4 ms·
As others have pointed out, it's just an inappropriate comment. Yes it's open source, and yes, anyone can hack on it themselves. But 99.99999% of the time it'
by cujo 12y ago
As others have pointed out, it's just an inappropriate comment.
Yes it's open source, and yes, anyone can hack on it themselves. But 99.99999% of the time it's not realistic.
Nearly every piece of software on my computer could be enhanced to fit me personally, but there's no way I could justify the time and energy to work on it. Also, in most cases I have no desire to learn the stack/underpinnings for a particular enhancement.
Lastly, the comment comes off as condescending. Are we really not allowed to wish for things? Must we personally fix everything we find an inconvenience or problem with?
- ionforce 12y agoThough I agree with you, where is the stick in the ground? The OSS community's theme song has always been "you can do it yourself", even though that has long been not realistic for many people. So, nothing here is different as far as I can tell.
- danudey 12y ago> The OSS community's theme song has always been "you can do it yourself" In my experience over the last 15 years, that theme song can often veer from "you can do it yourself" (empowerment) to "do it yourself" (dismissal); replying to a reasonable feature request, in any context, with 'fix it yourself' is one of the things that turned a lot of people off OSS around the time of the first 'year of linux on the desktop'. The GIMP was the best example of this, with professional graphics editors, illustrators, etc. requesting features and being told 'no one needs those features' and 'if you want it so much, do it yourself', and it hurt their image a lot with many potential users, both technical and non-technical. Personally, I'm glad that attitude has largely disappeared (though apparently, not entirely).