4 ms·

Dear User of My Open Source Project

70 points by blasdel 17y ago

Tichy 17y ago
Dear self-important open source developer: I have never heard about you, and I don't care about your little private project. Good luck with your freelancing work. P.S.: either you a) don't care what people think about your project, then why the rant or b) you care, then why the rant?
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
  > An open source developer ... He's not an open source developer. He's someone who writes code for himself, then makes it available to people in case they might find it useful. I think that's different. > ... is complaining about his open source customer ... "Customer" is an interesting word. If someone leaves stuff around with a sign saying "help yourself" and I take some, am I a "customer"? No, I don't think so. > ... complaining about his code. I don't think it's the "complaint", /per se/, I think it's the tone of the complaint. I've had this. People have picked up stuff I've chosen to make available, then they've demanded I enhance it in the ways they want. Further, their demands border on the threatening. I just wish more people would make their work available, fewer people would make demands, and that people in general were more constructive and just tried to get along. Unusually extreme climactic conditions in Hades seem more likely, though. (edited for typos)
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - sokoloff 17y ago
    I'm curious what would make someone an open-source developer if ~"writing code and making it freely available to people"~ is not the chief qualification.
    - skolor 17y ago
      As far as I can tell, its not the "Open-source" portion that is debated, its the developer portion. I have written a bit of code which I share around (and I think I'll actually start using the WTFPL license on it), but I would never consider myself an open-source developer. For the most part, its all code I threw together in an afternoon or a weekend (or, in one case a week of afternoons), and I thought "someone else may want this, so I'll make it available to them". To make this clear, I am not a software developer. I'm a college student/tech support person who just happens to write some semi-useful code. Its not software, there's little-to-no documentation, and I'll only be supporting it if I think the problem is interesting.
    - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
      In my mind there is a continuum between two points. 1: Those who write code specifically for the purpose of making it available, possibly originally because they wanted it themselves, but now because it's been made open, people are using it, and they're deriving some sort of (possibly intangible) benefits from it (karma, esteem, recognition, PostCardWare, whatever) and 2: People who write code, often small scripts or functions, purely because they need them, and, almost as an afterthought, make them publically readable with no thought to getting anything in return, but simply because they think the world would be a better place if more people did that. In linguistic terms, the concept of "Open Source Developer" has, in my mind "baggage". Your semantics may differ from mine, but to me, there is a distinction to be made.
    - blasdel 17y ago
      To me an "Open Source Developer" is someone who is paid by an interested big-corp to work full time on a project that's open source: there's lots of them at Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, IBM (ASF crap especially), Intel, Sun, Apple, etc. It's distinct from "scratch your own itch" stuff, especially when it's a project or a feature you wouldn't otherwise work on.
  - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
    He's someone who writes code for homself, then makes it available to people in case they might find it useful. That actually sounds like an excellent definition for a big fraction of source developers. One of the many benefits of open source is that it captures and aggregates value of even very modest contributions as well as the value of major contributions.
  - fauigerzigerk 17y ago
