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> we find that whitespace changes are not just part of the commits that Apache Open Office has been receiving, whitespace changes make up a substantial amount o

> we find that whitespace changes are not just part of the commits that Apache Open Office has been receiving, whitespace changes make up a substantial amount of the commits added to the repository. wat.

shaftoe 3y ago
It appears to be true. https://github.com/apache/openoffice/activity https://github.com/apache/openoffice/activity
- laurent123456 3y ago
  All these commits are so strange. They are all useless "clean up" commits yet they are not done by a bot, there's someone manually making these changes every few days, almost every day actually. Don't know if he's really trying to make the project seem active, or trying to score a certain number of commits, or if he's just really passionate about cleaning up that codebase all by himself.
  - yankput 3y ago
    It doesn’t look malicious, it seems he is randomly looking and fixing the codebase and the ASF lets him because who cares.
    - pests 3y ago
      Does the ASF let him? Do they even have the power or jurisdiction to be making these types of decisions for open office?
  - foldr 3y ago
    I don't see anything particularly strange about them. This recent commit, for example, fixes some typos and changes some formatting a bit. HN seems to be taking a very conspiratorial turn in its thinking recently. https://github.com/apache/openoffice/compare/d98be9a24613ebe504de87f0f919d2f1a41bc1d6...0f46dff71a3a0e0942a743e8b5b7c556cf7fbc70 https://github.com/apache/openoffice/compare/d98be9a24613ebe...
    - alright2565 3y ago
      Are there so few bugs and issues in OpenOffice that, for months, the most pressing matter is to fix the incorrect use of "its" in comments? I mean this person is German (their Github bio). Even if they're not a programmer, why don't they instead take the time to translate some of the many german source files to english, like Libreoffice did back in 2013[1]? [1]: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2013/02/07/the-document-foundation-announces-libreoffice-4-0/ https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2013/02/07/the-docu...
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        Unless they're being paid to, the obvious answer is "this is what they felt like working on"
      - foldr 3y ago
        Everyone knows that Apache's OpenOffice is barely maintained. That's not a reason to attribute nefarious motives to the person making these commits. This whole thread is going a bit bonkers making unfounded accusations about this particular individual.
        alright2565 3y ago
        I'm sorry, I missed the important context here. Yeah I don't think anyone is doing anything nefarious here, and I definitely don't want to accuse anyone of acting in that way. I have my own weird hobbies. I still don't think it's in the project's interest to have these changes merged in, they just confuse the history & make it harder to track down relevant context.
  - Allamande 3y ago
    As an programmer with OCD, I understand this maintainer. A lot of times I tidy up old code while trying to remember how something was done. Also, I read a lot of the diffs and even a bit of the dev mailing list, development is as slow as it gets but there is new code being commited.
  - yifanl 3y ago
    Mostly to me, it shows the importance of a sane lint/format step in the pre-commit hook, it prevents engineers spending an near-infinite amount of time on this type of cleanup.
Tactician_mark 3y ago
I'm really confused about this. It's the slimmest possible veneer, collapsing upon a cursory browse of the commit history. Why put in the time to update at all?
zellyn 3y ago
My guess is possibly one of those "make a commit to an open source repo" to enter things?
aeinbu 3y ago
Could it be someone is hiding information in there? Could this be steganography? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

shaftoe 3y ago

It appears to be true. https://github.com/apache/openoffice/activity https://github.com/apache/openoffice/activity

laurent123456 3y ago
All these commits are so strange. They are all useless "clean up" commits yet they are not done by a bot, there's someone manually making these changes every few days, almost every day actually. Don't know if he's really trying to make the project seem active, or trying to score a certain number of commits, or if he's just really passionate about cleaning up that codebase all by himself.
- yankput 3y ago
  It doesn’t look malicious, it seems he is randomly looking and fixing the codebase and the ASF lets him because who cares.
  - pests 3y ago
    Does the ASF let him? Do they even have the power or jurisdiction to be making these types of decisions for open office?
- foldr 3y ago
  I don't see anything particularly strange about them. This recent commit, for example, fixes some typos and changes some formatting a bit. HN seems to be taking a very conspiratorial turn in its thinking recently. https://github.com/apache/openoffice/compare/d98be9a24613ebe504de87f0f919d2f1a41bc1d6...0f46dff71a3a0e0942a743e8b5b7c556cf7fbc70 https://github.com/apache/openoffice/compare/d98be9a24613ebe...
  - alright2565 3y ago
    Are there so few bugs and issues in OpenOffice that, for months, the most pressing matter is to fix the incorrect use of "its" in comments? I mean this person is German (their Github bio). Even if they're not a programmer, why don't they instead take the time to translate some of the many german source files to english, like Libreoffice did back in 2013[1]? [1]: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2013/02/07/the-document-foundation-announces-libreoffice-4-0/ https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2013/02/07/the-docu...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      Unless they're being paid to, the obvious answer is "this is what they felt like working on"
    - foldr 3y ago
      Everyone knows that Apache's OpenOffice is barely maintained. That's not a reason to attribute nefarious motives to the person making these commits. This whole thread is going a bit bonkers making unfounded accusations about this particular individual.
      - alright2565 3y ago
        I'm sorry, I missed the important context here. Yeah I don't think anyone is doing anything nefarious here, and I definitely don't want to accuse anyone of acting in that way. I have my own weird hobbies. I still don't think it's in the project's interest to have these changes merged in, they just confuse the history & make it harder to track down relevant context.
- Allamande 3y ago
  As an programmer with OCD, I understand this maintainer. A lot of times I tidy up old code while trying to remember how something was done. Also, I read a lot of the diffs and even a bit of the dev mailing list, development is as slow as it gets but there is new code being commited.
- yifanl 3y ago
  Mostly to me, it shows the importance of a sane lint/format step in the pre-commit hook, it prevents engineers spending an near-infinite amount of time on this type of cleanup.

Tactician_mark 3y ago

I'm really confused about this. It's the slimmest possible veneer, collapsing upon a cursory browse of the commit history. Why put in the time to update at all?

zellyn 3y ago

My guess is possibly one of those "make a commit to an open source repo" to enter things?

aeinbu 3y ago

Could it be someone is hiding information in there? Could this be steganography? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography