[HN Gopher] Signal community: Reminder: Please be nice
___________________________________________________________________
Signal community: Reminder: Please be nice
Author : decrypt
Score : 1031 points
Date : 2021-01-13 02:50 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (community.signalusers.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (community.signalusers.org)
| larodi wrote:
| (high) time to start educating children in schools regarding
| differences in software. preferably as early as primary school.
| so that every person on this planet better understands what is
| free, what different types of software licenses do. software and
| we never ever have to talk again about the offenses taken by
| people spending free time on software that helps the world spin
| in a more consistent way...
| Veen wrote:
| You overestimate the importance of software development and
| licensing in the life of the average person. Most people never
| interact with a software developer or even understand what they
| do, much less submit bug reports and feature requests to open
| source projects.
| noobermin wrote:
| I feel like this is more a sociological or even philosophical
| question but why are users like this, in particular for something
| that is free? Sometimes I wish we were more grateful for things
| instead of being so damn entitled (about a free service,
| nonetheless!).
|
| That reply that is on the bug report (literally the post about
| being nice) which accusing the author of needing to "man up" is
| too on the nose.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| Ironically I saw that dedicated, talented people who toil away
| for open source were being abused so badly that they left. I
| decided to put my head above the parapet and do something I
| don't like to do: preach. Figured I'd get some people shoot me
| down or start mouthing off at me but I manned up and posted it
| anyway.
| notabee wrote:
| I feel like this is a good starting point. It's bikesheds all
| the way down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| The Signal Project's greatest vulnerability isn't technical but
| social. Contributors probably work in clean environments and
| follow special security protocols. Yet, their policies and
| procedures haven't considered emotional compromise by hostile
| attackers. It's a social hack, essentially. If any group wants to
| shut down the Signal Project, all they need to do is agitate
| overworked contributors in message forums.
| scaramanga wrote:
| I wonder if there might be any connection between a sudden rise
| in narcissistic personalities who feel a great sense of
| entitlement arriving on Signal forums and Trump-supporting
| lunatics who are fleeing social media sites which are now closing
| the barn-door after their horse has bolted :)
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| Considering the second response I received to that post was a
| spittle-flecked rant on how being nice isn't mandatory, made by
| someone with literally zero post history, I wonder alongside
| you :-)
| worik wrote:
| I have had the opposite experience. Carefully filing a bug
| report, carefully getting data for it, only to get shouted at by
| the maintainers.
|
| Be nice, yes. Both ways.
| ddevault wrote:
| Bleh. I don't really appreciate this.
|
| User entitlement and harassment are major problems in FOSS, and I
| don't endorse it, even for Signal. But, coming from Signal in
| particular, this seems pretty weak. It almost feels exploitative
| of the real problem - harassment in FOSS - as an excuse for
| Signal to make self-serving design decisions at the user's
| expense.
|
| Remember that Signal touts itself as a secure communications
| tool, with endorsements from the likes of Edward Snowden and
| Bruce Schiener. We should hold them accountable for delivering on
| that promise, or we risk the real human lives who choose to rely
| on a flawed tool. Signal has made several design decisions which
| reduce its ability to address the problem of secure
| communications, which are conveniently self-serving. When their
| arguments for these decisions have been debunked, and yet the
| self-serving designs persist, this is a bad look for Signal. They
| have chosen to weigh their self-interests against the user's
| security, in a tool _designed for securing vulnerable users_.
|
| Signal is unlike most FOSS projects. They have access to
| resources which put them among the most privelged projects in
| terms of ability to execute on changes. The Signal Foundation has
| a war chest of _hundreds of millions of dollars_.[0] With a
| hundred million dollars, a full-time dev team, and 10+ years of
| development, I think we can expect them to have addressed many of
| the complaints ten times over, especially when similar systems
| have been built by volunteer teams in a fraction of the time.
| Complaints, again, which address ways in which Signal 's privacy
| guarantees are lacking, and which Signal conveneintly benefits
| from leaving unsolved.
|
| I don't think anyone should be mean or rude to FOSS maintainers,
| including the Signal contributors. Entitlement and harassment are
| huge problems in FOSS. However, I do think we should hold Signal
| accountable for delivering on its privacy promise, being good
| stewards of vulnerable people, and not compromising on this to
| chase after their own self-interest.
|
| [0]
| https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/82450...
| bluefox wrote:
| Yeah, there's something fishy with Signal, though it's been
| obvious for years that HN is one of its propaganda hubs.
|
| The other day I described one of my concerns with it here [0].
| I made no demands or anything like that (this is HN after all)
| yet someone chose to basically label me "entitled"... that must
| address all concerns, right?
|
| Anyway, today I woke up and it seems this global campaign to
| ditch Facebook works, because some contact of mine added me to
| a group of "friends", people who "forgot" about me for years
| (because I'm not on any social network) and who had no idea
| what Signal was until now, who never knew or cared about
| privacy, but apparently decided to start using it this week.
| Neither he nor Signal asked for my consent, and now I'm faced
| with the unpleasant task of leaving that group and possibly
| hurting people because I never wanted to receive hundreds of
| vacuous messages every day. Thus I'm one step closer in my mind
| to moving to set up Matrix on my own server.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25692885
| creata wrote:
| Sorry if this comes across as blunt, but what self-serving
| decisions has Signal made, how do they benefit Signal, and how
| do they compromise users' privacy?
| ddevault wrote:
| The main concerns are: lack of federation, the persistent
| phone number disclosure requirement, and its absence on
| F-Droid, and its hostility to forks.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I'm curious what the Hacker News crowd thinks of the IME* issue
| Naomi Wu has been trying to highlight lately.
|
| https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg/status/134916717100428902...
|
| Basically Signal doesn't clarify to users that their keyboard is
| quite possibly spying on them, rendering all of Signals security
| moot if you're trying to steer clear of spying governments. In
| practice this means that Signal is completely owned for most
| users in China if they use their phone as Chinese users normally
| do.
|
| I keep hearing people say "use signal, it's secure" and very few
| people also say "and the keyboard may render all of that security
| useless". Thoughts? Naomi Wu has expressed recently that she
| feels totally ignored in this issue. Almost as if Signal doesn't
| want to discuss it.
|
| * Input Method Editor
| lol768 wrote:
| I think it's completely unrelated to Signal, to be frank.
|
| > Naomi Wu has expressed recently that she feels totally
| ignored in this issue.
|
| Yeah; I'd ignore it too if it was reported in a bug bounty
| programme. It'd obviously be out of scope.
|
| It reminds me of the "but users might be running malicious
| WebExtensions!" argument (one of many!) I keep seeing in the
| Signal community for not implementing a proper web client
| (along with "but the PKI might be compromised and the
| JavaScript might be backdoored!"). They might be running a
| compromised OS too! Hell, their phone might have an entire ARM-
| based listening device inside the case. Security is always
| relative, and if someone reading "Use Signal, it's secure"
| doesn't understand that then they have bigger problems.
| sschueller wrote:
| I use this
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.dslul.openboard.inputmet...
|
| It isn't as good a others but at least it doesn't spy on you.
| 05 wrote:
| Seems more like a core OS issue than something Signal specific.
| iOS at least disables keyboard apps' network access by default,
| Android users seem to be screwed (as usual) unless they root
| the phone and install a firewall..
| orestarod wrote:
| Why do you say that. You are free to block any app on Android
| from accessing the internet, including keyboards, from the
| standard Android settings, no root or anything.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I think the issue is that Naomi is seeking official
| recognition of this system flaw but signal and moxie have not
| done so in response to her questions. I think "signal creator
| acknowledges that signal is not always secure" would be a
| headline that would help non technical people understand this
| system flaw.
| izacus wrote:
| It would also be grossly misleading and would put
| responsibility on Signal for components they have no
| business dealing with.
|
| Non-technical people would just read "Signal isn't secure"
| which is BS.
|
| iMessage isn't insecure either because you can connect a
| compromised USB keyboard to your Mac.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Exactly. I made (an open source) keyboard app a while ago that
| logs everything you type into a file.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.abifog.lok...
|
| Now my variant doesnt require internet access but some forks
| added "email keylogs to someone else" functionality.
|
| If someone manages to install and enable that on a target's
| phone, then it renders Signal and all other secure apps
| useless.
| izacus wrote:
| > If someone manages to install and enable that on a target's
| phone, then it renders Signal and all other secure apps
| useless.
|
| So does installing a compromised USB keyboard or a broken
| Logitech receiver. Why is that Signal's problem?
| IceWreck wrote:
| Because what GP points out is that in China everyone uses
| Baidu's third party keyboard. So Signal alone enough is not
| enough to ensure safe communication.
|
| This isnt a signal problem, its an android problem. I don't
| see how Signal could fix it, short of developing their own
| keyboard for their own app only but that would break a
| shitton of android accessibility features.
| izacus wrote:
| I think this is the core part where Signal decides what it
| wants to really be:
|
| * A messenger for activists, whistleblowers and other people
| that might be hunted by governments.
|
| * A decently secure messenger for everyone that provides an
| alternative to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other major
| corporate platforms.
|
| Because in these cases those two goals are opposite - IME is
| the most fundamental way how people interact with a messaging
| app. Switchin it is very hard because users have muscle memory
| connected to an IME and IMEs vary wildly in their language
| support and typing experience,. Messing with it (blocking it,
| forcing people to use another) will make a lot of people refuse
| to use the app. Not messing with it will make activists mad and
| result in bunch of "Signal is crap for proper security" posts.
|
| They need to choose. And sitting on both goalposts is the worst
| option here.
| detaro wrote:
| It doesn't have to force it. One of the proposed things has
| been making one of the on-boarding prompts give on-boarding
| prompts and point this out to the user - giving people who
| expect security of the first level based on how it has been
| presented to them the chance to realize they don't have it,
| and react.
| franga2000 wrote:
| It basically boils down to "your fancy lock doesn't fix the
| person-sized hole in my door". She seems to be expecting the
| Signal devs to develop an entire Chinese IME. Why should the
| lock company have to also make doors?
|
| Somewhere in the middle there she gets rather rude and starts
| accusing Signal devs of only caring about western users, as if
| there is a double standard. But there isn't: Signal doesn't
| provide a keyboard and keylogger detector for "western" users,
| why should it for Chinese?
| medecau wrote:
| IME - Input Method Editor
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Thank you! I have edited my post to add that.
| jancsika wrote:
| > I'm curious what the Hacker News crowd thinks of the IME*
| issue Naomi Wu has been trying to highlight lately.
|
| I think your comment should be consistently reposted on every
| single story related to Signal until they address this problem.
| busrf wrote:
| This is interesting, thanks for posting it.
|
| On the one hand, there is nothing on a technical level that
| Signal can do beyond what they've already done (linked in the
| twitter thread, set a flag that the installed keyboard may or
| may not respect). Anything beyond this is venturing into
| providing a general computer security 101 course and/or telling
| you how your mobile OS permissions work and/or region-specific
| opsec advice. I'm not sure they're equipped to do that or if
| they are even the right people to do that. They are a small
| team and they most definitely do not have somebody embedded in
| activism of any kind in the sinosphere, which I think is what
| it would take for them to actually responsibly give region
| specific opsec advice.
|
| On the other hand, I think it may be quite reasonable for them
| to say, very clearly, "use your system IME to input text". It's
| a very simple guideline with reasoning that I think can be
| understood easily by most people. They have a privacy/security
| section in the FAQ on their site; something like this could go
| there.
|
| But of course if they did that, they would have to keep
| managing expectations around how much to delve into the
| security model of every platform they run on, and how many
| resources they can reasonably dedicate to usage scenario
| support. Their mission and product and user requirements are
| really unique; I'd love to be a fly on the wall of a signal
| product management meeting lol
|
| I'm basic and use my iOS system IME to text in chinese, but
| also I'm a basic overseas chinese. Maybe I'll have to survey my
| friends and family for what keyboard they use...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Yes. I think at this point Naomi is seeking official
| recognition from Moxie that this is a flaw in the overall
| system. I think she feels that she has been unfairly ignored,
| and she also knows people who she believes have been
| kidnapped by her government because of this flaw. So it's a
| very real and visceral issue for her and she is also a very
| high profile person so it seems wrong to ignore her. I
| believe her recent Twitter frustrations started when she
| noticed that Signal responded to questions from some very
| small Twitter account, but still hasn't responded directly to
| her.
|
| If, due to factors outside of their control, Signal cannot
| actually guarantee that your conversations are secure, it may
| be irresponsible of Signal not to make that more clear. But
| one can understand why they might prefer to avoid the
| issue...
| vital_beach wrote:
| I'm in the unique position to interact with clients from the 3
| digit to 8 digit ARR range, and it's so hard managing
| expectations across the group. All of these clients are massive,
| it's just a matter of what stage of adoption they're at with us.