    I guess one problem is that expecations of users of OSS are not just a thing between the developer of a particular piece of software and its users. The open source movement has been busy creating expectations of OSS being better supported, higher quality software with a commercial business model. All the big corporations supporting open source by making code available also change the perception that open source is some kind of grass roots non-commercial thing. The single developer of some open source library may in fact be on the payroll of some BigCorp playing some kind of advocacy role for which he is being paid a salary. You don't know unless you dig deeper and some people don't dig deeper. They just work on the basis of general assumptions formed by the collective advocacy effort of the open source movement as a whole. Of course that doesn't mean an individual developer has to honor that collective promise. I do understand that guy's rant. I'm just trying to explain how such misguided expectations can arise. The conclusion, for me, is this: Don't use open source software unless you don't need it and could build it yourself, unless you know why the developer has a vested interest in making you, the user, happy.
tom_rath 17y ago
...and that, dear readers, is why commercial software can compete against free, open source alternatives.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- mapleoin 17y ago
  um... no, not really. There is proprietary (you mean proprietary, not commercial) software without any kind of support provided to the user and there is open source software with _commercial_ support.
  - tom_rath 17y ago
    No, I'm speaking to those who are worried about their commercial software not being able to compete with 'free' alternatives. That '_commerical_' support you're referring to doesn't scale worth a damn, so it's easy to out-compete those folks as a business and provide a superior product.
    - christonog 17y ago
      "That '_commerical_' support you're referring to doesn't scale worth a damn" Please elaborate on this comment. Redhat has basically been the poster child for the free software/commercial support business model for over a decade now. I believe support for an open source software product can be scaled as a business.
      - bad_user 17y ago
        RedHat doesn't really sell support. They sell licenses, enforced by their trademark. They provide support for each license sold, that's true. People buy RedHat licenses because it's a defacto standard in the industry. Some people or companies use CentOS, which is a re-branded RedHat. But if you want the original, you have to buy the product.
poppysan 17y ago
Hilarious...That's like complaining about the food at a homeless shelter. Its free and, in this situation, unsupported. Buy a commercial product if you want above and beyond customer service...
Tichy 17y ago
I think an important question is: does it matter to me how many people use my (open source) software or not? And it seems to me usually it does matter. More users means higher likelihood for other people to provide patches. It means higher esteem for me, which should translate into higher consulting rates. Therefore I don't quite get the "fuck you, customer" attitude. If you don't care, why even bother to open source the software? Just keep it private on your hard disk. (Note: I didn't read the whole rant. Presumably there were some obnoxious customers. Whatever - how likely is it that they read his rant and change their ways? Not very likely imo).
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
  I make some of my code available for others to use as they will. I do not consider myself to be an open-source developer. I really don't care how many people use it, but it's nice that some people find it useful. I have the code, it costs me nothing to make it available, and others think it makes their world better, so that's OK then. I don't have an aggressive "customer" attitude, but I get pretty annoyed when someone who uses the software then demands that I change something. Not request, not suggest, not offer to help, but demand that it be changed. I'm not looking for more esteem, better rates, "karma" of any sort, I'm just happy to make it available because I think the world can't be worse off, and might be better off. I really, really don't care how many people use it, and what is clear is that keeping it private on my hard drive means that there is no chance it makes the world a better place. You don't seem to be able to comprehend the idea that people will sometimes just make their work available to others without any desire or need to recognition or compensation. I think the world would be a better place if people did. So I do.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    "You don't seem to be able to comprehend the idea that people will sometimes just make their work available to others without any desire or need to recognition or compensation." If that really were so, then why the rant? So a part of you seems to care. The "demanding" customers are basically just dumb or socially challenged, so I would pity them, not write a long rant.
