4 ms·

FOSS needs to teach basic marketing 101. Content first on landing page. Not "what's an instance?"

by treme 3y ago

the-grump 3y ago
FOSS 101: you don't like it, send a patch.
- Uehreka 3y ago
  I’m not submitting a patch to something if I don’t know what it is.
  - andrewstuart2 3y ago
    We have a saying for that too involving reading the manual.
    - bluefirebrand 3y ago
      The amount of times I've been told "Read the manual" and then the link to the manual was down, or the manual was out of date, or the manual was so disorganized I couldn't find what I was looking for far outnumbers the times a manual was useful. My guess is people who angrily retort "rtfm" are not the best at actually writing manuals.
      - bluGill 3y ago
        That is your sign to figure out the answer and fix the manual. This is often the most needed contribution. If you do well your feature requests are get priority as you are an active contributor.
      - jancsika 3y ago
        Ooh, I got this one: > The amount of times I've been told "Read the manual" and then the link to the manual was down, Patches accepted for fixing links so you can read the fucking manual. > or the manual was out of date, This is deb-old-doc list, the mailing list for archiving vintage manuals. To discuss out-of-date manuals in current versions of Debian you must subscribe to deb-doc-old > or the manual was so disorganized I couldn't find what I was looking for far outnumbers the times a manual was useful. Did you file a bug report? > My guess is people who angrily retort "rtfm" are not the best at actually writing manuals. It's possible. On the other hand: you don't exist. Go away. How'd I do? :)
    - SemioticStandrd 3y ago
      `man man`
      - bluGill 3y ago
        Just don't make the mustake of googling that and clicking the first link while at work. One of those times i'm glad for a restrictive firewall.
        SemioticStandrd 3y ago
        LOL my mind didn’t even go there, but now that you’ve said it, not sure how it didn’t
    - bobbean 3y ago
      Investing dozens of hours into learning something deeply enough to be able to modify it is a bit silly when someone who already knows what they are doing could probably do the same thing in half an hour.
      - btilly 3y ago
        It is only silly if you're willing to pay someone who already knows what they are doing to do it. Are you willing to pay? No? Are you willing to do the work? No? Then you're just being an annoyance. You aren't entitled to anyone else's effort. No matter how little effort you think it will be. (Hint, your estimates are almost certainly off, generally by orders of magnitude.)
        bobbean 3y ago
        How hard is it to say "that's not going to work" or "maybe one day" or "that's a good idea". If it's something open and collaborative, maybe someone will see the idea and be willing to implement it. Also, on a separate note, why are you so aggressive and belittling?
        the-grump 3y ago
        FWIW the belittling part is assuming you're entitled to someone else's half an hour. Personally, I welcome feature requests and bug reports as long as effort is put into communicating them properly. I thank the reporter, give them pointers, and encourage other people to contribute the feature/fix. If I have time I fix it myself. But if you act like I work for you in the report, you'll get the same measure of respect in return. Tangentially, the time you spend learning the project will make you a better contributor. You'll be able to contribute more quickly next time. Now the project has two people that can implement the requested change in 30 minutes. Please put in that time for projects you care about and help maintain them.
        btilly 3y ago
        The problem is that when the dev says "that's not going to work", then it is likely that the dev has just opened the door for an argument with a user who refuses to see that it won't and will try to argue for it at length. It doesn't take many of those to take all of the fun out of open source development, and have devs walk away from the project. I've seen it happen plenty of times. I've had it happen to me. It really is a soul-sucking distraction. As for your claim that I'm being belittling, I'm really not. I'm just telling you how this works in the real world. The one who is being belittling here is you, with your assumption that someone else should do what you want because they have developed skills and expertise that you haven't. But nobody else owes you their time and energy. You can pay them in money, you can pay them in showing such courtesy so that they want to do it, or you can pay by spending the effort to learn to do the work yourself. Assuming you can get it for free because you throw around words like "silly" is you dismissing the rights of others as unimportant. All that I'm doing is pointing that fact out to you.
- andrewstuart2 3y ago
  I like to say that "pull requests accepted" is the most polite middle finger you can give someone in the FOSS world.
  - parasti 3y ago
    It's not a middle finger at all, unless you think refusing to spend your free time on other people's ideas is giving a middle finger.
  - janosdebugs 3y ago
    In practice, dealing with PRs of potentially questionable quality is still a lot of work. You have to review the code, test the changes, make sure the docs are up to date, and explain to the contributor in the nicest possible way where they messed up. For some of my future projects, I'm even considering not accepting anything but docs and bugfix contributions at all due to the amount of work it takes.
    - GabeIsko 3y ago
      But that is fine, because someone can still merge patches to a fork of the software. Telling someone to fork is the real middle finger.
- DesiLurker 3y ago
  wasn't 'patches welcome' a euphemism for 'fuck off I'll do what I want'?
  - the-grump 3y ago
    I understand it to mean armchair experts and people who complain are welcome to contribute or they can understand the subtle message that they're just annoying otherwise. Patches welcome = "It's free software; don't act like you're a paying customer."
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
teeray 3y ago
About instances, people like to say “It’s easy! Just like email!” Meanwhile, there are grandmas out there that still talk about “hearing from the grandkids through [their] AOL”.
- bdw5204 3y ago
  There are a few thousand people who still pay for AOL dialup every month.[0] It was around 2 million back in 2015 but AOL has intentionally made it almost impossible to sign up for dialup. They primarily sell a "computer security" service these days and they still offer email addresses. [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/aol-1point5-million-people-still-pay-for-service-but-not-for-dial-up-internet.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/aol-1point5-million-people-s...
ghostpepper 3y ago
If you read the linked post, it doesn't sound like "How can we drive more user growth" is really the problem here -- at all
number6 3y ago
It's amazing good explainend in the GitHub repository https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy

FOSS needs to teach basic marketing 101. Content first on landing page. Not "what's an instance?"

by treme 3y ago

FOSS needs to teach basic marketing 101. Content first on landing page. Not "what's an instance?"

the-grump 3y ago

FOSS 101: you don't like it, send a patch.

Uehreka 3y ago
I’m not submitting a patch to something if I don’t know what it is.
- andrewstuart2 3y ago
  We have a saying for that too involving reading the manual.
  - bluefirebrand 3y ago
    The amount of times I've been told "Read the manual" and then the link to the manual was down, or the manual was out of date, or the manual was so disorganized I couldn't find what I was looking for far outnumbers the times a manual was useful. My guess is people who angrily retort "rtfm" are not the best at actually writing manuals.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      That is your sign to figure out the answer and fix the manual. This is often the most needed contribution. If you do well your feature requests are get priority as you are an active contributor.
    - jancsika 3y ago
      Ooh, I got this one: > The amount of times I've been told "Read the manual" and then the link to the manual was down, Patches accepted for fixing links so you can read the fucking manual. > or the manual was out of date, This is deb-old-doc list, the mailing list for archiving vintage manuals. To discuss out-of-date manuals in current versions of Debian you must subscribe to deb-doc-old > or the manual was so disorganized I couldn't find what I was looking for far outnumbers the times a manual was useful. Did you file a bug report? > My guess is people who angrily retort "rtfm" are not the best at actually writing manuals. It's possible. On the other hand: you don't exist. Go away. How'd I do? :)
  - SemioticStandrd 3y ago
    `man man`
    - bluGill 3y ago
      Just don't make the mustake of googling that and clicking the first link while at work. One of those times i'm glad for a restrictive firewall.
      - SemioticStandrd 3y ago
        LOL my mind didn’t even go there, but now that you’ve said it, not sure how it didn’t
  - bobbean 3y ago
    Investing dozens of hours into learning something deeply enough to be able to modify it is a bit silly when someone who already knows what they are doing could probably do the same thing in half an hour.
    - btilly 3y ago
      It is only silly if you're willing to pay someone who already knows what they are doing to do it. Are you willing to pay? No? Are you willing to do the work? No? Then you're just being an annoyance. You aren't entitled to anyone else's effort. No matter how little effort you think it will be. (Hint, your estimates are almost certainly off, generally by orders of magnitude.)
      - bobbean 3y ago
        How hard is it to say "that's not going to work" or "maybe one day" or "that's a good idea". If it's something open and collaborative, maybe someone will see the idea and be willing to implement it. Also, on a separate note, why are you so aggressive and belittling?
        the-grump 3y ago
        FWIW the belittling part is assuming you're entitled to someone else's half an hour. Personally, I welcome feature requests and bug reports as long as effort is put into communicating them properly. I thank the reporter, give them pointers, and encourage other people to contribute the feature/fix. If I have time I fix it myself. But if you act like I work for you in the report, you'll get the same measure of respect in return. Tangentially, the time you spend learning the project will make you a better contributor. You'll be able to contribute more quickly next time. Now the project has two people that can implement the requested change in 30 minutes. Please put in that time for projects you care about and help maintain them.