| More 0s = all hands on deck, two 0s = "I can't give you any kind
| of timeline and may never be able to". All of this is to say
| please be kind, it's generally not up to the people you're
| yelling at, even if you're paying for it.
| highmastdon wrote:
| People say: man up. I'd say let's ignore the toxicity and go
| about our way. If someone wants to be an asshole, fine by me, but
| I'm not letting them take my fun out of my life. Therefore it
| would be good to have a way of hiding stuff that you don't feel
| like putting your energy into. Sort of shadow banning but only
| for yourself.
| medecau wrote:
| mute/block button?
|
| of course the implementation varies from product to product but
| is usually not obvious to the other party
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| It's difficult if you're seen as an authority figure, if you're
| one writing the code. Ignoring assholes could well simply
| inflame them further when they see other people receiving
| official replies, when their 42 posts have garnered nothing.
|
| I certainly brush off the seething wastrels when they come my
| way, but I'm merely another member of the community and I have
| the luxury of ignoring them, flagging them, and letting someone
| else decide whether they should be kicked out or not. I really
| can imagine that if you cannot ignore these people (or have to
| add five people to your /ignore, every single day) it will wear
| most people down to a nub after a few years.
| diragon wrote:
| "Man up" is great advice, but it's from an era where socialized
| interaction happened mostly in person. In those times, the
| consequence of insults was almost always physical violence,
| sometimes to the death in a formally arranged way.
|
| Perhaps somebody needs to invent that device that allows us to
| punch people over the internet.
| highmastdon wrote:
| Yes and that makes me think. What if we could un-anonimise
| the internet for things like these. I think the anonymity of
| the internet makes trolls, toxicity, bullying and such much
| easier. Where if it's your actual name that's next to it, it
| influences your real life as well. Recruiters will search for
| your name on the internet and if you come off as a toxic
| bully, it'll have consequences
| raxxorrax wrote:
| nah.
|
| There is empirical evidence otherwise, e.g. toxicity on
| Facebook. On the contrary, it gets far more personal if
| people know each other too and petty infighting dominates.
|
| Recruiters looking up your name on the internet is awful.
| It got better, but a few years ago they haunted you to your
| last refuges.
|
| Some people have their real names attached to their
| profiles, but I assume most prefer it the other way around.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| You have my fork!
| meetups323 wrote:
| I maintain a very popular piece of FOSS software as my full time
| job (you've all heard of it, many of you use it).
|
| Easily the worst part of the job is toxic users who hop on to
| issues demanding you implement them immediately and belittling
| your planning ability. Worse when you were planning on
| implementing it soon anyways, but now if you do it's "rewarding"
| their behaviour (in their eyes at least), and they become
| invigorated to go and spread their toxicity even further.
| Alternatively, you can hold off on implementing it until things
| cool down, but then all the nice users who have been patiently
| waiting get screwed.
|
| I'm forever grateful that I actually get FAANG salary to do this
| -- I wouldn't keep it up if I was getting the little-to-noting
| many FOSS contributors get.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Is this Moxie? If so I just want to say I love your blog and
| your thoughts and wish I could read more. :)
| eplanit wrote:
| "I maintain a very popular piece of FOSS software as my full
| time job (you've all heard of it, many of you use it)."
|
| Then name it, please.
| dwhitney wrote:
| FYI - you're one of the toxic users he's talking about
| eplanit wrote:
| If that's toxic (I said please, in fact), then the OP is
| too thin-skinned. Why signal that you work on a popular
| software title (you've all heard of it...geez), but then
| not name it?
|
| I'll assume he worked on Hannah Montana Linux[1] /s
|
| [1] http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/
| pashsdk27 wrote:
| Maybe the OP wishes to be anonymous. Maybe you
| interpreted the message incorrectly. :))
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Do some people not recognize when they're being rude?
|
| Do they think they're just being funny or something and
| aren't aware of the inherent rudeness in their comments?
|
| Maybe people work in a bro type culture and this kind of
| thing is acceptable and so they don't realize ther
| behavior is not viewed favorably by the wider world?
|
| Just curious. It's interesting phenomenon.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| I strongly hold the belief that, for the long run, the success
| of open source depends on establishing a profitable business
| model that rewards people like yourself who put their hearts
| into it.
| throwaway29399 wrote:
| I maintain or contribute to various FLOSS projects. The day
| FLOSS becomes profit-driven is the day I stop contributing.
|
| Profit and user freedom are two different priorities.
| Sometimes they are compatible, more often they are not.
| arp242 wrote:
| There is a difference between "profit-driven" and "spending
| untold hours getting very little in return while some of
| the people using this are literally some of the richest
| companies and people in the world".
|
| I am not at all money-driven; my current income is about
| EUR600/month, which is not much but a sustainable where I
| currently live, and in return I can work on open
| source/free software as I see fit. It's not what everyone
| would choose, but for me, it's good trade-off, right now
| away.
|
| I wrote a bit about this over here last week[1], but I
| think we really need to think more about money instead of
| treating it as the devil.
|
| [1]: https://lobste.rs/s/r5qaap/introducing_preql_new_relat
| ional#...
| taoufix wrote:
| I made a small app for my specific need and decided to share it
| with people with same interests. It stated getting traction and
| more and more users started using it. At first I was exited to
| read the 5 stars reviews and thanks. When the app got even more
| traction and reached +30K users, the reviews and direct emails
| became toxic and insulting: why doesn't the app do this? why is
| it free? are you selling our data? (the app is free w/o ads and
| with Zero permissions not even network. It's just a small
| sqlite database with a UI).
|
| The I read the Flappy Bird's creator story[1], I decided to
| stop reading the reviews all together, it's just too much
| stress. I'm sure a lot of users (the silent majority)
| appreciate and find the app useful.
|
| [1] https://businessideaslab.com/flappy-bird-story-dong-nguyen/
| mk89 wrote:
| I think that this is a bit different from what the parent
| comment was about.
|
| > why doesn't the app do this? why is it free? are you
| selling our data?
|
| These are all valid questions, in my opinion, especially the
| last two. Some of them could easily be answered in a FAQ
| section.
|
| And no, I almost never leave reviews, so I am not one of
| "them".
| secfirstmd wrote:
| Yeh reading app reviews is toxic. We build a free open
| source/creative commons app (https://www.secfirst.org) to
| help people learn about digital and physical security. It's
| one of the biggest guides ever written about the topic,
| something like about 160k words in 40 different topics
| translated into 7 main languages. All done with volunteers.
|
| We regularly get people giving us one star reviews and
| telling us the app is shit because it's not translated into
| Japanese, Korean, Dutch or Norwegian etc. I mean we'd love
| to translate it into all these languages but Norway isn't
| exactly the world's most dangerous country so not our main
| priority. We try to reach out to _every_ user who contacts
| us no matter what and sometimes we send people the details
| about how easily to help is translate it if they can - but
| the usual answer is abrupt, unhelpful and dismissive.
| [deleted]
| kemitchell wrote:
| Reading your post reminded me of a common social conundrum
| among lawyers who negotiate deals.
|
| Sometimes I will run into a businessperson, on our side or the
| other side, who loves to send follow-up messages, or even makes
| calls, demanding progress reports or turnaround times. Almost
| never do these messages have even the slightest effect on how
| quickly I get to a job, or finish it. I have a to-do list, a
| calendar, and a list of priorities. Their content-free follow-
| ups affect none of them, unless it includes genuinely new and
| relevant information. Very, very, very rarely does an ongoing
| deal slip my mind.
|
| It may be that I was right in the middle of finishing a turn of
| an agreement when they interrupted me. I had no way to know
| their message wasn't reporting some important new development
| in the negotiation. Having stopped to check, I've broken focus,
| and will probably take longer to finish what I was doing.
|
| But from their point of view, they're reinforced every time
| they send a low-effort follow-up message and see progress a
| relatively short time later, whether the two were causally
| related or not. Even if the message actually _delayed_
| delivery. This leads to yet more follow-up messages, both later
| in the current deal and in other deals. It leads to
| disappointed expectations when mashing the lawyer 's button
| doesn't make them scribble faster.
|
| Anecdotally, I see this most from people with strong sales
| backgrounds. Either way, I almost always find it worthwhile to
| cut it off preemptively, by making it very clear that I'm an
| organized professional, and not a rower in their galley. I have
| threatened to fire a client for putting me in their CRM for
| automated follow-ups. Things got much better, for both of us,
| from there.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| If you published a roadmap would it solve the problem?
| newsbinator wrote:
| I was thinking the same. Doesn't even have to be a roadmap,
| even merely opening an issue for a feature long in advance,
| saying "comments about x go here, as we intend to implement
| it at some point in the future".
| fwip wrote:
| Those kind of issues, while useful for well-behaved people,
| are often magnets for the kinds of people who yell "look!
| People have been asking for this for 201X, why are you
| ignoring your users!"
| vntok wrote:
| The tone might be off but it seems like a perfectly valid
| question.
|
| If most users have wanted X for years but the developer
| instead spent her energy implementing Y and Z that noone
| else cares about, that begs questions like how are
| features prioritized ("based on what I want to work on"
| is a valid answer but needs to be explicit) and who the
| software is for ("me but sure you guys can tag along and
| use it for free I guess" is a valid answer but needs to
| be explicit)
|
| Maybe some of those users who have wanted feature X for
| years would be happy to pool some cash to make it happen
| if given the opportunity.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| We do exactly that with our customers. Here is our
| roadmap but if you must have feature x you can pay us to
| prioritise it and get it sooner. It's a great way to
| filter wants from needs.
| vntok wrote:
| Yes it's the decent thing to do.
|
| Building a tool that works juuuuust enough for people to
| set it up and start relying on it, and then never ever
| fixing the most salient and impactful bugs because
| "people aren't entitled anything after all" is just
| wrong.
|
| It would be much more honest to state up front that said
| tool should not be relied on for any use beyond one's
| hobby, that it will not be supported, and that the whole
| package is just "up there" for anyone interested, without
| any guarantee. And no, having that written in the default
| LICENSE file is not sufficient.
| f1refly wrote:
| Well, it's sometimes valid criticism. Have you ever
| checked out the gtk file picker ticket from 2004?
| mmmrk wrote:
| If you ever wonder why GNOME devs seem so hardnosed on
| issue trackers, just read comments by people demanding
| that they implement things users have been wanting for
| years :)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Well, when instead of fixing decades old bugs they decide
| to instead remove features people used because they don't
| want to maintain them and add features nobody asked for
| because they were fun to work on, what do you expect
| people to say?
| mmmrk wrote:
| 1. Nothing, because the maintainers have the last say
| because it's their time and they don't owe anyone
| anything
|
| 2. "Aight I step up to maintain the feature"
|
| I seriously don't understand the expectant attitude of
| some users. You get what you pay for.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| That's fine, then don't ever ask me to use your product
| or pretend like it is a serious tool.
|
| I find it funny how often FOSS advocates extoll the
| virtues of FOSS, only to turn around and silence
| complaint with statements like "what do you want for
| free?".
| mmmrk wrote:
| I don't see GNOME devs going around asking people to use
| it? And you can do what you want on a piece of software
| and still have it be a "serious tool". I don't see a
| contradiction.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Would it be okay to explain why other issues have taken
| priority and will likely take priority for the near
| future?
|
| It doesn't hurt to write down the thought process. Of
| course some people can't be appeased and no reasonable
| explanation will be sufficient.
| intended wrote:
| I cant help but laugh, since this is very likely the kind of
| things he fields, but is also totally natural for techies to
| suggest.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I meant it more as a solution to people thinking their bad
| behaviour is being validated.
| prox wrote:
| Nope, it's a culture problem. Everywhere were stuff is being
| made, you get what I call the proverbial twelve year old.
| These are emotional immature people who are unable to
| emphatically imagine that there is a person on the other side
| donating his time to create something that is useful.
|
| They don't see their own toxicity. If they see the roadmap
| and their desired feature X isn't there, there will just be
| screaming about that.
| Markoff wrote:
| one would think Signal can hire bunch of devs full time
| with 50M donation to avoid such lame excuses
| rorykoehler wrote:
| At which point you ask for a substantial sum of money to
| prioritise their feature (and hopefully they go away).
| newswasboring wrote:
| This is actually not a bad idea. There are already so
| many sponsor project like github sponsors, brave tips
| etc. Something like patreon can be used to solve this.
| You buy into a higher tier and that gives you 1 feature
| request.
|
| Edit: Or something like kickstarter, if enough people
| pledge for the issue it gets priority on roadmap.
|
| Edit: I looked up if software is being developed on
| patreon and... so much NSFW stuff.
| syrgian wrote:
| If you are willing to share, when you say that you get FAANG
| salary you mean FAANG-level or actually from one of those
| companies?
| sputr wrote:
| Honest question: why don't you ban such users?
|
| I used to be in non-main-stream politics, and we had the same
| problem - people coming into the group who were toxic and made
| our lives hell. It took me far too long to realize the
| following:
|
| Freedom of speech does not mean that individuals and private
| groups have to tolerate asshats. It's a fallacy that many,
| many, far too many, progressive groups and movements fall into:
| this feeling that we "owe" people to hear them out. And that we
| "owe" people to let them sit at the same table with us.
|
| You are not the government or a hegemonic group/platform. You
| don't owe toxic people anything. Ban them, without remorse.
| Have a rule for it - obviously - but for the most toxic
| behaviors don't even give them a warning. What do you have to
| lose - a few asshats out of hundreds, thousands or tens of
| thousands of users?
|
| And no, it's not censorship. Not everything is censorship.
| Telling idiots and asshats to STFU or GTFO isn't censorship.
| And a lot, and I do mean A LOT of problems that online
| communities and even real world politics have is connected to
| just not telling people the simple word of "NO".
| mulmen wrote:
| Thanks for what you do.
| sbinthree wrote:
| It's the same issue with support as a software company. We have
| companies paying us $10k a month who "want us to consider
| something for future roadmap if other customers would also
| value it" and free users who "demand we fix (expected and
| documented behavior) IMMEDIATELY". The problem isn't open
| source, it's free.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The enterprise guy is at the other end also writing software
| professionally so he understands if you can't build to his
| use-case.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| Isn't it a bit more subtle than that? The business issues
| with free users are well documented, but this is a bit
| different. What we're really taking about is GitHub - you
| don't have the same volume of low effort comments demanding
| features on pre-GitHub collaboration tools like making lists,
| IRC or even using the email address associated with commits.
|
| I'd suggest that it's more a combination of: the volume of
| users that now have access to the world's most popular git
| hosting service is vast compared to the number of people who
| can usefully contribute, the ease with which maintainers can
| be contacted through it and the "friendly by default" stance
| that most maintainers take on a platform where your stars are
| more valuable in the real world than your CV.
| eloisant wrote:
| Free users don't care if you tell them to fuck off.
|
| The company paying $10k can't change vendor overnight so it's
| in their best interest to stay in good terms. Also in his
| company, the guy you're talking to don't want to be "the guy
| who pissed off that key vendor".
| studius wrote:
| > Free users don't care if you tell them to fuck off.
|
| You don't have to and shouldn't respond in any specific
| time period. Even if you're the sole maintainer of a
| critical project and you imagine the world wants your head,
| the world has to wait sometimes.
|
| However, users may abandon projects where support tickets
| go untended, maybe even writing a post about it in the
| process[1], so try to respond when you can, unless you've
| abandoned the project.
|
| As a representative for a FOSS project or even a bystander
| commenting on a PR, respond professionally and succinctly.
|
| If you shouldn't accept a PR, don't.
|
| If it's a request that seems hostile to the project, and
| you have time, either leave it for a little while to cool
| off, try to serve it with professionalism without getting
| off-topic, or at worst close it.
|
| If needed, add a "code of conduct"[2] so that you can
| "encourage a pleasant and productive environment by
| responding to disruptive behavior in a fast, fair way"[3].
| Note that instituting one before it's needed, while seeming
| proactive, may put off some users.
|
| If you screw-up, apologize briefly, then fix it or move on.
|
| [1]- https://medium.com/free-code-camp/why-im-not-using-
| your-gith...
|
| [2]- https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-
| team@latest/github/build...
|
| [3]- https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-
| team@latest/github/build...
| bob_roboto wrote:
| I second that. Once a vendor becomes important enough I
| even stop thinking of it as a vendor and rather as a
| partner that you interact with as if it was part of your
| own organisation. I am not amused when members of my team
| are rude to a vendor and jeopardise a relationship that
| took a long time to build. Even when you pay six figures a
| month, you can still get preferential treatment compared to
| other customers in the same tier when it comes to influence
| over the roadmap if you actively foster the relationship.
| a_bonobo wrote:
| It's like when you give your old stuff away on
| Facebook/craigslist/gumtree - when it's free, you'll get very
| entitled people messaging you whether you can deliver it to
| them, or don't keep agreements. Asking for $5 removes 99% of
| the trouble.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| For this exact reason I've cut almost all of my tech support
| for friends and family. It seems that what goes around comes
| around, and my time was worth what they paid for.
| Closi wrote:
| 100% Agree.
|
| And this can happen on HackerNews too! Here is a thread in
| the last week where 50% of posters from HackerNews were
| berating Microsoft for open sourcing all of VS code, but not
| open sourcing one of their free language servers (calling
| them selfish, anti open-source e.t.c.). I think this is the
| exact same sentiment.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25719045
|
| So Microsoft open sourced all of VS Code, but didn't want to
| open source the Pylance language server (a separate product
| which is installed separately as an extension) which they
| provide as a free (as in beer). This is because Pylance is
| also used within their other (charged) offerings such as full
| Visual Studio and is a differentiator from their competition
| in the premium space. Also they have hinted that it includes
| some proprietary secret-sauce that they don't want to make
| public.
|
| Bear in mind that Microsoft is making VS Code free and open
| source... here are some quotes from the thread:
|
| > I find it what they are doing to be dishonest [...] the
| consequences of their actions is that people who dislike them
| will talk bad about them.
|
| > [Microsoft] have the right to be two-faced about their open
| source policy, I have the right to speak about how I think
| it's bad to do so.
|
| > They should please stop acting like they are the second
| coming of christ for open source [...] they are misleading
| their users.
|
| > Microsoft proved that they only care for OSS [...] because
| it enables them to spy on coders and their code to develop
| proprietary and closed sourced spins for software development
| product. The OSS community got served.
|
| > Microsoft always does this, they fool people by pretending
| they're in favor of open source or make something free but
| it's just a trick used to bait and switch people into the
| proprietary anticompetitive Microsoft ecosystem.
|
| > Seems like Microsoft is back to pissing in the public pool.
| depressedpanda wrote:
| To be fair, Microsoft has plenty of bad rep, stemming from
| decades of abusive behavior, to recover from.
|
| Also, a megacorp is not a person (no matter what the law
| may say).
|
| Being abusive towards individual developers should not be
| tolerated, but leveraging fair or unfair criticism towards
| an amoral entity? Eh, whatever floats your boat.
| Closi wrote:
| Signal isn't an individual developer, so what about the
| sort of comments highlighted in the original article?
|
| Or is it just 'be nice to developers in small companies,
| but you can say anything to developers in big companies'?
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Microsoft declared war on free software first, pursued
| that war for many years, and never made amends.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| > consider something for future roadmap if other customers
| would also value it
|
| Personally I wouldn't want a custom feature just for me.
| Because I know it'd likely be poorly supported and sometimes
| break. Because that's how it's been when I've been on the
| other side of that.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| You almost need something like a shadow ban for users like
| that. Or to try and outsource your ticket moderation to the
| community.
| taurath wrote:
| That's sort of dispersing the problem onto some other poor
| sap or group of saps. Businesses do need to set boundaries
| and it's terrifying to do so because "the mob" can suddenly
| decide against having goodwill. Best bet is to set
| standards very early and firmly like you'd treat a child -
| EG "we do NOT put our hand in the fire, but you can do just
| about anything else" and "we do NOT adjust our roadmap to
| people who yell the loudest but we are happy to have a
| conversation over why it's important"
| foepys wrote:
| I think part of the problem is the expectation of
| instantaneous gratification today. Individuals can get any
| item they want shipped premium to their door step the next
| day nearly everywhere. So why shouldn't software features be
| the same? The problem with "free" is that many, many more
| people can use the software.
|
| Large corporations (which the $10k/mo user probably is) on
| the other hand calculate updates in months or even years.
|
| My company also has a very large customer that asks us to
| implement something "whenever possible" and if we need 2
| years they are just happy we did it. Why? Because they have a
| long update cycle. It's not really important if it's in the
| next release because they might not even install that but
| wait for the release after that.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| As somebody who usually works in those big support contact
| enterprises, I often find myself incredibly frustrated by
| the open source projects my employers pay for. You often
| see these companies that take the enterprise approach to
| support contracts, taking the open source approach to
| fixing issues. As in, if you want something fixed, you'll
| be lucky if it ever happens.
|
| The issue that undermines you're (mostly correct)
| observations on slowing moving enterprise, is that they'll
| often adopt technology before knowing if it will even work
| the way they want it to. So when it comes time to
| implement, you'll find things that don't work as described,
| often accompanied by some years old issue on their tracker
| which basically say "we might get around to that some
| time".
|
| "Enterprise grade" proprietary software is usually terrible
| anyway, so still prefer open source for the reason that I'm
| able to write my own patches for it (which I often do). But
| I find the open source attitude toward fixing issues, in
| software that your customers are actually paying a lot of
| money for, incredibly frustrating. There's a particular
| maintainer on a project that I use a lot at work, and
| anytime I see his avatar on the forum while trying to debug
| an issue, I instantaneously know that my whole day is about
| to be ruined by some of the least helpful advice you could
| possibly imagine.
| echelon wrote:
| > I maintain a very popular piece of FOSS software as my full
| time job (you've all heard of it, many of you use it).
|
| If it's Firefox, thank you from the bottom of my heart. This
| piece of software is essential in keeping the web free and
| open. Fight the good fight. Don't let the trolls and the
| selfish users dissuade you.
|
| Regardless of what you work on, thank you. We should all be
| more appreciative.
| totalZero wrote:
| > "rewarding" their behaviour (in their eyes at least)
|
| You must, in your own mind, depersonalize the requests and
| translate them into polite-speak. You know better than I that
| people who complain about software are usually unaware and
| frustrated. If they knew the whole picture and hadn't just
| encountered limitations in the software, maybe they'd be nicer.
|
| The risk is that your resentment could lead to wanting to delay
| an improvement just because you want to disincentivize toxic
| demands.
| everdrive wrote:
| A bit of a tangent, but when it comes to consumable media I
| often hear the same lament: "X is great," (where X is a band, a
| TV show, a video game, etc.) "but it's got a toxic community."
|
| I'm not sure how many of these things really have a toxic
| community per se. Instead I just wonder if you could more
| correctly say they have a "large community on the internet,
| which is usually caustic no matter the topic at hand."
| arp242 wrote:
| I've definitely noticed there is a difference between
| communities. Of course, no community is "perfect", and a lot
| of times conflicts happen just because someone having a bad
| day or lost their temper. That's okay, part of the human
| condition and all of that.
|
| What matters is 1) how you deal with things when someone is
| having a bad day (things can either cool down or escalate),
| and 2) how you deal with people who seem to be having bad
| days almost every day (i.e. assholes).
|
| If you don't do _anything_ then all communities will
| gravitate towards toxicity; simply because non-assholes will
| get tired of assholes and will stop coming back, and then all
| you 're left with are ... assholes, and people with above-
| average patience.
| oefrha wrote:
| I have a slightly different experience. I find aggressive users
| very easy to ignore. What does drive me mad is that some non-
| hostile users put zero value on my time.
|
| I've painstakingly implemented debug logs and carefully
| prepared issue templates yet I still get these "does not work
| (EOM)" (effectively) issues. In the back-and-forth that ensues,
| sometimes it takes three or four attempts of asking the same
| question to get what I need, possibly separated by a day each
| time. Sometimes they'll eventually realize what they missed was
| documented in the first place and would have been obvious if
| they followed the issue template to begin with.
|
| Then there are users expecting me to help with an incomplete,
| out of context code snippet, or quite the opposite, with their
| 5k LoC repository, hoping I'd fish out the 50 or 5 lines that
| are actually relevant on my own.
|
| These users are not outright assholes, so it's somewhat harder
| to justify passive-aggressiveness against them. And they may
| have actual issues locked behind three or four back-and-forths.
|
| (For the record, I got maybe a total of $10 in donations from
| thousands of hours of FOSS work. Actually a high profile
| project I worked for did receive sponsorship, but nothing went
| into my pocket for obvious reasons.)
| Abhinav2000 wrote:
| > (For the record, I got maybe a total of $10 in donations
| from thousands of hours of FOSS work. Actually a high profile
| project I worked for did receive sponsorship, but nothing
| went into my pocket for obvious reasons.)
|
| Can you expand on the last bit? Is it common for sponsorship
| not to go to the actual developers working on the project and
| getting eaten by middle layers of bureaucracy?
| oefrha wrote:
| I never saw a dime and never looked into spending details,
| but to the best of my knowledge, sponsorship money largely
| went to hardware for infrastructure; then some went to
| sponsoring physical meetups, e.g. reimbursing travel
| expenses of team members who attended FOSDEM. It's not a
| lot of money so if everyone gets paid I suppose it would
| only be a token amount.
| Abhinav2000 wrote:
| Thanks!
| opportune wrote:
| I understand when writing paid software with support
| expectations/contracts, sometimes you have to engage with the
| teeth-pulling exercise that is "does not work". But why do
| you in FOSS? Can't you just close the ticket and say "not
| descriptive enough" and move on?
| bxnkL wrote:
| Depends on the project. If it is governed by bureaucrats
| and you do that too often, you'll be accused of "not being
| inclusive".
|
| The modern version of "Boxer the work horse should work
| harder".
| LoSboccacc wrote:
| this is extremely frustrating for the users.
|
| there's a game I used to play fairly often before updates
| simply broke it. like mission items were replaced with
| random fires floating in water. many users with the same
| issue reported it, and some like me even provided a save
| (which was never even downloaded)
|
| all such tickets were closed with "cannot reproduce"
|
| I'm not (their) tester, I don't have time to fully
| reproduce issues step by step, and I don't have access to a
| debug build anyway to figure out the bug trigger condition
|
| "does not work" is the best I can say here.
| joncampbelldev wrote:
| Was the game free? And did the people working on the game
| contribute a lot of their time to it for free?
|
| If not then I can see the reason for your frustration,
| however it is not the same as free software being worked
| on (at least partly) by volunteers receiving the same
| lack of effort (or in signal's case nastiness) in bug
| submissions.
| LoSboccacc wrote:
| paid
| StavrosK wrote:
| You can and I regularly close tickets for not following the
| template that says at the very top "tickets not following
| this template will be closed with no reply".
|
| It's even better if you can get a bot to automatically
| reply and close it.
| Tehnix wrote:
| I was thinking about how one could automate this when
| reading.
|
| Not a foolproof way, but add a string in your Issue
| Templates that is required to be there, e.g. <!--
| AUTOMATIC-CHECK -->.
|
| If this is not present in the issue, the GitHub action
| just closes the issue with a message to please fill in
| the template if they wish to create an issue.
|
| Doesn't catch nearly everything, but should get some and
| it's easy to set up. Could be interesting to go further
| with the idea and maybe check if each section contains
| text or something like this, hmm...
| StavrosK wrote:
| I've seen this in repos, I'm pretty sure there are bots
| who implement it. I'd guess it catches more than 90% of
| cases, especially if you put the string at the bottom of
| the template.
| oefrha wrote:
| You can. You can do anything, really, including not reading
| issue reports at all. But you set out to be helpful anyway,
| so it's about finding a cutoff where you don't want to help
| anymore. As I said, it's simply harder than ignoring
| assholes. (Plus you may get a bad rep.)
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| To do that, you need a healthy brutal self-respecting trait
| that I think most of us admire.
|
| The rest of us feel bad doing that, especially towards
| someone trying to use something we built ourselves that
| holds some measure of our own pride or even self-worth, it
| feels closer to obligation. So we waste our time trying to
| help the characters that deserve our help the least, and we
| learn to develop a resentful version of that trait over a
| period of decades.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It's a skill probably worth practicing.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Sounds like a good way for someone without coding skills
| to help a project, bug/message triage.
|
| But then, a good bug-reporting system should be able to
| do such filtering?
|
| I'm wondering if detecting abusive communications
| is/could be part of it, bit of ML seems like it would
| fit, even just some Bayesian filtering might do.
|
| One could also train an NN to recognise images of the app
| (or simpler: OCR|grep) and require a screenshot with any
| submission.
|
| But I guess automated triage mightn't be the best route.
| It seems very much a delicately balanced people problem.
| matz1 wrote:
| Like anything else, the more you do it the easier it
| gets. Its not going to be instant but you'll get used to
| it.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| The Syncthing project will often apply this trait and
| you're right - it's admirable as well as pragmatic.
| teekert wrote:
| Honestly sometimes the amount of things that you need to
| fill out just makes me use other software. I.e. kmail would
| never remember that I want my email threads expanded (this
| example is not real, the kmail devs were very helpful with
| minimal info in this case). Does this really require I hunt
| down all this info from all around the place? Sometimes I
| don't even know where to get the info.
|
| What helps immensely (and I saw this in the Geyser MC
| project), the software can produce a snippet with all info
| the devs want with one command, and it even exports to
| pastebin taking out sensitive info. If you paste such a
| link in their Discord it even makes an overview with syntax
| highlighting in the chat. That really helps a lot on my
| (bug reporter) side. And thus on the dev side.
| oefrha wrote:
| If you can't be bothered to copy a few version numbers
| when trying to get free support, kindly "use other
| software". People providing free support usually don't
| give a damn about your "taking your business elsewhere".
|
| Moreover,
|
| - People omit things they think are irrelevant, when they
| are.
|
| - I print all the relevant details when --debug is on, so
| people just need to copy that. Some people refuse to run
| that and insist on submitting "does not work".
| teekert wrote:
| I understand the -1, but you have to understand that to a
| user the choice is sometimes between:
|
| 1. Create crappy bug report and move on quickly to get
| things done or:
|
| 2. Do not create a bug report and move on immediately, to
| get things done
|
| I try to file whenever I can but when it's getting late
| and I want to go to bed I choose option 1 sometimes.
| Maybe I should choose option 2?
|
| For example, take the Nextcloud bug filing template on
| GitHub [0]. It's quite a long read but sure, worth the
| effort for free software I agree (Nextcloud is my
| favorite project, my life is in there, on my server)!
| However, I may not know exactly where these things are:
| ``` #### Web server error log <details>
| <summary>Web server error log</summary> ```
| Insert your webserver log here ```
| </details> #### Nextcloud log
| (data/nextcloud.log) <details>
| <summary>Nextcloud log</summary> ```
| Insert your Nextcloud log here ```
| </details> #### Browser log
| <details> <summary>Browser log</summary>
| ``` Insert your browser log here, this could
| for example include: a) The javascript
| console log b) The network log c) ...
| ```
|
| They also want config.php, contents of `sudo -u www-data
| php occ app:list`, ask you to do this:
| Login as admin user into your Nextcloud and access
| http://example.com/index.php/settings/integrity/failed
|
| Also all versions: ### Server
| configuration \*Operating system:\*
| \*Web server:\* \*Database:\*
| \*PHP version:\* \*Nextcloud version:\*
| (see Nextcloud admin page) \*Updated
| from an older Nextcloud/ownCloud or fresh install:\*
|
| Moreover, I'm quite afraid to put my domain names or even
| more sensitive info onto a public website if I just copy
| and paste. All I'm saying is that a big button that
| generates everything a dev needs with sensitive stuff
| redacted (which should be doable here and yes maybe I
| should make a PR for that) will make the experience a lot
| nicer for the reporter and the dev.
|
| As said, the Geyser MC project [1] can do exactly this
| and to me it is a game changer, the whole process was
| fast and pleasant and it was easy to test the automated
| builds they made in the branch based on my issue and
| report back in context on GitHub. Pasting the JSON their
| report feature generates into their Discord channel
| together with your question and their ability to just
| !docs/something point you to relevant docs with a small
| command feels like magic. I found the whole process
| inspirational.
|
| I love all FOSS devs. You are my heroes.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/issues/new?assig
| nees=&la...
|
| [1] https://github.com/GeyserMC/Geyser
| oefrha wrote:
| > I may not know exactly where these things are
|
| I've never judged any user poorly for saying "sorry, you
| asked for XXX, but I'm not sure where it is; here's my
| best effort bug report anyway". But "it's getting late"
| is not an excuse; it's getting later for people who need
| to read your crappy bug report. If you can't file a best
| effort report, don't.
| teekert wrote:
| Fair enough. It helps if at least the communciation is
| clear: Like "Fill it all or don't file" or "Try to file
| as much as you can".
|
| I really don't want to make it later for devs that give
| me so much. I'd be ok with: "Closed: Too little info"
| from a bot. I may decide to have another crack at it
| later when I have more time.
|
| Edit: Btw, I'm using software for fee but, I'm also beta-
| testing for free. It's not just a one-way street: "I
| derive value from a free product so I should never
| complain." Is that really true?
|
| I also invest time beta-testing (some times for products
| that make money on support or are open-core or are a
| gateway to paid software). Sure there are trolls, but
| there are also many users that make crappy reports that
| really want to help but just don't understand how (or why
| their report is a waste of everyone's time).
| joncampbelldev wrote:
| TFA and the person you're replying are not suggesting you
| can never complain (at least I don't think they are).
|
| There is a difference between not complaining vs raising
| issues constructively and valuing the maintainers time at
| least as much as you value your own time.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| KDE, and it's related apps, is an interesting one. For a
| long time you could get the version info from a menu item
| (Help>About or something) in any of the K apps. But then
| they changed it to give no version info ... then the bug
| report tool asks up front what version you're using ...
|
| One of the great things with Steam when I started running
| it on Linux was it's debugging info that gathered details
| of your system so you didn't have to.
| bmn__ wrote:
| > But then they changed it to give no version info
|
| This is still the case. Every KDE application has the
| menu entries _Help - About $APPNAME_ and _Help - About
| KDE_ which both show the relevant version numbers. I 'm
| overwhelmingly certain this feature never went away
| because I am on a rolling distro and upgraded through
| pretty much all versions and I figure I would have
| noticed the absence of these menu entries.
|
| > then the bug report tool asks up front what version
| you're using
|
| That's incorrect. The menu entry _Help - Report Bug..._
| opens a dialog with version information that has a button
| _Launch Bug Report Wizard_ which produces a link like
| e.g. `https://bugs.kde.org/enter_bug.cgi?format=guided&pr
| oduct=kon...`. Consequently in the bugtracker, the
| available information is already filled in.
|
| ----
|
| By the way, this post is an example for the bullshit
| asymmetry principle, and I resent that I had to spend a
| magnitude more time to correct your misinformation than
| it took you to produce it. Please be a better netizen.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Ok, I'm a 20y user of KDE, and a massive supporter. I
| still got the app version from apt (apt-get at the time)
| and framework version and still submitted bug reports -
| after registering and installing symbols to get decent
| backtraces. I even helped some people improve their forum
| posts by showing them how to get the relevant version
| numbers.
|
| There was a change, it was unhelpful. There were reasons,
| it was to do with changes in versioning on plasma
| frameworks - I could look up the details, but that isn't
| really important a few years hence.
|
| The jist of my comment is that structures within an
| application can help us non-programmers to make useful
| bug submissions; I cited 2 examples from my real life
| experience.
|
| Hopefully we agree on the basic premise I set out at
| least?
| teekert wrote:
| Yeah this was also the gist of my comment(s).
| saargrin wrote:
| you are a true hero :)
| philliphaydon wrote:
| > I've painstakingly implemented debug logs and carefully
| prepared issue templates yet I still get these "does not work
| (EOM)" (effectively) issues.
|
| I've gone to a few GitHub repos to report bugs only to be met
| with a novel length template and just left.
|
| Got no issue following a template to provide enough info to
| help solve a bug. But damn nothing worse than having a giant
| template with 20 questions.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Yeah, as much as parent complains about users not believing
| their time is valuable, my time is valuable too. I might
| not get back to you for a day or more _because I have other
| shit to do_.
|
| Generally speaking, I don't even bother to file bug reports
| anymore. 70% of the time my issue is already in your issue
| tracker, sometimes has been for years, and nothing has been
| done about it despite multiple users giving you the logs
| and whatnot you've asked for anyway. I could be all "me
| too" in a vein attempt to convince you you really should
| fix this thing, but you're just as likely to be annoyed by
| the complaint and further deprioritize it in your mind.
| imtringued wrote:
| You need a consistent process that you can point your users
| to. If they don't follow the process then politely explain
| that this will save time for both parties.
| oefrha wrote:
| I do. It's in the issue template, it's in the wiki (pointed
| to by issue template), and commonly seen error messages may
| even point to the relevant wiki page. People who don't care
| don't care.
| nousermane wrote:
| What you are describing is a perfectly typical (and expected)
| behavior for a user of a commercially-licensed library/server
| software.
|
| Many developers/admins use both FOSS and COTS, and feel the
| same low-effort interaction with upstream is okay in both
| cases. It's possible to educate a small number of your users
| (and to a some extent, you should try - for example your post
| here is a small step in that direction!), but that work is
| even lower-reward than answering those half-baked reports.
|
| To deal with low-effort, good-faith user reports, in COTS
| scenario, you'd hire a support/TAC person (a team,
| eventually). For a popular/accessible FOSS project, it is
| possible to have something similar on a volunteer basis:
|
| - set up IRC channel/slack/forum/mailing list for that;
|
| - display a prominent banner asking to "please try support
| forum first" on your bug submission page;
|
| - encourage people who want to contribute, but are not quite
| acing your codebase (yet), to hang around in the forum, help
| others.
| oefrha wrote:
| For very popular community projects, you can indeed solve
| the problems by throwing some manpower at it.
