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Unless you have copious amounts of free time, you can only fix the problems affecting you in your day job, and contribute them back. The developer could have a

Unless you have copious amounts of free time, you can only fix the problems affecting you in your day job, and contribute them back. The developer could have accepted that allegedly inferior fix, give the credit, and patch it with their own version in a single commit. I'd have done that, for example, all the while trying to communicate with the submitter of the patch about my intentions. Maybe he wanted the badge for his own honor, not to put it anywhere else. Some people are into that kind of thing, and he fixed a legitimate problem of his to earn this. I can understand them and respect them for that. > No one asked you to do this. Their work needed this. The company needed this to work better, and they deserve the credit for doing the work. This is not open for discussion in my opinion. > You seem to have no interest in fixing other problems (which you were given an opportunity to do) As I aforementioned, you need time to do this. It's not given that the author has free time to work on any problems they deem worthy. I'd love to fix tons of bugs, mine or not, but I can't do that because lack of time. Heck, I can't find an hour to finish implementing my own projects. How do we know that he has the whole day to do the research and fix other bugs?

shortcake27 3y ago
> Their work needed this. The company needed this to work better, and they deserve the credit for doing the work. This is not open for discussion in my opinion. Why is it not open for discussion? I can’t just fill in a pothole or cut my neighbours grass and expect credit and/or compensation. OSS isn’t common property. You can’t just do whatever you want and expect to receive credit. Yeah, their work needed a fix and they got a fix. That’s already a better than average outcome.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  Free software is common property. This the rule 0. It's everyone's. This is why four freedoms exist, and The Kernel is GPLv2. i.e. Free Software. Compensation and credit are completely different things. Credit is not compensation. It's an answer to question "Who did this?". He didn't do whatever he want. He was experiencing a problem, he traced, researched it, debugged it, fixed it, and submitted a patch to The Kernel. If that was only something "whatever he wanted", the patch would be shot down. The bug is accepted/confirmed on The Kernel side, his patch is being reviewed and deemed "stylistically unacceptable", the reviewer/maintainer wrote his own version, and by pushing the fix w/o attributing him, he effectively claimed that he did all the work from discovery to patching, incl. everything in between. The maintainer didn't have to accept the patch per se. He could have just written "This bug is discovered, dissected and fixed by $THE_PERSON. Patch is implemented and committed by me. Thanks a lot, $THE_PERSON!". This is basic human decency. I have my name on many bug reports, either reporting them, or providing more information leading to solution of the bug. I have a couple of patches here and there, and I experienced something similar from another prominent project people interact with every day, but I said that "mneh, whatever". The author certainly didn't because the treatment he got is really bad, and good for him publicizing this, because these kind of people needs to be known. Well, there might be miscommunication and the story can be completely different, but starting the discussion from somewhere is healthy.
  - shortcake27 3y ago
    > Free software is common property. This the rule 0. It's everyone's. This is why four freedoms exist, and The Kernel is GPLv2. i.e. Free Software. Just because something is free, it doesn’t make it common property. Being able to use the kernel and modify _your own copy_ is not the same as the kernel itself being common property. The four freedoms don’t grant us permission or rights to alter other people’s copies of the software, so those copies are not common property. > The maintainer didn't have to accept the patch per se. He could have just written "This bug is discovered, dissected and fixed by $THE_PERSON. Patch is implemented and committed by me. Thanks a lot, $THE_PERSON!". That’s basically what happened, yeah? The author got credit for reporting it.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      > The four freedoms don’t grant us permission or rights to alter other people’s copies of the software, so those copies are not common property. Of course, but accepting a bug, giving feedback on a submitted patch to be included in the kernel is openly saying "We're willing to accept this, but you need to polish this and that", which the author did. In practice he got the permission to modify their copy. > That’s basically what happened, yeah? The author got credit for reporting it. No, definitely not. They got a "reported-by" tag, which means "the author told me that something is not working, so I did all the work to find why, did all the work to solve, did all the work to implement, did all the work to commit." In reality, the author found, debugged, solved and patched the problem. The maintainer didn't like the style, pushed his version, and claimed that all work is done by him, except hitting his proverbial foot to a proverbial stone while walking (i.e. discovering the bug).
      - shortcake27 3y ago
        > In practice he got the permission to modify their copy. I wouldn’t consider it common property if permission is required. It seems like our definitions of common property differ, but I’m not sure there’s any value in trying to align ourselves on this. > No, definitely not. They got a "reported-by" tag, which means "somebody told me that something is not working, so I did all the work to find why, did all the work to solve, did all the work to implement, did all the work to commit." Got it. Yeah I agree this is not the same. However, I still stand by my original stance which is that no one is owed anything, especially when they do something no one asked them to do.
frankreyes 3y ago
> The developer could have accepted that allegedly inferior fix, give the credit, and patch it with their own version in a single commit. My best oss contribution was done exactly like this. Someone else reviewed my code, made some changes, but my name was on the commits. I was happy that someone else took the time to make my code better and at the same time, keep my name on it.
- shkkmo 3y ago
  As has been mentioned elsewhere if this had been submitted via the standard process, something more like that might have happened. However, this was submitted to the security mailing list which is optimized for quick, precise fixes, not for teaching new contributors how to adhere to coding standards.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    This methodology also has the side effect of "new contributor has security fix but can't contribute it because they need to be "taught" on non-security issues first."
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - shkkmo 3y ago
      No it doesn't. The new contributor didn't have the knowledge and skills to make a patch that followed project standards. They were still able to submit a report and a first attempt at fixing the issue and get people who do know how to do that to craft a fix quickly. This is the system working correctly. Rather than being thankful that other people contributed their time and effort to help OP solve the issue their company was facing, OP decided to misquote the person who helped them and start drama where none was needed.
      - FireBeyond 3y ago
        > Rather than being thankful that other people contributed their time and effort to help OP solve the issue their company was facing, OP decided to misquote the person who helped them and start drama where none was needed. Wow, way to turn this around. The user had fixed their issue. Don't make it like "other people" "helped them solve it". The user and his company were quite capable of compiling their own kernel and using that. They solved their own problem, with no help from others. They then chose to disseminate it for the greater good. And yet people like you are demanding that they show gratitude to the community for somehow deigning to help them.

shortcake27 3y ago

> Their work needed this. The company needed this to work better, and they deserve the credit for doing the work. This is not open for discussion in my opinion. Why is it not open for discussion? I can’t just fill in a pothole or cut my neighbours grass and expect credit and/or compensation. OSS isn’t common property. You can’t just do whatever you want and expect to receive credit. Yeah, their work needed a fix and they got a fix. That’s already a better than average outcome.

bayindirh 3y ago
Free software is common property. This the rule 0. It's everyone's. This is why four freedoms exist, and The Kernel is GPLv2. i.e. Free Software. Compensation and credit are completely different things. Credit is not compensation. It's an answer to question "Who did this?". He didn't do whatever he want. He was experiencing a problem, he traced, researched it, debugged it, fixed it, and submitted a patch to The Kernel. If that was only something "whatever he wanted", the patch would be shot down. The bug is accepted/confirmed on The Kernel side, his patch is being reviewed and deemed "stylistically unacceptable", the reviewer/maintainer wrote his own version, and by pushing the fix w/o attributing him, he effectively claimed that he did all the work from discovery to patching, incl. everything in between. The maintainer didn't have to accept the patch per se. He could have just written "This bug is discovered, dissected and fixed by $THE_PERSON. Patch is implemented and committed by me. Thanks a lot, $THE_PERSON!". This is basic human decency. I have my name on many bug reports, either reporting them, or providing more information leading to solution of the bug. I have a couple of patches here and there, and I experienced something similar from another prominent project people interact with every day, but I said that "mneh, whatever". The author certainly didn't because the treatment he got is really bad, and good for him publicizing this, because these kind of people needs to be known. Well, there might be miscommunication and the story can be completely different, but starting the discussion from somewhere is healthy.
- shortcake27 3y ago
  > Free software is common property. This the rule 0. It's everyone's. This is why four freedoms exist, and The Kernel is GPLv2. i.e. Free Software. Just because something is free, it doesn’t make it common property. Being able to use the kernel and modify _your own copy_ is not the same as the kernel itself being common property. The four freedoms don’t grant us permission or rights to alter other people’s copies of the software, so those copies are not common property. > The maintainer didn't have to accept the patch per se. He could have just written "This bug is discovered, dissected and fixed by $THE_PERSON. Patch is implemented and committed by me. Thanks a lot, $THE_PERSON!". That’s basically what happened, yeah? The author got credit for reporting it.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    > The four freedoms don’t grant us permission or rights to alter other people’s copies of the software, so those copies are not common property. Of course, but accepting a bug, giving feedback on a submitted patch to be included in the kernel is openly saying "We're willing to accept this, but you need to polish this and that", which the author did. In practice he got the permission to modify their copy. > That’s basically what happened, yeah? The author got credit for reporting it. No, definitely not. They got a "reported-by" tag, which means "the author told me that something is not working, so I did all the work to find why, did all the work to solve, did all the work to implement, did all the work to commit." In reality, the author found, debugged, solved and patched the problem. The maintainer didn't like the style, pushed his version, and claimed that all work is done by him, except hitting his proverbial foot to a proverbial stone while walking (i.e. discovering the bug).
    - shortcake27 3y ago
      > In practice he got the permission to modify their copy. I wouldn’t consider it common property if permission is required. It seems like our definitions of common property differ, but I’m not sure there’s any value in trying to align ourselves on this. > No, definitely not. They got a "reported-by" tag, which means "somebody told me that something is not working, so I did all the work to find why, did all the work to solve, did all the work to implement, did all the work to commit." Got it. Yeah I agree this is not the same. However, I still stand by my original stance which is that no one is owed anything, especially when they do something no one asked them to do.

frankreyes 3y ago

> The developer could have accepted that allegedly inferior fix, give the credit, and patch it with their own version in a single commit. My best oss contribution was done exactly like this. Someone else reviewed my code, made some changes, but my name was on the commits. I was happy that someone else took the time to make my code better and at the same time, keep my name on it.

shkkmo 3y ago
As has been mentioned elsewhere if this had been submitted via the standard process, something more like that might have happened. However, this was submitted to the security mailing list which is optimized for quick, precise fixes, not for teaching new contributors how to adhere to coding standards.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  This methodology also has the side effect of "new contributor has security fix but can't contribute it because they need to be "taught" on non-security issues first."
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - shkkmo 3y ago
    No it doesn't. The new contributor didn't have the knowledge and skills to make a patch that followed project standards. They were still able to submit a report and a first attempt at fixing the issue and get people who do know how to do that to craft a fix quickly. This is the system working correctly. Rather than being thankful that other people contributed their time and effort to help OP solve the issue their company was facing, OP decided to misquote the person who helped them and start drama where none was needed.
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      > Rather than being thankful that other people contributed their time and effort to help OP solve the issue their company was facing, OP decided to misquote the person who helped them and start drama where none was needed. Wow, way to turn this around. The user had fixed their issue. Don't make it like "other people" "helped them solve it". The user and his company were quite capable of compiling their own kernel and using that. They solved their own problem, with no help from others. They then chose to disseminate it for the greater good. And yet people like you are demanding that they show gratitude to the community for somehow deigning to help them.