to decelerate and moved into the lane furthest from him, at the time, and after another car in front of me passed him, he moved into my lane. I'm still braking to slow down, and I change lanes to avoid him again, swerving and praying the lights in my rear view are slowing too and don't hit me as I try to avoid this man. As I pass him, I manage to be one lane to his left, and he makes a lunge to try and jump in front of my vehicle. With some frequency, to this day I wonder how fucked I would have been if he succeeded in jumping in front of my car. The story I tell myself is that he was mentally unwell and thought he was heroically "tilting at windmills". It is more likely he was belligerently drunk, or was suicidal and wanted some help in it. I don't know what makes something believable or unbelievable in your mind, but these are the details of an almost-incident that happened to me.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - NoInkling 4y ago
      Drunk people lying down in the street is definitely something I've seen several times in my life.
  - NoInkling 4y ago
    I think the part he left out is that (if I recall correctly) he was allegedly speeding to some degree.
- danjac 4y ago
  Russia does not have a "justice system" in the way that we would understand it in the West. Instead it has (and indeed, always had) a system of patronage and bribery, where your status within the system determines your sentence. If you are an oligarch, or the son of an oligarch, you will walk free, unless you cross Putin. If you are a nobody, you pay off the right people or you go to prison or end up freezing to death in a foxhole in the Donbass (Wagner recruits directly from prison, just as Stalin emptied the gulags for his cannon-fodder in WWII). That's just how Russia is and always has been, and unfortunately, very likely always will be. Is Denis guilty? Perhaps, but he will not have had a fair trial by any Western standard, and so we have to presume innocence.
mylidlpony 4y ago
I mean, that part isn't really surprising or noteworthy. Lots of people in russian prison don't deserve to be there (the ones detained on protests, political cases etc).

wpietri 4y ago

Agreed, but I think it goes beyond tunnel vision and sunk costs. He clearly likes helping developers! He is a good-hearted person who will feel bad screwing over a bunch of people who depend upon him. The main thing that's getting him to shift is that now he has a spouse and a child who depend upon him much more directly, and so he's even less willing to disappoint them.

ricardobeat 4y ago

> the community doesn't give a fuck about you, they want your code and they want it free That's a pretty polarizing mindset. The community wants to be a community - you take, and give as you can. Nobody owes anyone else anything.

jay-barronville 4y ago
Pretty easy to say when you’re not the guy stressing out about paying bills while six-figure earners whose jobs are made significantly easier because of you trash you. I generally agree with the idea that nobody owes anyone else anything, but in this case, I think he should’ve been let it all burn to the ground — maybe then the ingrates would be able to understand how critical his library is.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ricardobeat 4y ago
  Babel has four paid developers, an almost $200k/year budget and hundreds of contributors. I'm sure that's enough to maintain the polyfills, if someone else wasn't already doing it for free - not to throw shade on them, but that's reality (not one I particularly like). I do agree with that second statement. It is unfortunate that he got into this situation, but there is absolutely no reason to continue if it's not working out. He has the choice to go make six figures too, and doesn't owe anyone maintaining this library either.
  - karlshea 4y ago
    If you would have read the article, you would have seen the image from a Babel maintainer saying they won't fork because they don't have the resources to maintain it.
    - jabl 4y ago
      If the coreJS maintainer stops working on it and it bitrots for a year or two, maybe the babel people will magically find the manpower to maintain it then. As it stands, why should they spend their time maintaining a fork of a project that is still maintained and in good shape?

duxup 4y ago

> the community doesn't give a fuck Well there are some backers out there: https://www.npmjs.com/package/core-js https://www.npmjs.com/package/core-js

matheusmoreira 4y ago

> the community doesn't give a fuck about you, they want your code and they want it free This is why I'm skeptical about non-free software licenses. Maybe we should all be applying AGPLv3 to our free software code instead of stuff like MIT or BSD. That way anyone who just wants to exploit people's work at their jobs to make a killing while simultaneously hating them for it will have to look elsewhere. This old post's made a huge impression on me: https://web.archive.org/web/20091210171517/https://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html https://web.archive.org/web/20091210171517/https://zedshaw.c... > “Hey your software is awesome! Can I get it for free so I can use it at work and make money or please my boss? That’d rock! (for me).” > I want people to appreciate the work I’ve done and the value of what I’ve made. > Not pass on by waving “sucker” as they drive their fancy cars.