|
| However, there's this uncanny valley of somewhat popular,
| mostly solo maintainer projects where you get a steady
| stream of tickets (say one or two a week) yet there's no
| community to speak of, so everything falls onto you. It
| gets pretty annoying when you have a couple of these
| uncanny valley projects.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'd like an option to pay for prioritization, or pay outright
| for fixes. "Pay $100 to raise the priority of this issue X
| points" or something like that. Wouldn't be that hard to sell
| to my management when we're running up against a bug that
| affects us directly but perhaps doesn't have a huge impact on
| the community at large.
| sampo wrote:
| Could issue boards have volunteer community moderators, like
| Reddit and StackOverflow have?
| asiachick wrote:
| Maybe some one (who's good at writing) could make a
| closedforreasons.org and you could just put the link in and
| close the issue anytime someone posts such an issue.
|
| The site could try to be as polite as possible, explaining
| that your time isn't free. You're not there to cater to them
| or give them free labor. You are interested in bug reports
| but only if they contain a minimal complete repo and explain
| what minimal means, what complete means, and what repo means.
| There could be common links like closedforreasons.org/mcve
| closedforreasons.org/rude closedforreasons.org/nofreelabor
| closedforreasons.org/notyouremployee
| closedforreasons.org/outofscope
| closedforreasons.org/askingfortutorial etc...
|
| It will certainly piss some people off but maybe after a
| hopefully short while it would be seen as a gentle nudge by
| everyone that's been through it.
| exikyut wrote:
| This idea seems really interesting/promising. Here are
| three considerations I've thought of while thinking about
| how it might be implemented:
|
| 1. Many years ago (I only saw this here and there myself) a
| particular essay on Asking Smart Questions that would
| sometimes be linked whenever a suboptimal(ly worded) query
| was posted on a mailinglist or newsgroup or forum.
| http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
|
| It's quite the wall of text, because it's thorough. This
| produces an unfortunate effect: everyone who reads the
| article, digests it, and applies what it says "disappears"
| into the bigger picture of people who ask good questions;
| while people who don't have the time to read an issue
| template properly have their eyes glaze over and they add
| the URL to their mental list of "evil entitled webpages
| that demand too much of my time" and go on filling the
| internet with noise.
|
| TL;DR, a webpage this big: --> <-- works for just about
| everyone, but the "TLDR dropoff" is disillusioningly
| exponential beyond 0 bytes.
|
| 2. Taking as an example the common use case of people at
| the stage of learning about software development, there's a
| specific point in that learning process where _everything_
| seems possible... _too_ possible. Of course it 's possible
| to merge the Linux and Windows kernels. Of course it's
| possible to "just rewrite the codebase" to make the two
| mutually incompatibly designed components work together.
| One place that comes to mind that this sort of thing can
| concentrate is in game modding communities. It's not
| uncommon for there to be one or two "dev" type positions
| that are basically hacking it but have enough figured out
| to be competent, with a bunch of other users surrounding
| them that have no idea what they're doing and asking for
| the impossible. The net result is 500+ issues or forum
| posts, with only one or two ((ahem, achievable)) items
| slowly being acknowledged worked on, and the rest basically
| ignored for the sake of efficiency. The people that all
| have no idea what they're doing collectively think each
| others' ideas are great and if only the devs would actually
| listen to them the project might actually get somewhere.
|
| TL;DR, accessibility and intuitivity are hard.
|
| 3. There are thousands of devs out there in situations
| where they simply don't have time to answer every possible
| question. They may honestly have a massive workload and are
| doing triage on top of that, they might be maintaining a
| minimum-viable free user support forum for a commercial
| product, they might be a time-poor OSS contributor, they
| may have laziness issues :P (independent of any other
| points here), they may have communication issues, ...
|
| Again, there are thousands of devs out there who would be
| looking for a TLDR for their circumstance.
|
| A large proportion of those that choose to use a template-
| as-a-service website to optimize their time can only pick
| from the best possible option from the available choices,
| even where the choices that are available aren't an exact
| fit, because this is a common pattern when optimizing.
|
| Considering all of the above together, * _you are going_ *
| to have circumstances where angry users will feel snubbed
| by suboptimally-chosen messages, and the challenge with a
| site like this would be to figure out how to reduce the
| chances that...
|
| - almost-but-not-100% templates are chosen by time-poor
| devs for lack of better options, which will lead to poor
| reception of the site by end users
|
| - the message is too long or complicated for the user to
| read and act on (can the user read English easily? Do they
| have intellectual issues (autism and ADD are particularly
| common, and drastically underaddressed) that make it hard
| for them to break work down into chunks and focus on it?
| Does the text of the template help the user to feel
| supported so they can calm down and focus on the work they
| must now do? Etc)
|
| A couple of other points:
|
| - Analytics would definitely be a good idea, as would
| actually looking through the supplied referers (that you
| can actually open).
|
| - An "I didn't find anything appropriate for [URL]" option
| with a free-text "description" box would deliver a lot of
| helpful signal to further refine the options available
|
| - Editing everything on GitHub or similar would make it
| straightforward for people to simply just contribute direct
| improvements (the "nothing appropriate" submission box
| would not be public)
| geoduck14 wrote:
| .
| dmckeon wrote:
| Came across this explainer site the other day: Short, Self
| Contained, Correct (Compilable), Example http://sscce.org/
| andrewaylett wrote:
| Your wish is my command: https://closedbecause.xyz/
|
| Source here:
| https://github.com/andrewaylett/closedbecause.xyz,
| suggestions for reasons welcome, PRs even more welcome.
| worik wrote:
| Well done!!
| cyberfart wrote:
| A relevant post, "Open Source is Not About You" by Rich
| Hickey.
|
| https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7b
| a95...
| dastx wrote:
| How can you have a closed because site without being able
| to write a custom reason, with custom parameters, and on
| top of that, it doesn't make my coffee. Ridiculous.
|
| (Joke obvs. Sorry, couldn't resist.)
| _underfl0w_ wrote:
| It would be neatly recursive if someone opened an
| incomplete/nonsense PR on the repo for this site,
| prompting a link to the site itself.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Having robust reply templates is pretty key. If the
| templates explain why a thing was closed, there isn't much
| for the user to refute. They can always fume, but fuming on
| a closed ticket is like screaming into the void. Leveraging
| bots helps as well. e.g. if an issue template isn't
| followed, removed, or omits key required info the issue is
| closed by a bot and a reply is dropped letting the user
| know that their attempt to circumvent the requirements
| means they get no support.
| necrotic_comp wrote:
| I quite like the idea of using bots - that way there's no
| human making a decision, and since we've already
| internalized bots as cold and unfeeling, no one's
| feelings are hurt.
|
| IIRC, Gentoo does this, and my first patch was rejected
| multiple times. But because it was a bot that responded,I
| just felt like I had made a mistake, whereas with a human
| in the mix I probably would've asked a bunch of a
| questions and wasted her time and mine.
| gitgud wrote:
| Bots are good in moderation, but in some cases bots can
| annoy everyone involved...
|
| For example; the Angular repository has a "stale bot",
| which closes and locks the issue after a certain amount
| of time of inactivity.
|
| This sounds great on the surface, however it's insane in
| practice. The users constantly need to recreate duplicate
| issues, as the original issue is locked. Most of the
| duplicates are not linked, so maintainers can't determine
| which issues are duplicates. And it also increases the
| friction of users notifying that the issue is still
| occurring.
|
| Basically the result of "stale bots" is more duplicate
| issues and less engagement on old issues (as they're
| locked)
|
| Moral of the story, use bots in moderation
| andrew_ wrote:
| I manage a couple of high volume projects on a few open
| source initiatives. Stalebot is a _sanity saver_. Users
| are always welcome to trigger the bot to reopen. I won 't
| presume your experience on open source projects of a big
| size, but when you're dealing with dozens of new issues
| daily, and have hundreds of issues that go back five
| years with no activity, the stalebot saves the day.
|
| That speaks to another issue of open source - it's more
| common than not for a user to report an issue with no
| intention of following up, nor helping to triage (let
| alone contributing). Drive-by issues are noise and take
| precious time away from maintainers. There again,
| stalebot steps in to help. YMMV but my personal
| experience is that we don't get too many reopens, and we
| don't get too many duplicates from closed issues.
| switchbak wrote:
| Drive by issues are noise? So if I say "library X fails
| with this input" and don't follow up/triage/commit code,
| then this is a waste of time?
|
| I strongly disagree. Follow-up and collaboration are
| great, but someone taking the time to write a decent bug
| report is also valuable.
| detaro wrote:
| Presumably if it's a "decent bug report", _needing_
| additional feedback etc is less likely, and I assume GP
| is more talking about bug reports that are not really
| usable without further information. (Although even if you
| are careful at providing information, you can easily hit
| cases where more information is needed)
| emilecantin wrote:
| Great idea! I was looking for a side-project I could do in
| a week or so, so I just bought the domain and I'll build
| it.
| blargpls wrote:
| There's something similar to what you're proposing:
| https://idownvotedbecau.se/. It's tailored to Stack
| Overflow and the Stack Exchange network, but a lot of it
| overlaps with your proposal.
| aloisdg wrote:
| Came here to post that. It save a lot of time. It is more
| friendly and useful https://lmgtfy.app/. Far more
| relevant and less passive-aggressive.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| I think a problem is the social integration of sites like
| Github (I assume you have your project there). Traditionally
| low-effort questions were filtered out because many users
| didn't want to get into the trouble of contacting developers
| directly. Although it wasn't unheard of, but there was
| probably significantly less noise.
| YorickPeterse wrote:
| Over the years I've learned there's a class of users that
| simply don't read.
|
| Example: for GitLab we stopped using the repository that used
| to host the code for GitLab CE. All issues were closed, and
| when you create a new issue there's a template active that
| basically says "Don't create issues here". In spite of that,
| people still create issues here, and in some cases don't even
| bother changing that template.
| enriquto wrote:
| This sounds like an UI problem. Why can't the system just
| disable the issue creation button?
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Yeah. It's literally one checkbox lacking on GitHub.
|
| So (1) Scrape the old, closed issues to a static website,
| link it from README.md. (2) Disable _Issues_ in GitHub 's
| repo settings.
|
| Part 1 is somewhat complicated, because issue-to-issue
| linking.
| smeej wrote:
| I've spent more than a decade in customer/user-facing
| roles, and that class of users is actually "almost all of
| them."
|
| But it's worse than that. Most people do not have the
| reading fluency to read more than a few words in a sentence
| without getting frustrated and confused. If your work peers
| and social groups consist of the 3-5% of people who aren't
| in that category, it can be easy to forget that.
|
| Any time you can make something's function clear with one
| or two words and design, opt for that over explanation.
| crznp wrote:
| If "almost everyone" fails some expectation, is the
| problem with the people or the expectation?
|
| The average user might not be super invested in the
| application, they just know that something doesn't work,
| which is frustrating. If their only outlet for that is a
| bug report, the developers get overwhelmed with bad bug
| reports and users get the expectation that the developer
| is going to fix all their problems for them.
|
| If the outlet is a feedback form instead, maybe the user
| can feel listened to in a small way and move on. The
| developer doesn't have to sift through a bunch of issues,
| they can just follow up if there seem to be any hot-spots
| that are causing a lot of frustration.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| And this is why UI/UX experts are so valuable in software
| projects!
| areactnativedev wrote:
| Same feeling, the fact that one has to assume people will
| not take 5s to read and understand a message has nothing to
| do with the project being open-source & free or not.
|
| I feel that it must be even more annoying when you're
| offering free great work to these people. But I believe it
| to be a fact about all users (I include myself, though I'm
| trying to work on it).
| vidanay wrote:
| > I still get these "does not work (EOM)" (effectively)
| issues
|
| Over the last 20 years, I have received more than my fair
| share of bug reports just like this from well paid, trained,
| educated, internal engineers who's entire purpose is to
| support our software product.
|
| When I complain to management, I get "does not play well with
| others" type comments.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| Brian Fox had a great canned response to such people: he would
| reply "Please return your copy of Bash for a full refund"
| fn1 wrote:
| > Worse when you were planning on implementing it soon anyways,
| but now if you do it's "rewarding" their behaviour (in their
| eyes at least), and they become invigorated to go and spread
| their toxicity even further.
|
| No, please don't think like that.
|
| Implement what you see fit when you planned to do it and you
| can ignore this.
|
| 1. You don't know how "toxic" people really are. Some of them
| are nice, but just put no time/understanding into their
| internet communication. They write and forgot what they wrote a
| minute later.
|
| 2. If they really need to learn something, talking to them
| politely "Thanks for the suggestion but...", "Could you
| please..." etc. will help over time. Not doing something in the
| fear of rewarding their behaviour is way too complex to
| understand.
| folkrav wrote:
| > 1. You don't know how "toxic" people really are. Some of
| them are nice, but just put no time/understanding into their
| internet communication. They write and forgot what they wrote
| a minute later.
|
| A bit of a cop-out, IMHO. That's also true of real-life
| interactions: most people you'll talk to, you'll forget about
| 5 minutes later. I honestly don't remember if I said anything
| in particular to the corner store lady just yesterday, and I
| see her every other day. If I was a jerk to her, putting in
| thought or not, I was the asshole, final. Seriously, it's not
| that hard not being an asshole, just... don't be.
|
| > 2. If they really need to learn something, talking to them
| politely "Thanks for the suggestion but...", "Could you
| please..." etc. will help over time. Not doing something in
| the fear of rewarding their behaviour is way too complex to
| understand.
|
| Sure, treat people with respect. However, I'm not convinced
| it would be that guy's responsibility not to hurt someone's
| feelings, especially when that person was a jerk in the first
| place. I don't think we owe respect to someone who was
| disrespectful. The whole point is that dealing with it is a
| chore; having to take the time to educate people on their own
| behavior doesn't make it easier. I just think it shouldn't be
| _expected_ of maintainers to have to deal with it at all:
| simply closing the issue or ignoring the request should be
| seen as a fine response to asshole behavior.
| jlg23 wrote:
| My $0.02 advice for dealing with toxic FOSS users: "You already
| got more than you paid for, closing this ticket for violation
| of basic human interaction protocols."
