9 ms·

Having posts like this occasionally on the front page of HN is a good and necessary regular reminder to the community: the people who write and maintain OSS pro

by j2kun 2y ago

Having posts like this occasionally on the front page of HN is a good and necessary regular reminder to the community: the people who write and maintain OSS projects are humans. Treat them with respect, and challenge bad actors when you encounter them.

chaostheory 2y ago
Some might be sponsored, but most of them also do not get compensation for their work. They’re mainly doing it for the public good.
duxup 2y ago
I hope so. I also worry that "hey reminder that" really doesn't do much on the internet, except maybe give the troll their moment in the spotlight. Granted, as I say in my other comment, I don't have an magical solutions to this kind of thing :(
- emsal 2y ago
  "hey reminder that" does make a difference, but that difference is invisible because it's exclusively in the form of incidents that did not happen. Remember that everyone reading the comment is a human too and some will be receptive. Good is good.
  - duxup 2y ago
    Unfortunately, I'm too analytical to just believe that without some evidence.
ziddoap 2y ago
Given the amount of people in this thread (and similar threads over time) saying "just thicken up your skin" (i.e. it is the maintainers fault for being sensitive, not the trolls fault for being a dick), I doubt it.
- zzo38computer 2y ago
  Anyone can communicate or do other stuff that will affect anyone, and they may make decisions based on that. Therefore, it is both of their fault. Whoever wrote the email message should not have written like that; but, it is the receiver to decide what (if anything) to do about it. The maintainer can choose to decomission the project; whether or not that is the best thing to do is a different question (although, considering what the first paragraph of the README.md file says, there are some reasons that they might not want to work on this project, especially if all it results is email messages like that one).
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  I don't think anyone is suggesting it is not the trolls fault, but the internet is fundamentally an unpolicable place so I'm unsure what the value of assigning 'fault' even is. There are 7 billion people and at minimum, tens of millions of them are massive assholes and idiots.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    >I don't think anyone is suggesting it is not the trolls fault, I mean, there is though? "Just get over it", "need thicker skin", "the cost of doing business in open source", etc. You did it in your own comment even. Making excuses for shitty behavior, as if it's some natural law like gravity. What do those sentences mean, if not suggesting that the maintainer is the one who made the wrong decision (by taking offense to the email)?
    - zzo38computer 2y ago
      It is not an excuse. The maintainer can decide what to do about it. Whether or not that is the wrong decision is a different issue. (Anyways, there are many other reasons why it might not be maintained, than only due to receiving such a email message; e.g. because you are injured or because you have other work to do (which is what is mentioned in the README.md file anyways), or whatever other reason that maybe other people don't necessarily know.) Nevertheless, some people who will maintain the project (not necessarily this one, and not necessarily) should do so even if people send such bad messages. That does not mean that everyone will; what they decide to do about messages they receive is their own choice. This is why FOSS is important; you can fork the project and make your own modifications, if you disagree with the maintainer.
tombert 2y ago
I had that realization when I emailed the creators of Erlang [1]. In my mind they were like these rockstars and I was some plebe groveling at their feet, so I was amazed when they replied back extremely politely, fairly quickly no less. It made me realize that fundamentally these are just people, people generally are helpful and nice, and they also like hearing positive things said about them. It was a good lesson to learn at a fairly young age. [1] To be clear I was extremely polite, no criticism was tossed their way!
- drbawb 2y ago
  I remember e-mailing a guy for some iPad app and having a similar moment. The important context is the app had its own custom keyboard. I used the app personally, and recommended it to a customer to solve a problem they were having. It turned out that the newest version would not work because it had removed some of the Fn-keys. I e-mailed the developer to ask for some guidance. At the time I figured it maybe had something to do with the viewport size, and was just trying to diagnose the issue. (I had an iPad mini, while the customer had purchased I think a 9th gen iPad. I wanted to know if a different device would solve the problem.) The guy e-mailed me back and was like "Oh, yeah, I changed that last week while making the new keyboard layout. I'll revert it and push out a new build." - I had a similar epiphany at that point where it was like "this guy is a dev just trying to navigate tradeoffs and ship the best app he can." - Also the tradeoffs are never as straightforward as one would think.[1] [1]: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
  - tombert 2y ago
    > this guy is a dev just trying to navigate tradeoffs and ship the best app he can I suspect a lot (most?) of apps in the App Store and the Play Store fall into this category, just like most repos on Github. People are putting their projects out there; obviously they're not immune to criticism, but I think it's important to remember that most of these people aren't Tim Cook, they're not making a living promoting stuff and taking shit people throw, they're just engineers sharing code with the world. > Also the tradeoffs are never as straightforward as one would think. Yep, completely agree; the obvious "solution" is to make everything configurable, and that can work to some extent, but then you risk an "oops I reinvented interpreters" moment, and then you made the app impossible to use for non-geeks. There's almost never a "correct" way to do it to satisfy everyone.
orochimaaru 2y ago
Yes, this is a real problem. But the text of the email makes it seem the author was a target of some troll attack. The names do not look real on gmail (Diego jewstein ???) and the text is very llm’ish. I’m surprised gmail spam filters didn’t catch this. I worry that someone may be trying to incorporate a sophisticated supply chain attack. Step 1. Troll maintainers, Step 2. Find someone to maintain who can accept malicious code. Step 3. Track where this goes
- zzo38computer 2y ago
  > I worry that someone may be trying to incorporate a sophisticated supply chain attack. Step 1. Troll maintainers, Step 2. Find someone to maintain who can accept malicious code. Step 3. Track where this goes Maybe. I had not considered that, but it might be right. There are mitigations of such an attack although you will have to be careful; such mitigations might not really stop it if you are not careful.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  That's a good call on the possibility that this is an attack, which I personally hadn't considered despite the recency of the xz shenanigans. At least the maintainer seems to have thought of it. > Also, I will consider turning it over to an interested party, but I will require at least one recommendation from a Node.js core contributor that I can vet with the people that I know on that team. Maybe not a perfect solution but it's something. Granted, a new fork might become popular but people could rightly call it into question given this statement.
- bowmessage 2y ago
  Jia Tan is looking for work