sutro 17y ago
Dear bloggers who begin rants with the word Dear: Please stop.
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  Dear person who read a blog post and whined about it - everything mentioned in this blog post about free software, except about free text instead.
makecheck 17y ago
Even if a person is frustrated or doesn't communicate well, he or she is still telling me about a problem. As a developer, I find this much better than not knowing about the issue at all. How many people receive thousands of E-mails for their thousands of downloads? Feedback is rare. Usually, frustration is rooted elsewhere. The person has something to do, and is annoyed that it (still) can't be done, probably after trying my project along with a number of others. I try not to take this personally. So my first response is to be civil. I don't even talk about anything mean they might have said, I focus entirely on the problem. I solve that problem, and say "here you are". The response to this has always been gratitude, and even amazement that I solved the problem. It seems that once the person reaches the point of yelling at a developer, that person has given up and doesn't really expect anything anymore. A community is built one person at a time.
- tjr 17y ago
  http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Mail.html http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Mail.html When you receive bug reports, keep in mind that bug reports are crucial for your work. If you don't know about problems, you cannot fix them. So always thank each person who sends a bug report. ... By all means help individual users when you feel like it, if you feel you have the time available. But be careful to limit the amount of time you spend doing this-- don't let it eat away the time you need to maintain the program! Know how to say no; when you are pressed for time, just "thanks for the bug report -- I will fix it" is enough response.
- liuliu 17y ago
  I usually ignore "help request" email or "feature request" one because basically, to reply these emails occupies a lot of time. But "bug fix" email are pretty useful. I do write test cases for code, but a lot bugs are about platform specification, compiler differences which is hard to be found by your own.
- m0nty 17y ago
  I like receiving bug reports. I like even more those cases where people say "the problem is in this bit of code". The thing that put me off doing my open source project is that some people don't have the chops to sys admin their own boxes, and try to get free help from me. They try to make out it's my code of course: "I can't get the database to load into MySQL. Can you fix it?" "It's saying something about 'can't load module nnn'. Is it broken?" I try to be civil but after three or four iterations ("OK, it loads but now I get some error in the logs about 'Can't connect to database'. I wonder what that could be?") well, life's too short and I have actual systems to run, actual bills to pay. So although your counterpoint is good I would nonetheless say the author is spot on, and there are an awful lot of rude bastards out there who don't deserve free code, let alone free support.
Semiapies 17y ago
A "license" like that would be a good thing, I think. Whenever I hear about some potentially useful-to-me 0.1-version OS project, it'd be nice to know things about it. Things like, "Is the developer ever going to spend more than that first weekend poking at it?" or "Does the developer think of this code as similar to a discarded toilet he's left on a curb?" I get the point about entitled-feeling users, but there's a flip side: in the comments, he goes on about welcoming bug reports, etc. from those users. He wants users to bug-test for him and help him improve his code, but he's not paying them for the QC work any more than they're paying him for coding. If you release software, for better or worse, you set up some social expectations. If you don't want people complaining to you and wanting bug-fixes and support, either don't release that software or make it abundantly clear in the license, download site, etc. that the software isn't supported.