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| On the flip side though, lots of FOSS project maintainers want
| a large user base for fame and glory but also want to omit
| support for that large user base to instead pursue whatever
| interests the maintainers, as opposed to what is evidently
| needed, all under the disingenuous guise that not being
| directly compensated entitles any arbitrary planning policy.
|
| While users have no justification for being rude or insulting,
| they absolutely do have justification to be frustrated if you
| want to have your cake (compensation in the form of notoriety
| due in large part to the willingness of others to actually use
| your FOSS project) and eat it too (not prioritize plans, bug
| fixes, or features in accordance with what that user base needs
| & requests, over and above what you prefer).
|
| I'm not saying this applies to you specifically, but it does
| apply to many FOSS projects, and arguments of infinite
| entitlement to strand users who bring your project notoriety
| because the compensation isn't in currency format are totally
| specious and deserve to be met with (polite) frustrated
| pushback.
| jhasse wrote:
| > not being directly compensated entitles any arbitrary
| planning policy.
|
| It does though IMHO.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| You present no argument at all. FOSS is FOSS. Creator or
| current maintainer owes you and other users exactly nothing.
| They are putting their stuff up for you to use if you see
| value in it. You can report bugs and make feature requests,
| but no one is under any obligation to even read your bug
| reports or feature requests. If you want your specific thing
| fixed right now then do it yourself.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Grandparent comment is " _I maintain a very popular piece
| of FOSS software as my full time job_ "; FOSS means libre
| not necessarily gratis, it could still be paid for, with
| paying customers or employer-users in this case and owe
| them a lot.
| ganafagol wrote:
| That's correct, but misses the point. If you are paid for
| FOSS work then whoever pays you can expect you to do
| certain things. But that's the "get paid" part, not the
| "FOSS" part. It would be the same with paid work on
| proprietary software.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Yes it would be the same with paid work on proprietary
| software, which is why the comment I was replying to "
| _FOSS is FOSS. Creator or current maintainer owes you and
| other users exactly nothing._ " is a non-sequitur, it
| doesn't hold up. Whether you have the source code and
| rights to redistribute it is orthogonal to whether the
| creator or current owner has a contract with you and
| "owes" you anything.
|
| Having access to the source doesn't automatically mean
| the owner/maintainer owes you nothing. I think the
| comment is promoting only the "FOSS == gratis" side of
| getting things for free ($0) and not considering the
| original "FOSS == insight and rights, even if paid for"
| side of things.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| Even if you pay for piece of software that does not
| entitle you any say on the direction the software is
| going or priority on your bug reports or feature
| requests. There can be explicit contract where you are
| funding specific feature, but just donating to a project
| does not entitle you to anything. You can stop using the
| software if it does not provide you any use. That is the
| only thing you are entitled to.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I never said "payment ENTITLES you to support", I said
| having access to the source does NOT mean NO entitlement
| to support, one does not control the other either way
| because access to the source and paid support contracts
| are separate things.
|
| > " _there can be explicit contract where you are funding
| specific feature_ "
|
| Yes, I said as much when I said you can have a contract
| for support and also have FOSS software. Here, you are
| downvoting me and agreeing with me. There can be a
| explicit contract where you have the source source and
| also are entitled to some development that you're paying
| for.
|
| > " _You can stop using the software if it does not
| provide you any use. That is the only thing you are
| entitled to._ "
|
| NO, here you are changing your mind again and narrowing
| it back down to "it was free so you have no rights". You
| cannot make the judgement that because someone has open
| source software, they didn't pay for it, and you cannot
| make the judgement that if they have open source
| software, they are not entitled to anything. The three
| are DIFFERENT things. The original point of FOSS was to
| avoid vendor lockin, not to get free downloads from
| Github.
|
| In case it isn't extremely clear, downloading a free and
| foss tool from Github does not entitle you to feature
| requests or support. Donating to it does not either.
| Saying "every FOSS user has no entitlement to support or
| feature requests _because_ the code is FOSS " is
| incorrect, and a bad idea for the programming/tech
| industry to be spreading, partly because a lot of
| developers would benefit from spreading the idea of paid
| FOSS because they want to work on it and get paid, and
| partly because users would benefit from the increase in
| paying for software and also getting the source as part
| of that, including whatever entitlement to support paying
| would have got them normally.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| Sure, but that doesn't mean I have to view it as an
| acceptable choice if a maintainer leverages a large user
| base for notoriety and then fails to prioritize that user
| base's needs. They _can_ do that, and I _can_ express
| frustration that it's an unacceptably poor failure if they
| do, in more ways than just declining to use their software.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I think there's a big assumption that maintainer does the
| work to gain notoriety. Many of them (myself included) do
| it completely anonymously. Many others have a traceable
| identity but still they may be motivated by other things.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| If it appears on a resume, it's done for notoriety. If
| it's fully anonymous and never appears on a resume, then
| I concede you are right in that case, but I think that's
| an extreme minority of cases among the types of projects
| the thread is discussing.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| > If it appears on a resume, it's done for notoriety.
|
| There might be such people, but I doubt such projects
| would be very successful or notorious. Being able to put
| something on CV does not provide that long lasting
| gratification needed to develop/maintain software in the
| long run. If it's about your CV only, then there are
| probably more effective ways to achieve better returns.
|
| (In my case I don't put my F/OSS on my CV and I don't
| think I'm "extreme minority")
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| As a hiring manager, a large fraction (easily greater
| than 50%) of resumes that I see do list OSS projects and
| contributions as accomplishments and technical
| experience.
|
| Maybe I just see an unusual slice of the OSS maintainer
| world, but it's very common.
| katbyte wrote:
| If you have issues with how a project is being run fork it
| and do it yourself
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| Or, politely object, raise issues & frustrations and lobby
| the maintainers to make different choices.
| TheDong wrote:
| Your comment misunderstands the point of some most software.
|
| Yes, some open source software (like Red Hat Enterprise
| Linux) is run by a company and has an expectation of support.
|
| The vast majority of free software, from the GNU tools like
| gcc to the linux kernel to clang, does not have that
| expectation.
|
| All free software has a license that lets you fork it (by
| definition)... and that's where your reasonable expectations
| should end.
|
| If you think the maintainer isn't doing a good job working on
| the right issues or maintaining the project, that's not the
| maintainer's problem. That's your problem. If you have the
| abilities to fork it and implement those changes yourself
| (realizing the maintainer does not have to incorporate those
| changes of course), go for it. If you can't, well, your
| expectations are totally wrong.
|
| If a maintainer actively looks for "fame" or actively pushes
| more people to use their software, that does not mean they
| have to provide support. That does not mean they have to live
| up to some standard you've made up in your head.
|
| They should make a reasonable attempt to uphold any specific
| promises they make, but that's about all they owe people, and
| if they promise to build a feature, then burn out, that's
| okay too really.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| > " If you think the maintainer isn't doing a good job
| working on the right issues or maintaining the project,
| that's not the maintainer's problem. That's your problem."
|
| This is backwards. The maintainer is expecting attention
| and users. By alerting the maintainer to issues, I would be
| _helping them_ (using my own extra effort, eg bug reports,
| feature requests).
|
| The nuclear option for a user is to just throw their hands
| up, not even try to lobby the maintainer to make better
| choices, and quit using the project. The nuclear option for
| a maintainer is to completely ignore the user base whose
| attention they need and whose efforts on bug reports or
| whose frustrations give them free labor to understand their
| projects fault points and fix them, and instead say,
| "you're not paying me with money, only with attention, time
| and effort, so I owe you nothing" (as if _owing_ was any
| part of any of it) and ignore their feedback.
|
| Either side _can_ go for the nuclear option. But wouldn't
| we hope the social contract in FOSS has a higher standard
| and people try to both give and receive reasonable
| feedback, and people try, at least, to consider users'
| needs after users have invested attention, word of mouth
| review, effort on bug reports, etc. before "going nuclear"
| and gainsaying everything with "you don't pay me in the
| form of currency so I owe you nothing."
| mmmrk wrote:
| > The maintainer is expecting attention and users
|
| Do they? The projects I maintain I do so for myself and
| work.
|
| > By alerting the maintainer to issues, I would be
| helping them
|
| Do you? I need to weight the time and effort to
| understand your issue against my potential gain from it.
|
| > The nuclear option for a maintainer is to completely
| ignore the user base whose attention they need
|
| Odd, I don't need attention for my projects.
|
| > as if owing was any part of any of it
|
| You explicitly spell out that maintainers owe user
| listening to them and helping them for their "free
| labor".
|
| > But wouldn't we hope the social contract in FOSS has a
| higher standard and people try to both give and receive
| reasonable feedback, and people try, at least, to
| consider users' needs after users have invested
| attention, word of mouth review, effort on bug reports
|
| If said users indeed invest quality time and I as a
| maintainer feel like their presence enhances my project,
| sure, giving and receiving is a good idea! Now, we both
| know how often that happens :)
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| > Do they?
|
| Overwhelmingly yes.
|
| > Do you?
|
| Yes, only users of a library or package really have
| sufficient context to articulate the pain points, bugs,
| and missing features. Users have to weigh up their own
| time and priorities too, so for users to give up their
| free time to put work into documenting issues / feature
| needs, that is a bunch of free labor given to the project
| maintainer. Any maintainer who sees bug reports or
| feature requests as a time drain instead of free product
| research is completely wrong.
|
| > Odd, I don't need attention for my projects.
|
| Then why are they open source?
|
| > You explicitly spell out that maintainers owe user
| listening to them and helping them for their "free
| labor".
|
| No, I never said anything like that, in fact I said the
| opposite. Maintainers are perfectly free to ignore users
| if they want. It would just mean it's reasonable for
| users to see that as a shitty owner and express
| frustration about it. Maintainers don't owe anyone
| anything, and I never said otherwise. But it's perfectly
| legitimate for users to express frustration over badly
| managed FOSS projects, neglected feature requests, etc.
|
| In other words, "if you don't like it, leave" is
| unjustified, and users _should_ express frustration. It
| doesn't mean a maintainer is going to listen, but that's
| beside the point. The original comment I replied to
| proposed that users are ingrates or should possibly be
| banned if they "complain" - that if they have a problem,
| it's not the maintainer's problem.
|
| These are just wrong attitudes. Maintainers aren't
| obliged to do anything. Irrelevant. Users should still
| complain and lobby maintainers to fix things, as that's
| far more helpful and reasonable than "take it or leave
| it."
|
| > If said users indeed invest quality time and I as a
| maintainer feel like their presence enhances my project,
| sure, giving and receiving is a good idea! Now, we both
| know how often that happens :)
|
| No, this is up to the _users_ to decide, as they actually
| use the project. Users decide if filing a bug report,
| asking for a feature, or pushing back on a roadmap is
| needed, because it stems from the problems they
| experience as users. Of course the maintainer doesn't
| have to care or even read it, but that would be
| horrendously undiplomatic of the maintainer, and users
| would have every justification to express frustration
| about it.
| TheDong wrote:
| > Yes, only users of a library or package really have
| sufficient context to articulate the pain points, bugs,
| and missing features
|
| This is a bizarre viewpoint. The creator/developers of an
| open source project usually has a far better
| understanding of the bugs, missing features, etc of their
| project. They've spent months to years thinking about it.
| They understand the technical restrictions that result in
| various tradeoffs. Users making feature requests rarely
| have the full picture or understand the technical
| tradeoffs at play, unless they implement or fix their
| issue themselves.
|
| Maybe there's a 1/3000 issue where a user gives
| thoughtful and meaningful insight into a new feature the
| project could have which the maintainer hasn't thought
| of, but the vast majority of issues are not that. The
| vast majority are users who don't understand the
| technical tradeoffs of the project, don't understand the
| maintainer's goals, etc.