by j2kun 2y ago

chaostheory 2y ago

Some might be sponsored, but most of them also do not get compensation for their work. They’re mainly doing it for the public good.

duxup 2y ago

I hope so. I also worry that "hey reminder that" really doesn't do much on the internet, except maybe give the troll their moment in the spotlight. Granted, as I say in my other comment, I don't have an magical solutions to this kind of thing :(

emsal 2y ago
"hey reminder that" does make a difference, but that difference is invisible because it's exclusively in the form of incidents that did not happen. Remember that everyone reading the comment is a human too and some will be receptive. Good is good.
- duxup 2y ago
  Unfortunately, I'm too analytical to just believe that without some evidence.

ziddoap 2y ago

Given the amount of people in this thread (and similar threads over time) saying "just thicken up your skin" (i.e. it is the maintainers fault for being sensitive, not the trolls fault for being a dick), I doubt it.

zzo38computer 2y ago
Anyone can communicate or do other stuff that will affect anyone, and they may make decisions based on that. Therefore, it is both of their fault. Whoever wrote the email message should not have written like that; but, it is the receiver to decide what (if anything) to do about it. The maintainer can choose to decomission the project; whether or not that is the best thing to do is a different question (although, considering what the first paragraph of the README.md file says, there are some reasons that they might not want to work on this project, especially if all it results is email messages like that one).
whimsicalism 2y ago
I don't think anyone is suggesting it is not the trolls fault, but the internet is fundamentally an unpolicable place so I'm unsure what the value of assigning 'fault' even is. There are 7 billion people and at minimum, tens of millions of them are massive assholes and idiots.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  >I don't think anyone is suggesting it is not the trolls fault, I mean, there is though? "Just get over it", "need thicker skin", "the cost of doing business in open source", etc. You did it in your own comment even. Making excuses for shitty behavior, as if it's some natural law like gravity. What do those sentences mean, if not suggesting that the maintainer is the one who made the wrong decision (by taking offense to the email)?
  - zzo38computer 2y ago
    It is not an excuse. The maintainer can decide what to do about it. Whether or not that is the wrong decision is a different issue. (Anyways, there are many other reasons why it might not be maintained, than only due to receiving such a email message; e.g. because you are injured or because you have other work to do (which is what is mentioned in the README.md file anyways), or whatever other reason that maybe other people don't necessarily know.) Nevertheless, some people who will maintain the project (not necessarily this one, and not necessarily) should do so even if people send such bad messages. That does not mean that everyone will; what they decide to do about messages they receive is their own choice. This is why FOSS is important; you can fork the project and make your own modifications, if you disagree with the maintainer.