70 points by blasdel 17y ago

Tichy 17y ago

Dear self-important open source developer: I have never heard about you, and I don't care about your little private project. Good luck with your freelancing work. P.S.: either you a) don't care what people think about your project, then why the rant or b) you care, then why the rant?

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
> An open source developer ... He's not an open source developer. He's someone who writes code for himself, then makes it available to people in case they might find it useful. I think that's different. > ... is complaining about his open source customer ... "Customer" is an interesting word. If someone leaves stuff around with a sign saying "help yourself" and I take some, am I a "customer"? No, I don't think so. > ... complaining about his code. I don't think it's the "complaint", /per se/, I think it's the tone of the complaint. I've had this. People have picked up stuff I've chosen to make available, then they've demanded I enhance it in the ways they want. Further, their demands border on the threatening. I just wish more people would make their work available, fewer people would make demands, and that people in general were more constructive and just tried to get along. Unusually extreme climactic conditions in Hades seem more likely, though. (edited for typos)
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- sokoloff 17y ago
  I'm curious what would make someone an open-source developer if ~"writing code and making it freely available to people"~ is not the chief qualification.
  - skolor 17y ago
    As far as I can tell, its not the "Open-source" portion that is debated, its the developer portion. I have written a bit of code which I share around (and I think I'll actually start using the WTFPL license on it), but I would never consider myself an open-source developer. For the most part, its all code I threw together in an afternoon or a weekend (or, in one case a week of afternoons), and I thought "someone else may want this, so I'll make it available to them". To make this clear, I am not a software developer. I'm a college student/tech support person who just happens to write some semi-useful code. Its not software, there's little-to-no documentation, and I'll only be supporting it if I think the problem is interesting.
  - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
    In my mind there is a continuum between two points. 1: Those who write code specifically for the purpose of making it available, possibly originally because they wanted it themselves, but now because it's been made open, people are using it, and they're deriving some sort of (possibly intangible) benefits from it (karma, esteem, recognition, PostCardWare, whatever) and 2: People who write code, often small scripts or functions, purely because they need them, and, almost as an afterthought, make them publically readable with no thought to getting anything in return, but simply because they think the world would be a better place if more people did that. In linguistic terms, the concept of "Open Source Developer" has, in my mind "baggage". Your semantics may differ from mine, but to me, there is a distinction to be made.
  - blasdel 17y ago
    To me an "Open Source Developer" is someone who is paid by an interested big-corp to work full time on a project that's open source: there's lots of them at Red Hat, Novell, Canonical, IBM (ASF crap especially), Intel, Sun, Apple, etc. It's distinct from "scratch your own itch" stuff, especially when it's a project or a feature you wouldn't otherwise work on.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  He's someone who writes code for homself, then makes it available to people in case they might find it useful. That actually sounds like an excellent definition for a big fraction of source developers. One of the many benefits of open source is that it captures and aggregates value of even very modest contributions as well as the value of major contributions.
- fauigerzigerk 17y ago
  I guess one problem is that expecations of users of OSS are not just a thing between the developer of a particular piece of software and its users. The open source movement has been busy creating expectations of OSS being better supported, higher quality software with a commercial business model. All the big corporations supporting open source by making code available also change the perception that open source is some kind of grass roots non-commercial thing. The single developer of some open source library may in fact be on the payroll of some BigCorp playing some kind of advocacy role for which he is being paid a salary. You don't know unless you dig deeper and some people don't dig deeper. They just work on the basis of general assumptions formed by the collective advocacy effort of the open source movement as a whole. Of course that doesn't mean an individual developer has to honor that collective promise. I do understand that guy's rant. I'm just trying to explain how such misguided expectations can arise. The conclusion, for me, is this: Don't use open source software unless you don't need it and could build it yourself, unless you know why the developer has a vested interest in making you, the user, happy.

tom_rath 17y ago

...and that, dear readers, is why commercial software can compete against free, open source alternatives.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
mapleoin 17y ago
um... no, not really. There is proprietary (you mean proprietary, not commercial) software without any kind of support provided to the user and there is open source software with _commercial_ support.
- tom_rath 17y ago
  No, I'm speaking to those who are worried about their commercial software not being able to compete with 'free' alternatives. That '_commerical_' support you're referring to doesn't scale worth a damn, so it's easy to out-compete those folks as a business and provide a superior product.
  - christonog 17y ago
    "That '_commerical_' support you're referring to doesn't scale worth a damn" Please elaborate on this comment. Redhat has basically been the poster child for the free software/commercial support business model for over a decade now. I believe support for an open source software product can be scaled as a business.
    - bad_user 17y ago
      RedHat doesn't really sell support. They sell licenses, enforced by their trademark. They provide support for each license sold, that's true. People buy RedHat licenses because it's a defacto standard in the industry. Some people or companies use CentOS, which is a re-branded RedHat. But if you want the original, you have to buy the product.

poppysan 17y ago

Hilarious...That's like complaining about the food at a homeless shelter. Its free and, in this situation, unsupported. Buy a commercial product if you want above and beyond customer service...

Tichy 17y ago

I think an important question is: does it matter to me how many people use my (open source) software or not? And it seems to me usually it does matter. More users means higher likelihood for other people to provide patches. It means higher esteem for me, which should translate into higher consulting rates. Therefore I don't quite get the "fuck you, customer" attitude. If you don't care, why even bother to open source the software? Just keep it private on your hard disk. (Note: I didn't read the whole rant. Presumably there were some obnoxious customers. Whatever - how likely is it that they read his rant and change their ways? Not very likely imo).