|
| Again, if a user has a good idea for the project, the
| user should fork it and implement it. If the user can't,
| then they shouldn't be asking the maintainer to.
|
| In addition, if a user feels like they're spending enough
| time to "put work into documenting issues/features" that
| they're net losing time after the savings of being able
| to use the project (vs implement it all themselves), then
| they should neither file issues nor use the project at
| all.
|
| > Then why are they open source?
|
| Projects don't have to be open source because someone
| wants bug reports from users who have no clue what
| they're talking about.
|
| In fact, if you listen to maintainers, the vast majority
| don't want that crap.
|
| Projects can be open source because "information wants to
| be free", or "I want my users to be able to fork it, they
| have rights", or "I hope someone learns from this", or "I
| want people to contribute code (but not dumb issues)".
|
| For the most part, an open source project wants attention
| from a group of people - people who find the project
| useful already, and who are willing to not incur a
| maintenance burden.
|
| Just because the author of the project does want people
| who find the project useful as-is to use it doesn't mean
| that they're inviting people who have issues with it to
| use it and complain.
|
| > Users should still complain and lobby maintainers to
| fix things, as that's far more helpful and reasonable
| than "take it or leave it."
|
| No, it's not more reasonable for users to complain unless
| the maintainer asks users to complain. If the maintainer
| has a contributing.md or a page on their site that says
| something like "please send me poorly thought out feature
| requests, hate mail, and entitled bullshit", then yes,
| users can do that.
|
| Otherwise, the user should indeed take it or leave it. If
| the maintainer has a contributing.md saying "I might
| accept PRs", the user can absolutely discuss implementing
| a feature with the maintainer.
|
| The default, if there's no documentation about
| expectations, is that it is 100% take it or leave it.
|
| You seem to think that all open source projects are like
| RHEL, where a huge company runs it and all users pay
| thousands of dollars for support. In that specific case,
| yes it's totally fine for users to send support emails
| describing issues they ran into.
|
| The majority of oss projects are not that. The majority
| are some dude who hacked something out and hopes other
| people like it too. If other people like it, cool. That
| does not give other people a reasonable right to expect
| that person to actually do any serious maintainership of
| it.
|
| That seems to be your big disconnect. Users are entitled
| to nothing more than the existing code given to them in
| an OSS project unless the author explicitly adds
| additional expectations (such as having a contributing.md
| asking for issues or having a bug report button in the
| project or something).
|
| I have to ask, have you maintained many open source
| projects? Have you seen things from both sides of the
| fence? What interactions have led you to have this
| viewpoint?
|
| Your viewpoint seems quite foreign to the maintainers
| I've met, and I'm curious what has shaped it.
|
| My perspective has largely been shaped by maintaining OSS
| projects, talking to other maintainers, and reading
| secondary sources on the free software ethos.
| cycomanic wrote:
| So according to your argument the users are compensating the
| FOSS maintainers by using the software?
|
| That's an interesting concept of compensation, does this
| apply in other domains, e.g. if I go to a soup kitchen which
| donates free food is my eating that food compensation?
|
| I'm really trying to understand this argument.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| Your analogy is extremely specious. A better analogy is an
| unheard of band playing an open mic night. The audience is
| doing _the band_ a favor, by giving attention, possibly
| giving word of mouth reviews, not the other way around. The
| audience has every right to give feedback and help the band
| understand they don't sound good. The band can ignore that
| feedback if they want, but they sure have no justification
| to look down on the audience for saying it, or saying,
| "play your own music if you don't like it."
|
| Giving my attention to your FOSS project is compensation.
| In fact, FOSS is so over-saturated with options that giving
| my attention is _high_ compensation. Project maintainers
| are lucky to have an audience of users and should value
| their feedback and create solutions _for_ them, if they
| want the attention to continue or they want compensation to
| increase.
|
| What doesn't make sense is to treat users like they don't
| matter, ignore critical bug fixes or feature requests to
| prioritize dabbling or recreational features, and
| disingenuously turn around and claim users are rude or
| should be shadow banned for stating justified frustration
| over this, all under the false pretense that just because
| the compensation is in the form of attention and engagement
| (similar to currying "likes" or "votes" on social media),
| and not currency, this somehow means there is zero social
| contract between maintainers and users.
|
| If users are kind enough to express frustration in bug
| reports or feature requests, it means they are making an
| extra effort to hopefully not have to leave your project
| and stop using it. It's an attempt at a constructive
| solution by letting the maintainer know there's a social
| obligation problem happening. That seems way, way more
| positive and reasonable than a disgruntled maintainer
| immediately shrugging it off and going straight for the
| nuclear option of, "well if you don't like it, leave."
| cycomanic wrote:
| I think your analogy is just as flawed (and you have not
| explained why yours applies more than mine, as you do not
| know the motivation of maintainers), but lets go with it
| for now.
|
| So your argument is that in compensation for your
| attention you are entitled to give uninvited criticism,
| or lets say tell them to play songs you like? Moreover,
| how do you assume that your criticism or the songs you
| would like to have played somehow take priority over
| other peoples interests? If I would be in the audience
| for some unknown band I certainly hope that people who
| don't like the music leave instead of heckling the
| musicians.
|
| You are saying that maintainers have a "social
| obligation" by giving you something for free, so you are
| entitled to their time, because that's what it boils down
| to. To make another analogy (again admittedly flawed),
| would I be entitled to demand you reply to me, because I
| have given you my attention in this discussion?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > So your argument is that in compensation for your
| attention you are entitled to give uninvited criticism
|
| I would maintain that in many cases it isn't uninvited,
| just unwanted. There are many repos on github that are
| just somebody's pet project they did for fun or because
| it filled a need for them, and they aren't inviting
| criticism because they just shared code in case anyone
| else could use it or learn something from it.
|
| However, _many_ FOSS projects are very much like the band
| analogy above in that they aren 't content to upload
| videos of their jam session to youtube but actively seek
| to attract an audience. They make project announcements
| on places like HN, they show up in forums and tell people
| how _blazing fast_ their project is and it 's a good fit
| for someone's use case, they have fancy websites, etc.
| They ask for your attention, and in so doing invite
| criticism.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| There's no such thing as "uninvited criticism" in FOSS
| (or open mic night). Merely by exposing your project to
| be acquirable by end users, you have invited criticism.
| And if you go further and promote the project, give talks
| about it, recommend it, seek sponsorship, seek
| contributors, then you've invited criticism even more so.
|
| Of course you can ignore that criticism - that was never
| in doubt. But users are fully justified to make the
| criticism and it would be rude and wildly unreasonable to
| reply by saying, "if you don't like it, leave."
| rodgerd wrote:
| It's analagous to the brain-rotting line of thinking that
| pirating games is a benefit to the developer because
| "exposure".
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I agree wholeheartedly with this post.
|
| If you are just some person who wrote some code and made it
| open in case anyone else finds it useful, that's totally cool
| and I can respect that.
|
| If your goals are to attract a lot of users and you're out
| there pushing for people to use your product, don't be
| surprised when they tell you what their problems with it are.
| You've already signaled you want them as a user, and by
| ignoring them you're signaling that you don't want to put any
| work in for it.
| smokey_circles wrote:
| People are people and whether they are maintainer or
| customer, we can all be ass-hats.
|
| How would you prefer that kind of "arbitrary planning" be
| addressed though?
|
| I don't have any luck with my FOSS projects but I am SUPER
| grateful for that because I just don't have the time to sit
| and work on them after I've done the job I have to pay the
| bills I also have.
|
| Any advice for someone like me?
| ganafagol wrote:
| My advice: if you like the project you are working on,
| great! Keep working on it and maybe users will come along.
| Or they may not, but it does not really matter cause you
| like it anyway right? If you do _not_ like working on it,
| stop doing it. No matter users or not.
|
| That's the 1 line summary of doing volunteer work.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| In my experience this is usually a recipe for
| unhappiness, similar to choosing a college major by
| "following your passion."
|
| If you want to enjoy working on FOSS, choose to solve a
| problem that lots of users need solved, the more mundane
| the better, then make your whole backlog focused on what
| the user tells you.
|
| FOSS needs product / market (of attention) fit like
| anything else. Unless you are your own user for a real
| use case, you need other real users to be the sole
| driver.
| imtringued wrote:
| I don't have time to spend on my FOSS projects and I don't
| care about user growth. If I use the project myself and my
| friends are deriving lots of value then that's more than
| enough.
| grecy wrote:
| > _I 'm forever grateful that I actually get FAANG salary to do
| this -- I wouldn't keep it up if I was getting the little-to-
| noting many FOSS contributors get._
|
| I wonder if you have any tips or advice for other people out
| there maintaining FOSS projects who are struggling to get paid
| for their work.
|
| How can a person in that scenario move closer to what you've
| got going on?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| In my case, it took about 20 years. I don't make the FAANG
| money because I prefer to pay other contributors, but the
| project raises that much. I was willing and able to sit back
| and enjoy the ride. YMMV.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I suspect the project was started by a FAANG business, eg
| React or something like that.
| heyoni wrote:
| React isn't something we all use, as OP implied...on the
| other hand, OP might be maintaining a left padding package!
| stingraycharles wrote:
| He implied that we all heard of it, but it's besides the
| point I was trying to make -- rather than starting an OSS
| project in the hopes some FAANG company may sponsor it,
| it may very well be a project started by such a company
| instead. Ie its not likely something you can "grow" a
| project into.
| bigiain wrote:
| I'm now imagining a stream of hysterical entitled feature
| request demands from users of leftpad.js...
|
| "This dumb library doesn't left pad correctly when I'm
| standing on my head. FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY or I'll change
| to an alternative library and leave a 1 star Yelp review!
| What kind of clueless amateurs are you? You call yourself
| 'developers'???"
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| I suspect that what meetups323 means is that they work for a
| FAANG company on a piece of software that company uses that
| is also open-source, not that it's their own FOSS project and
| it draws them a FAANG-equivalent salary.
| pabs3 wrote:
| There are a number of resources for getting paid to work on
| FOSS on the FOSSjobs wiki:
|
| https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources
| umanwizard wrote:
| The realistic answer is to abandon your personal project and
| get hired to work on one of the many open source teams within
| Google or Facebook.
| TheDong wrote:
| One possible path here is to build something so close to a
| company that you're likely to end up getting hired to
| maintain it. One notable example is the author of the "boto"
| aws SDK (https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/big-news-regarding-
| python-b...), who was hired by amazon to keep working on it.
| It still took 6 years for him to get hired. The majority of
| projects like this end up not resulting in hires to work on
| that project (though they can result in hires pretty easily
| to do other work at the company).
|
| A second path is to join a faang company that does OSS work,
| specifically on a team that does so. You could join facebook
| on the react team, google on the chromium/android/go team,
| etc etc. In all of those teams, you'll probably be a small
| cog in the machine for a while, but if you persevere, it's
| possible to create an adjacent project that you own. It's
| much easier to split out into your own company-paid-for OSS
| work from a team that already does OSS work. This option is
| unquestionably the easiest path. It's still not easy.
|
| A third path is to build something that is valuable enough to
| be acquired, but coincidentally is open source, and then make
| it remaining open source a condition of being acquired. Zulip
| managed this route when dropbox acquired them, and there's a
| few other examples, but this is a very hard route.
|
| Notice that none of these examples are great for most open
| source projects. Those options mostly require you to change
| the OSS projects you work on from what you want to something
| a faang wants you to work on.
|
| To get paid a faang salary working on your own project of
| your own invention is practically impossible without
| incredible luck, or being a principal engineer (i.e. guido
| getting paid by google to work on python, rob pike to create
| go, other examples certainly exist).
|
| My recommendation? If you want a faang salary to do oss work,
| but are okay compromising on the project, pick the faang
| company with a project closest to what you want to do and get
| hired for that oss project specifically.
|
| If you'd rather work on your oss project than have a faang
| salary to work on someone else's project, then that's great!
| You have the passion to work on your foss thing, and that's a
| good sign. Keep working on it, and understand that your
| chance of making any money is almost nil.
| chii wrote:
| > toxic users who hop on to issues demanding you implement them
| immediately
|
| I would have a policy of not allowing feature requests, only
| bug reports. Their demands gets immediately deleted. Either
| report a bug or GTFO - and make this the norm!
| enriquto wrote:
| > I would have a policy of not allowing feature requests,
| only bug reports.
|
| There's also the "polite" feature request, that's actually
| helpful. For example, a user wants a feature, and they ask if
| the developer would be willing to accept a pull request
| implementing that feature. I think this is respectful and
| better than sending the pull request right away.
| arp242 wrote:
| Also, while a lot of feature requests are for kind of
| obvious things and not really all _that_ valuable IMO,
| sometimes people just post really good ideas in feature
| requests. It would be a shame to lose that.