        btilly 3y ago
        The problem is that when the dev says "that's not going to work", then it is likely that the dev has just opened the door for an argument with a user who refuses to see that it won't and will try to argue for it at length. It doesn't take many of those to take all of the fun out of open source development, and have devs walk away from the project. I've seen it happen plenty of times. I've had it happen to me. It really is a soul-sucking distraction. As for your claim that I'm being belittling, I'm really not. I'm just telling you how this works in the real world. The one who is being belittling here is you, with your assumption that someone else should do what you want because they have developed skills and expertise that you haven't. But nobody else owes you their time and energy. You can pay them in money, you can pay them in showing such courtesy so that they want to do it, or you can pay by spending the effort to learn to do the work yourself. Assuming you can get it for free because you throw around words like "silly" is you dismissing the rights of others as unimportant. All that I'm doing is pointing that fact out to you.
andrewstuart2 3y ago
I like to say that "pull requests accepted" is the most polite middle finger you can give someone in the FOSS world.
- parasti 3y ago
  It's not a middle finger at all, unless you think refusing to spend your free time on other people's ideas is giving a middle finger.
- janosdebugs 3y ago
  In practice, dealing with PRs of potentially questionable quality is still a lot of work. You have to review the code, test the changes, make sure the docs are up to date, and explain to the contributor in the nicest possible way where they messed up. For some of my future projects, I'm even considering not accepting anything but docs and bugfix contributions at all due to the amount of work it takes.
  - GabeIsko 3y ago
    But that is fine, because someone can still merge patches to a fork of the software. Telling someone to fork is the real middle finger.
DesiLurker 3y ago
wasn't 'patches welcome' a euphemism for 'fuck off I'll do what I want'?
- the-grump 3y ago
  I understand it to mean armchair experts and people who complain are welcome to contribute or they can understand the subtle message that they're just annoying otherwise. Patches welcome = "It's free software; don't act like you're a paying customer."

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

teeray 3y ago

About instances, people like to say “It’s easy! Just like email!” Meanwhile, there are grandmas out there that still talk about “hearing from the grandkids through [their] AOL”.

bdw5204 3y ago
There are a few thousand people who still pay for AOL dialup every month.[0] It was around 2 million back in 2015 but AOL has intentionally made it almost impossible to sign up for dialup. They primarily sell a "computer security" service these days and they still offer email addresses. [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/aol-1point5-million-people-still-pay-for-service-but-not-for-dial-up-internet.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/aol-1point5-million-people-s...

ghostpepper 3y ago

If you read the linked post, it doesn't sound like "How can we drive more user growth" is really the problem here -- at all

number6 3y ago

It's amazing good explainend in the GitHub repository https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy