7 ms·

In the end you're only pressured as much as you allow yourself to be pressured. "I don't feel like it, if it's important to you then feel free to fork". That'

by arp242 3y ago

In the end you're only pressured as much as you allow yourself to be pressured. "I don't feel like it, if it's important to you then feel free to fork". That's really all that's needed. "I don't feel like it" is all the justification you need. Some guy just made a compression tool, because some people like doing that kind of thing, or because it was useful for him. He didn't ask to be made "critical infrastructure" or to be responsible for the security of sshd or to have some business depend on it, or anything like that. No one even asked him.

gmerc 3y ago
When it was created, it was a different time. There was a sense of community around open source, much more tightly nit. And the more socially minded you are, the more vulnerable you are to these kind of attacks.
- arp242 3y ago
  2007 wasn't that long ago, and these type of maintainership issues aren't new – they were a thing when I was starting out in the early 2000s as well. What changed are the stakes, and also the amount of effort bad actors are willing to spend to mine their cryptoblahblah or whatever. And sure, I understand why people feel a responsibility. And it's fine to take this responsibility too. I'm just saying: there is no need to. The entire point of this Free Software/Open Source is to give people the freedom to do whatever you want with some piece of software, without having to be beholden to the original author. That's pretty much the entire point. Anyone in the world can be a maintainer for xz. By forking it and applying useful patches.
  - Klonoar 3y ago
    > 2007 wasn't that long ago It was almost 20 years ago, and no, I generally agree with the person you're responding to that OSS has changed significantly in these regards since the early-to-middle 2000s. I'm not even disagreeing with the rest of your take, just poking at this idea that time hasn't passed and changed things. Some days I look around our industry and feel like it's nowhere near the one I was working in before.
  - toyg 3y ago
    2007 was 17 years ago, and it was another world. This time 17 years ago, the iPhone had not been released. Facebook was still new and hot, the first big operation to be unashamedly built on PHP (!). GitHub didn't exist, opensource happened on mailing lists, Sourceforge, private Subversion repos. It was definitely another world. I do agree that maintainership issues were already there, but I think they were smaller in number. Between the explosion of projects and the explosion of users, they are now on a different scale.
    - rrdharan 3y ago
      MySpace, Yahoo! Mail, eBay and probably other large scale operations were all built on PHP long before Facebook and I don’t think any of them were particularly ashamed about it.
      - toyg 3y ago
        I doubt eBay was originally built with PHP - when it was founded in 1995, the very first PHP version had been available for barely 3 months. I expect the original EBay was mostly Perl, which was the standard at the time. The others I don't know, but MySpace was not a particularly big operation. Before WordPress, most sites started as PHP at some point were expected to migrate to something else, because maintainability of PHP3/4 projects was a big challenge (hence the "shame"). Facebook was the first company that simply refused to do that, and focused on improving PHP instead.
    - manquer 3y ago
      PHP was a popular stack at that time ? Wikipedia and Wordpress existed and were very popular and unashamedly PHP. What PHP lacked and Ruby had was rails like framework , the team from 37signals singlehandedly shifted the momentum out of PHP with their work on rails.
stavros 3y ago
This ignores the very fact that peer pressure works and puts the entire blame on the victim. No, people react differently when pressured vs when not pressured. That's the entire reason why peer pressure works.
- arp242 3y ago
  I didn't blame anyone; I just made some observations on how this type of thing can be avoided, partly based on my own experience doing volunteer work for the last 20 years (as open source maintainer and as scout leader), and being subject to the same pressures at times. I hate this trend of shouting "victim blaming!" once someone tries to explain things or analyse anything. Not everything needs to be a value judgement. "X happened, and Y could have prevented it" is not a judgement.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Well, when you say "the victim could just not have succumbed to the pressure" I don't see how that doesn't blame the victim. I understand it's not your intention, but peer pressure works exactly because it gets around people's "wait, I don't actually want to do this" defense, and to say "just don't do it, nobody is physically forcing you to" ignores that fact. If I were in the maintainer's shoes, and was feeling ambivalent about handing over maintenance to a fairly unknown person, this kind of social attack would definitely push me over the edge, exactly as it was planned to.
    - arp242 3y ago
      Anything can be viewed as a judgement statement if you paraphrase or stretch things enough. I don't think your paraphrasings are a fair representation of what I actually said. But you can insert "I'm not trying to blame anyone, but here are some suggestions to modify cultural norms so these things are less likely to happen in the future" if you want. Or you can just assume good faith and take that as implied unless demonstrated otherwise.
      - 3y ago
em-bee 3y ago
"I don't feel like it, if it's important to you then feel free to fork". That's really all that's needed. that's much harder than it sounds. having someone fork your project can give you the feeling of loosing control over the project as potentially all your users might go with the fork. that fear is often strong enough to push yourself to do things that will avoid a fork. it's a desire for harmony and a fear of conflict
- arp242 3y ago
  You're right of course, but there are cultural norms and expectations at play here, which I feel need to be modified somewhat. And that doesn't really change that things really are that simple, kind of. How do you stop smoking? By not lighting up any cigarettes. Of course it's not that simple, but ... it also kind of is.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    there are cultural norms and expectations at play here, which I feel need to be modified somewhat this is an important observation. a change of culture is really what is needed here, because it implies that not only maintainers change their behavior, but everyone involved, and the question is not so much what any individual can do for themselves, but how we can help others with that change and spread it
    - arp242 3y ago
      It's impossible for everyone to change their behaviour, because that's too many people. Some people are just assholes and don't care. Or they're idiots and don't understand. Nothing we can do about that. Most people are alright, but with 8 billion people on the planet even a small percentage being an asshole means a lot of assholes. For the most part, the people who care already care (you, me, most others commenting here) are not really the problem. So ultimately the only thing you can do as a maintainer is set your own boundaries for yourself. And the original message in that thread ("there is no activity, what are your plans?") is a fair question, although the follow-ups are not. All of this is true for a lot of the internet by the way. The best thing of the internet is that anyone on the planet can talk to anyone else on the planet. When I was a kid I did some ham radio with scouting, and you could talk to people from places like Russia and the US. Wow! The worst thing of the internet is that anyone on the planet can talk to anyone else on the planet. You're constantly exposed to a seemingly never-ending stream of assholes and idiots, and a single asshole can ruin the day of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people every day. Maybe this is just 1% of people, but 1% of 8 billion is 80 million.
cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
This is incredibly naive. Anyone that thinks that pressure doesn’t work is exactly who I’d personally put top of my list to try to social engineer. Everyone is human. Nobody has infinite strength against persistent pestering. Everyone is capable of finding oneself in a scenario where they feel unsolicited responsibility. All you’re saying here is that you haven’t personally experienced it.
- zelphirkalt 3y ago
  The GP did not state that pressure does not work. They stated how to they think one should think about people trying to pressure. Or about contributions. They named the industry's self inflicted problems.
- arp242 3y ago
  I didn't say that; I just said you can maintain these projects with different attitudes. "I feel a huge responsibility to please every user who reports a problem, shortcoming, or asks for a feature, which I need to address ASAP" is one attitude. "I work on it whenever I feel like it, and if you don't like that then I don't care" is another. Those are on the extreme end and for most people it's somewhere in-between. It's very common for people doing volunteer work to lean too much towards the first. They have trouble saying "no" and bite off more they can chew, even without direct pressure. Learning when to say "no" and setting boundaries for yourself is absolutely a vital skill for any kind of volunteer work – without it sooner or later you will burn out. When I was a scout leader burnout due to this was a major cause of attrition. We made it very clear and very explicit there was no pressure for anyone to do anything they didn't want to, and that there was no shame in not wanting to do something just because you didn't feel like it. But it still happened, because people still feel this pressure, even when it doesn't actually exist.
- keybored 3y ago
  Peer pressure works excellently against me as a teenager [when I was one] who just wants to fit in and have friends. It works much less well against me when I get unsolicited calls and contacts via phone and the Internet.
tonnydourado 3y ago
The maintainer did mention mental health issues. It can be hard to say no in the best of times, let alone when your own mind is trying to screw with you.
- EasyMark 3y ago
  That's brave on his part and honest. I would never admit that in public personally and shows his personal level of honesty, unfortunately it can make you the victim of even more predators. Just say "no" and move on with your own agenda on your own personal projects. It's none of anyone's business, but one may share at times, just realize that others may try to take advantage. That's just my take.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
EasyMark 3y ago
This is harsh but tree, but it's not simple. People are different. Some shrug off things naturally, others try to be empathetic almost to a fault. I've learned to be the former, but when I was younger was much more the latter. I try not to act like it's easy because it took me a while to have that skill. And it is a skill and not built in to me, I still feel the urge but built up the skill of saying "no"
- EasyMark 3y ago
  true*
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
You don't even have to say, "I don't feel like it." You don't have to say anything.
kqr 3y ago
I'm curious: do you maintain a popular open source project? The reason I ask is maybe the people who do are (in general) self-selected from the subgroup of people who don't just say "sod off" when someone is rude or inconsiderate. If that was their stance in life, they would likely not put up with maintaining a popular open source project for very long.