tombert 2y ago

I had that realization when I emailed the creators of Erlang [1]. In my mind they were like these rockstars and I was some plebe groveling at their feet, so I was amazed when they replied back extremely politely, fairly quickly no less. It made me realize that fundamentally these are just people, people generally are helpful and nice, and they also like hearing positive things said about them. It was a good lesson to learn at a fairly young age. [1] To be clear I was extremely polite, no criticism was tossed their way!

drbawb 2y ago
I remember e-mailing a guy for some iPad app and having a similar moment. The important context is the app had its own custom keyboard. I used the app personally, and recommended it to a customer to solve a problem they were having. It turned out that the newest version would not work because it had removed some of the Fn-keys. I e-mailed the developer to ask for some guidance. At the time I figured it maybe had something to do with the viewport size, and was just trying to diagnose the issue. (I had an iPad mini, while the customer had purchased I think a 9th gen iPad. I wanted to know if a different device would solve the problem.) The guy e-mailed me back and was like "Oh, yeah, I changed that last week while making the new keyboard layout. I'll revert it and push out a new build." - I had a similar epiphany at that point where it was like "this guy is a dev just trying to navigate tradeoffs and ship the best app he can." - Also the tradeoffs are never as straightforward as one would think.[1] [1]: https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- tombert 2y ago
  > this guy is a dev just trying to navigate tradeoffs and ship the best app he can I suspect a lot (most?) of apps in the App Store and the Play Store fall into this category, just like most repos on Github. People are putting their projects out there; obviously they're not immune to criticism, but I think it's important to remember that most of these people aren't Tim Cook, they're not making a living promoting stuff and taking shit people throw, they're just engineers sharing code with the world. > Also the tradeoffs are never as straightforward as one would think. Yep, completely agree; the obvious "solution" is to make everything configurable, and that can work to some extent, but then you risk an "oops I reinvented interpreters" moment, and then you made the app impossible to use for non-geeks. There's almost never a "correct" way to do it to satisfy everyone.

orochimaaru 2y ago

Yes, this is a real problem. But the text of the email makes it seem the author was a target of some troll attack. The names do not look real on gmail (Diego jewstein ???) and the text is very llm’ish. I’m surprised gmail spam filters didn’t catch this. I worry that someone may be trying to incorporate a sophisticated supply chain attack. Step 1. Troll maintainers, Step 2. Find someone to maintain who can accept malicious code. Step 3. Track where this goes

zzo38computer 2y ago
> I worry that someone may be trying to incorporate a sophisticated supply chain attack. Step 1. Troll maintainers, Step 2. Find someone to maintain who can accept malicious code. Step 3. Track where this goes Maybe. I had not considered that, but it might be right. There are mitigations of such an attack although you will have to be careful; such mitigations might not really stop it if you are not careful.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
That's a good call on the possibility that this is an attack, which I personally hadn't considered despite the recency of the xz shenanigans. At least the maintainer seems to have thought of it. > Also, I will consider turning it over to an interested party, but I will require at least one recommendation from a Node.js core contributor that I can vet with the people that I know on that team. Maybe not a perfect solution but it's something. Granted, a new fork might become popular but people could rightly call it into question given this statement.
bowmessage 2y ago
Jia Tan is looking for work