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
I make some of my code available for others to use as they will. I do not consider myself to be an open-source developer. I really don't care how many people use it, but it's nice that some people find it useful. I have the code, it costs me nothing to make it available, and others think it makes their world better, so that's OK then. I don't have an aggressive "customer" attitude, but I get pretty annoyed when someone who uses the software then demands that I change something. Not request, not suggest, not offer to help, but demand that it be changed. I'm not looking for more esteem, better rates, "karma" of any sort, I'm just happy to make it available because I think the world can't be worse off, and might be better off. I really, really don't care how many people use it, and what is clear is that keeping it private on my hard drive means that there is no chance it makes the world a better place. You don't seem to be able to comprehend the idea that people will sometimes just make their work available to others without any desire or need to recognition or compensation. I think the world would be a better place if people did. So I do.
- Tichy 17y ago
  "You don't seem to be able to comprehend the idea that people will sometimes just make their work available to others without any desire or need to recognition or compensation." If that really were so, then why the rant? So a part of you seems to care. The "demanding" customers are basically just dumb or socially challenged, so I would pity them, not write a long rant.

sutro 17y ago

Dear bloggers who begin rants with the word Dear: Please stop.

jodrellblank 17y ago
Dear person who read a blog post and whined about it - everything mentioned in this blog post about free software, except about free text instead.

makecheck 17y ago

Even if a person is frustrated or doesn't communicate well, he or she is still telling me about a problem. As a developer, I find this much better than not knowing about the issue at all. How many people receive thousands of E-mails for their thousands of downloads? Feedback is rare. Usually, frustration is rooted elsewhere. The person has something to do, and is annoyed that it (still) can't be done, probably after trying my project along with a number of others. I try not to take this personally. So my first response is to be civil. I don't even talk about anything mean they might have said, I focus entirely on the problem. I solve that problem, and say "here you are". The response to this has always been gratitude, and even amazement that I solved the problem. It seems that once the person reaches the point of yelling at a developer, that person has given up and doesn't really expect anything anymore. A community is built one person at a time.

tjr 17y ago
http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Mail.html http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Mail.html When you receive bug reports, keep in mind that bug reports are crucial for your work. If you don't know about problems, you cannot fix them. So always thank each person who sends a bug report. ... By all means help individual users when you feel like it, if you feel you have the time available. But be careful to limit the amount of time you spend doing this-- don't let it eat away the time you need to maintain the program! Know how to say no; when you are pressed for time, just "thanks for the bug report -- I will fix it" is enough response.
liuliu 17y ago
I usually ignore "help request" email or "feature request" one because basically, to reply these emails occupies a lot of time. But "bug fix" email are pretty useful. I do write test cases for code, but a lot bugs are about platform specification, compiler differences which is hard to be found by your own.
m0nty 17y ago
I like receiving bug reports. I like even more those cases where people say "the problem is in this bit of code". The thing that put me off doing my open source project is that some people don't have the chops to sys admin their own boxes, and try to get free help from me. They try to make out it's my code of course: "I can't get the database to load into MySQL. Can you fix it?" "It's saying something about 'can't load module nnn'. Is it broken?" I try to be civil but after three or four iterations ("OK, it loads but now I get some error in the logs about 'Can't connect to database'. I wonder what that could be?") well, life's too short and I have actual systems to run, actual bills to pay. So although your counterpoint is good I would nonetheless say the author is spot on, and there are an awful lot of rude bastards out there who don't deserve free code, let alone free support.

Semiapies 17y ago

A "license" like that would be a good thing, I think. Whenever I hear about some potentially useful-to-me 0.1-version OS project, it'd be nice to know things about it. Things like, "Is the developer ever going to spend more than that first weekend poking at it?" or "Does the developer think of this code as similar to a discarded toilet he's left on a curb?" I get the point about entitled-feeling users, but there's a flip side: in the comments, he goes on about welcoming bug reports, etc. from those users. He wants users to bug-test for him and help him improve his code, but he's not paying them for the QC work any more than they're paying him for coding. If you release software, for better or worse, you set up some social expectations. If you don't want people complaining to you and wanting bug-fixes and support, either don't release that software or make it abundantly clear in the license, download site, etc. that the software isn't supported.