by arp242 3y ago

gmerc 3y ago

When it was created, it was a different time. There was a sense of community around open source, much more tightly nit. And the more socially minded you are, the more vulnerable you are to these kind of attacks.

arp242 3y ago
2007 wasn't that long ago, and these type of maintainership issues aren't new – they were a thing when I was starting out in the early 2000s as well. What changed are the stakes, and also the amount of effort bad actors are willing to spend to mine their cryptoblahblah or whatever. And sure, I understand why people feel a responsibility. And it's fine to take this responsibility too. I'm just saying: there is no need to. The entire point of this Free Software/Open Source is to give people the freedom to do whatever you want with some piece of software, without having to be beholden to the original author. That's pretty much the entire point. Anyone in the world can be a maintainer for xz. By forking it and applying useful patches.
- Klonoar 3y ago
  > 2007 wasn't that long ago It was almost 20 years ago, and no, I generally agree with the person you're responding to that OSS has changed significantly in these regards since the early-to-middle 2000s. I'm not even disagreeing with the rest of your take, just poking at this idea that time hasn't passed and changed things. Some days I look around our industry and feel like it's nowhere near the one I was working in before.
- toyg 3y ago
  2007 was 17 years ago, and it was another world. This time 17 years ago, the iPhone had not been released. Facebook was still new and hot, the first big operation to be unashamedly built on PHP (!). GitHub didn't exist, opensource happened on mailing lists, Sourceforge, private Subversion repos. It was definitely another world. I do agree that maintainership issues were already there, but I think they were smaller in number. Between the explosion of projects and the explosion of users, they are now on a different scale.
  - rrdharan 3y ago
    MySpace, Yahoo! Mail, eBay and probably other large scale operations were all built on PHP long before Facebook and I don’t think any of them were particularly ashamed about it.
    - toyg 3y ago
      I doubt eBay was originally built with PHP - when it was founded in 1995, the very first PHP version had been available for barely 3 months. I expect the original EBay was mostly Perl, which was the standard at the time. The others I don't know, but MySpace was not a particularly big operation. Before WordPress, most sites started as PHP at some point were expected to migrate to something else, because maintainability of PHP3/4 projects was a big challenge (hence the "shame"). Facebook was the first company that simply refused to do that, and focused on improving PHP instead.
  - manquer 3y ago
    PHP was a popular stack at that time ? Wikipedia and Wordpress existed and were very popular and unashamedly PHP. What PHP lacked and Ruby had was rails like framework , the team from 37signals singlehandedly shifted the momentum out of PHP with their work on rails.

stavros 3y ago

This ignores the very fact that peer pressure works and puts the entire blame on the victim. No, people react differently when pressured vs when not pressured. That's the entire reason why peer pressure works.

arp242 3y ago
I didn't blame anyone; I just made some observations on how this type of thing can be avoided, partly based on my own experience doing volunteer work for the last 20 years (as open source maintainer and as scout leader), and being subject to the same pressures at times. I hate this trend of shouting "victim blaming!" once someone tries to explain things or analyse anything. Not everything needs to be a value judgement. "X happened, and Y could have prevented it" is not a judgement.
- stavros 3y ago
  Well, when you say "the victim could just not have succumbed to the pressure" I don't see how that doesn't blame the victim. I understand it's not your intention, but peer pressure works exactly because it gets around people's "wait, I don't actually want to do this" defense, and to say "just don't do it, nobody is physically forcing you to" ignores that fact. If I were in the maintainer's shoes, and was feeling ambivalent about handing over maintenance to a fairly unknown person, this kind of social attack would definitely push me over the edge, exactly as it was planned to.
  - arp242 3y ago
    Anything can be viewed as a judgement statement if you paraphrase or stretch things enough. I don't think your paraphrasings are a fair representation of what I actually said. But you can insert "I'm not trying to blame anyone, but here are some suggestions to modify cultural norms so these things are less likely to happen in the future" if you want. Or you can just assume good faith and take that as implied unless demonstrated otherwise.
    - 3y ago

em-bee 3y ago

"I don't feel like it, if it's important to you then feel free to fork". That's really all that's needed. that's much harder than it sounds. having someone fork your project can give you the feeling of loosing control over the project as potentially all your users might go with the fork. that fear is often strong enough to push yourself to do things that will avoid a fork. it's a desire for harmony and a fear of conflict

