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> Also, I can't say I have ever been thanked for contributing. Just kicked in the face. Really? My contributions to the open source world are certainly modest,

by sii 12y ago

> Also, I can't say I have ever been thanked for contributing. Just kicked in the face. Really? My contributions to the open source world are certainly modest, but I get thank you emails perhaps once a month for applications I've released. People are quite pleasant.

nanoscopic 12y ago
Yes, for many years I intentionally did not release more open source due to only having people contact me to ask for help or criticize and never to simply say thank you. Most recently I have decided that releasing open source is what I want to do, because it is what I want. I don't expect anyone to appreciate it any more. The parser I wrote has actually made it into several linux distributions ( as well as on the distributed discs ). Several people benchmarked it and said it was amazingly fast. I'm pretty sure it is used by a fair amount of people, but since it is mainly distributed through CPAN I have no idea who really uses it or how many. I think this is the case for what I wrote because it is a component. People in general I think appreciate tools much more than components, especially if the component is one of many somewhat inter-compatible other options. There is little love for "another thing added to the pile" even if it is different in fundamental ways.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  >only having people contact me to ask for help or criticize and never to simply say thank you // I wonder if in part this is due to solicitation - you [by which I mean 'one', a person, not specifically you] have a "support" forum for problems, you have a note asking for contacts with bugs but generally OSS projects don't have a "comment with thanks" or a tip jar or whatever. Guestbooks used to be the way people could offer a quick comment of thanks. But as you say this is more likely to work for frontend user-facing projects. Stars on github or similar will show at least that people appreciate your work if they've not explicitly thanked you.
audunw 12y ago
Are these end-user applications? I suspect developers can tend to be less grateful than end-users, and this guy was writing an XML parser. I've also had people thank me for a FOSS app, but that was also a consumer application. The fact that it was open-source was actually incidental though, I don't think anyone have actually forked or looked at the code. If they did, maybe I'd have gotten some hate mail ;)

by sii 12y ago

nanoscopic 12y ago

Yes, for many years I intentionally did not release more open source due to only having people contact me to ask for help or criticize and never to simply say thank you. Most recently I have decided that releasing open source is what I want to do, because it is what I want. I don't expect anyone to appreciate it any more. The parser I wrote has actually made it into several linux distributions ( as well as on the distributed discs ). Several people benchmarked it and said it was amazingly fast. I'm pretty sure it is used by a fair amount of people, but since it is mainly distributed through CPAN I have no idea who really uses it or how many. I think this is the case for what I wrote because it is a component. People in general I think appreciate tools much more than components, especially if the component is one of many somewhat inter-compatible other options. There is little love for "another thing added to the pile" even if it is different in fundamental ways.

pbhjpbhj 12y ago
>only having people contact me to ask for help or criticize and never to simply say thank you // I wonder if in part this is due to solicitation - you [by which I mean 'one', a person, not specifically you] have a "support" forum for problems, you have a note asking for contacts with bugs but generally OSS projects don't have a "comment with thanks" or a tip jar or whatever. Guestbooks used to be the way people could offer a quick comment of thanks. But as you say this is more likely to work for frontend user-facing projects. Stars on github or similar will show at least that people appreciate your work if they've not explicitly thanked you.

audunw 12y ago

Are these end-user applications? I suspect developers can tend to be less grateful than end-users, and this guy was writing an XML parser. I've also had people thank me for a FOSS app, but that was also a consumer application. The fact that it was open-source was actually incidental though, I don't think anyone have actually forked or looked at the code. If they did, maybe I'd have gotten some hate mail ;)