arp242 3y ago
You're right of course, but there are cultural norms and expectations at play here, which I feel need to be modified somewhat. And that doesn't really change that things really are that simple, kind of. How do you stop smoking? By not lighting up any cigarettes. Of course it's not that simple, but ... it also kind of is.
- em-bee 3y ago
  there are cultural norms and expectations at play here, which I feel need to be modified somewhat this is an important observation. a change of culture is really what is needed here, because it implies that not only maintainers change their behavior, but everyone involved, and the question is not so much what any individual can do for themselves, but how we can help others with that change and spread it
  - arp242 3y ago
    It's impossible for everyone to change their behaviour, because that's too many people. Some people are just assholes and don't care. Or they're idiots and don't understand. Nothing we can do about that. Most people are alright, but with 8 billion people on the planet even a small percentage being an asshole means a lot of assholes. For the most part, the people who care already care (you, me, most others commenting here) are not really the problem. So ultimately the only thing you can do as a maintainer is set your own boundaries for yourself. And the original message in that thread ("there is no activity, what are your plans?") is a fair question, although the follow-ups are not. All of this is true for a lot of the internet by the way. The best thing of the internet is that anyone on the planet can talk to anyone else on the planet. When I was a kid I did some ham radio with scouting, and you could talk to people from places like Russia and the US. Wow! The worst thing of the internet is that anyone on the planet can talk to anyone else on the planet. You're constantly exposed to a seemingly never-ending stream of assholes and idiots, and a single asshole can ruin the day of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people every day. Maybe this is just 1% of people, but 1% of 8 billion is 80 million.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago

This is incredibly naive. Anyone that thinks that pressure doesn’t work is exactly who I’d personally put top of my list to try to social engineer. Everyone is human. Nobody has infinite strength against persistent pestering. Everyone is capable of finding oneself in a scenario where they feel unsolicited responsibility. All you’re saying here is that you haven’t personally experienced it.

zelphirkalt 3y ago
The GP did not state that pressure does not work. They stated how to they think one should think about people trying to pressure. Or about contributions. They named the industry's self inflicted problems.
arp242 3y ago
I didn't say that; I just said you can maintain these projects with different attitudes. "I feel a huge responsibility to please every user who reports a problem, shortcoming, or asks for a feature, which I need to address ASAP" is one attitude. "I work on it whenever I feel like it, and if you don't like that then I don't care" is another. Those are on the extreme end and for most people it's somewhere in-between. It's very common for people doing volunteer work to lean too much towards the first. They have trouble saying "no" and bite off more they can chew, even without direct pressure. Learning when to say "no" and setting boundaries for yourself is absolutely a vital skill for any kind of volunteer work – without it sooner or later you will burn out. When I was a scout leader burnout due to this was a major cause of attrition. We made it very clear and very explicit there was no pressure for anyone to do anything they didn't want to, and that there was no shame in not wanting to do something just because you didn't feel like it. But it still happened, because people still feel this pressure, even when it doesn't actually exist.
keybored 3y ago
Peer pressure works excellently against me as a teenager [when I was one] who just wants to fit in and have friends. It works much less well against me when I get unsolicited calls and contacts via phone and the Internet.

tonnydourado 3y ago

The maintainer did mention mental health issues. It can be hard to say no in the best of times, let alone when your own mind is trying to screw with you.

EasyMark 3y ago
That's brave on his part and honest. I would never admit that in public personally and shows his personal level of honesty, unfortunately it can make you the victim of even more predators. Just say "no" and move on with your own agenda on your own personal projects. It's none of anyone's business, but one may share at times, just realize that others may try to take advantage. That's just my take.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

EasyMark 3y ago

This is harsh but tree, but it's not simple. People are different. Some shrug off things naturally, others try to be empathetic almost to a fault. I've learned to be the former, but when I was younger was much more the latter. I try not to act like it's easy because it took me a while to have that skill. And it is a skill and not built in to me, I still feel the urge but built up the skill of saying "no"

EasyMark 3y ago
true*

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

You don't even have to say, "I don't feel like it." You don't have to say anything.

kqr 3y ago

I'm curious: do you maintain a popular open source project? The reason I ask is maybe the people who do are (in general) self-selected from the subgroup of people who don't just say "sod off" when someone is rude or inconsiderate. If that was their stance in life, they would likely not put up with maintaining a popular open source project for very long.