| xbar wrote:
| I don't know what you maintain. But let me say, loudly, THANK
| YOU! YOU ARE APPRECIATED.
| cgsmith wrote:
| What is FAANG salary?
| majinuub wrote:
| Its a salary that you would normally earn working for the
| large tech companies in Silicon Valley. FAANG stands for:
| Facebook Apple Amazon Netflix Google
| sabertoothed wrote:
| The salary made at companies like Facebook, Amazon, Apple,
| Netflix and Alphabet (formerly known as Google), together
| known as FAANG.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| It's not just "being nice to devs" -- open source communities are
| utter shit for everyone.
|
| My experience working on open-source projects, from a Product
| Manger perspective, is it sucks too.
|
| To get it right, modern software takes a team. Everything from
| BAs, UX designers, QA, DevOps, etc.
|
| But the projects aren't treated like a real project. Often it's a
| dev doing something on their own... often again it's to get away
| from the "team organizational structure" and just do something on
| their own. They don't get paid for it, they're just out to "hobby
| build" so why not play a bit. Test out some ideas.
|
| But inevitably it's shit. They don't make decisions based on
| what's good for the customer (and the customers don't pay), they
| make decisions based on, "Do I have 20 hours to put in to get
| this right, or do I want to ignore the edge cases and just do the
| quick and dirty 30 second solution so I can move on to the next
| task I find fun?"
|
| And the quality suffers. And that's OK, except the expectations
| are all set so high. "This is the open-source version of
| Microsoft Office!" or "This is a peer-to-peer replacement for
| Facebook!" and when a user hears that, and then goes to use it...
| and finds their expectations were totally mis-set... oof. They're
| pissy. "I put in all this time thinking it would do whatever
| basic thing Microsoft Office has done for 20 years... and it
| didn't do it... and I wasted a day trying... wasted a day looking
| at obsolete / poorly done documentation... and now I'm mad too!"
| Expectations need to be set better, and they never are. Everyone
| over promises based on a vision, not based on actual
| capabilities.
|
| And when a QA person, or a product manager, volunteers to help...
| then herding devs, who "own" the project into best practices or a
| team-based workflow becomes a nightmare. Everyone is working on
| their own version of "off hours" on the project -- no way to sync
| a 9 to 5 schedule of any sort. Team meetings never happen; maybe
| you get together on Slack or something, but like very rare anyone
| is able to be like, "Hey let's all go bond and get a beer..." As
| a "leader" you can't enforce best practices -- and that's
| frustrating for everyone as the devs started the project to get
| away from management, and management gets burnt out trying to
| manage devs who don't want managers... Corners are cut,
| opportunities to bring in other talent are squandered because
| it's all about ego.
|
| Long enough rant, but like... TL;DR: Open Source sucks. If you're
| gonna build something, start with a business plan. Make enough
| money to hire BAs to gather requirements, UX designers to build
| good flows, devs to build it, QAs to test it, managers to wear
| chinos, and support staff to handle the onslaught of shitty
| annoyed customers. And guess what, to make all this work...
| you'll need some sales guys too. Make it a business, you'll be a
| lot happier in the end. Fundamentally, if you're good at
| something... why are you giving it away for free?
|
| Be Nice, but you can't really un-ring this bell. Fire is hot.
| Water is wet. The internet is mean. And working on Open Source
| projects is pretty much universally horrible.
| intended wrote:
| Signal's Eternal September?
| im3w1l wrote:
| This is about tone on the Signal Community Forums, not within
| the Signal App. As Signal is an encrypted chat app, there is no
| Signal culture within the app that could Eternal September.
| intended wrote:
| No i meant in the community forums - since there's likely
| been a large addition of users in the past few days due to
| WhatsApp. I suspect a decent chunk of tech forward people
| have moved.
|
| So I was wondering it if was Eternal September for the
| forums.
|
| But I think I see where you are coming from = there is a
| finite number of people who will come to a coding forum, not
| an unbending wave, which would make Eternal September less of
| a good fit.
| baryphonic wrote:
| It's an old reference, sir, but it checks out. I was about to
| clear it.
| pridkett wrote:
| It's an old reference to Usenet and AOL. It used to be that
| many Usenet groups had problems every fall when new college
| students would discover Usenet after getting internet access
| for the first time at their university. In general this meant
| posts that went against the norms of many groups. It would
| usually straighten itself out after a few months, but in
| general, September was a rougher month.
|
| Then, sometime in the mid 90's (maybe 95?), AOL gave its users
| access to Usenet. This meant a steady flow of new users who
| didn't adhere to norms of the newsgroups. Therefore, the
| Eternal September.
|
| Same concern now as it seems like everyone is discovering
| Signal. I'm not sure how much I agree as signal is primarily
| small group chats where norms can be better enforced.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| Developing a pleasant community, and developing the skills and
| environment to deal with angry people who use the project as
| their punchbag, is more valuable than the code. People who nice,
| pleasant and diplomatic are gold, and can help shape the
| community. They're as valuable as your most skilled coder.
| geuis wrote:
| Ok just 2 points, primarily my own opinion.
|
| First, I suspect a lot of new Signal users are the Reddit/Twitter
| terror assholes from thedonald.lose and other similar suddenly
| exposed rock bottoms that have been forced to relocate over the
| last week or so. Ignore them, ban them, etc. Don't let ANY of
| that bit of animated shit pukes that mumble like they're semi
| conscious bags of bird shit bother you.
|
| 2nd point. It's ok to say no. Proof in point, I've been running
| jsonip.com for 11 years. Service supports many many millions of
| requests a month. Completely free.
|
| I'm lucky, I don't frequently get any hate mail or "add this new
| thing asshole" for the service. But any time I have over the last
| 11 years, I've directly told those people to shove it if they've
| been rude or demanding.
|
| They're using my service for free. I'm paying for this out of
| pocket. Fuck you if you think you can abuse me.
|
| Just to round out, since I'm obviously very suave about language
| and what not, stop being nice. Stop letting a lot of free loaders
| ruin your day and kill your mood and passion by treating you
| badly.
|
| There is an equivalent to the no shoes, no shirt, no mask policy
| and retail store has for online stores and OSS projects. If the
| user/customer can't adhere to extremely basic human decency
| norms, they don't get to play. You tell them to fuck off and go
| away, then move on with helping people that actually give a shit
| and are nice.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| > Don't let ANY of that bit of animated shit pukes that mumble
| like they're semi conscious bags of bird shit bother you.
|
| LOL. Appropriately eloquent. And I'm not being sarcastic!
|
| The number of times I've gone to reply to a post somewhere to
| tell someone "You don't get candy if you're a bad boy, go back
| to your room" but ten other, nicer people have already tried to
| positively engage...
|
| You'll be glad to hear I'm not the one being nice. I
| flag/report, or if a thread is turning sour tell them they're
| on their own if they try to mistreat me. This is why I don't
| mod any communities because too many people would get the same
| treatment the lamers did on IRC: I'd kick them out the door and
| get on with my day. Seems that's out of vogue these days.
| geuis wrote:
| Hah. I'm with you. Even used to do the same thing on IRC
| years ago.
|
| I'm firmly of the opinion we (general collectively) of the
| mainstream have bent far enough back and tried too hard to
| accommodate the ignorant for too long. No time for that shit
| anymore.
|
| Oh and I'm hell when I host an Among Us game. If the randos
| don't catch on quick, boot put the hatch!
| supernova87a wrote:
| I mean, if everyone were well behaved in life and would just "be
| nice", there would be no need for laws, or police, or moderators.
|
| I think everyone is realizing that software/tech doesn't
| magically solve fundamental human dynamics, no matter how much it
| fixes other problems. And that you need to have non-negligible
| resources dedicated to policing/enforcing rules so that we can
| have nice things.
|
| And be grateful for those who do.
|
| There is a world out there ready to mess up your carefully built
| shit, by maliciousness, honest inadvertence, people not reading
| the directions, people learning for the first time and making
| mistakes, or just sheer incompetence, or indifference.
| ganafagol wrote:
| No, even if everybody was nice all the time you'd need
| laws/rules. Their purpose is not just to keep bad guys at bay,
| but also to give good guys a pre-agreed framework within which
| to operate.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| We all need some thick skin to get on in life and need to cope
| with bad behaviour but hopefully the post gave some people
| pause for thought about how they act next, and how they have
| acted before.
| lightgreen wrote:
| While people should be nice, maybe it's time for Signal to hire a
| professional community manager. If developers do support on such
| forums (who else would be disappointed by unilateral demands?),
| it is a productivity killer.
|
| Telegram has such person for full time, I follow them on Twitter,
| and their responses are usually hilarious
| https://twitter.com/telegram/with_replies
|
| For example, when people demand something from Telegram, their
| response is usually brainless "I'll pass that to developers" or
| something slightly more witty like "it's planned for 2301, watch
| for updates". Everybody's happy.
| wruza wrote:
| >twitter link
|
| How do you look up an original post in twitter that they
| replied to? If I tap on "in reply to @" link it just shows
| their entire feed. Thanks in advance!
| [deleted]
| lightgreen wrote:
| Usually original tweets are just shown in the feed, but if
| you click on the tweet body, it will explicitly unfold the
| thread, if I got what you are asking.
| wruza wrote:
| Yes, this is it, thank you!
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I've found the opposite more often than not: Users are nice, but
| the maintainers are arrogant, unwilling to listen to your issue,
| close the issue without explanation, disrespect you for bringing
| something that breaks their product or shows a major flaw,
| nitpicking until cows come home with PRs, rejecting PRs for no
| reason at all (screw you for putting all this effort in the PR,
| right?), god-forbid if you ever talk about any drawbacks or
| issues with the license. Users are usually nice and other users
| moderate them if a wild one appears.
|
| Can maintainers please be nice?
| RedComet wrote:
| Let's not pretend this just some guy's hobby project. They've
| received millions of dollars in funding, more than many small
| businesses make a year.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| And that means it's OK to abuse them and their volunteer
| moderators? Getting a paycheck that big wouldn't make me feel
| better if I was having shit slung at me from all directions.
|
| I'd have a more comfortable life but I'd still be getting up in
| the morning to go to work knowing I was going to open my inbox
| to weeping boils flinging their bile at me.
| senectus1 wrote:
| "Social media made you all way too comfortable with disrespecting
| people and not getting punched in the face for it." - Mike Tyson
|
| Feels very much like an aphorism for life these days
| jedmeyers wrote:
| "Law enforcement made Mike Tyson all way too comfortable with
| punching people in the face and not getting shot for it." -
| Billy the Kid, apparently
| newbie789 wrote:
| What?
| vagrantJin wrote:
| It was his job to punch people in the face. He's been doing
| effectively since he was 13. This must be the lowest class
| comment Ive ever seen on HN.
| jedmeyers wrote:
| Punching people in the face for disrespecting him was his
| job? I guess you can say shooting people was Billy the
| Kid's job, then.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > Punching people in the face for disrespecting him was
| his job?
|
| It's called trash talk, a significant part of his
| sport/job before and after fights.
|
| > I guess you can say shooting people was Billy the Kid's
| job, then.
|
| No. That's _law enforcements_ job after following the
| correct protocols. My good fellow are you alright?
| chalst wrote:
| Usenet had killfiles, Wikipedia has IP bans for problem editors.
| Issue trackers need something similar.
| medecau wrote:
| github has moderation
|
| - https://github.com/settings/interaction_limits
|
| - https://github.com/<user>/<repo>/settings/interaction_limits
|
| and users can block other users
|
| - https://github.com/settings/blocked_users
| sneak wrote:
| I think it's reasonable to critique the fact that OWS has
| received $100mm and I can't even add all my devices to my account
| (they limit it to 4 or 5, iMessage permits at least 10), or add
| any other phones (only tablet and desktop can be linked).
|
| Being an asshole is unwarranted, but oftentimes one wonders where
| the money is going with that group. Their production is certainly
| behind reasonable expectations. We have stickers but not backup,
| we have some SGX thing for safe server contacts but video calls
| on desktop are still basically broken/unusable.
|
| For that kind of cash they should have a lot more to show.
| novok wrote:
| On an M1 macbook signal desktop video calls were pretty decent.
|
| The limit is a single variable on their back end server, maybe
| poke them to up it to 10?
| bigiain wrote:
| How much of that $100mm came out of your pocket?
|
| Have you got links to any complaints about how OWS is being run
| by the people donating money to them? (At least for non-troll
| sized donations. Sending them $5 by PayPal then claiming the
| right to define and prioritise their roadmap doesn't count.)
|
| I'm not sure you are displaying "reasonable expectations" here,
| nor that your opinion on how much they should have "to show"
| carries much weight.
|
| As always, you're welcome to 100% of your money back on your
| purchase of Signal and it's services if you don't like the
| product.
| sneak wrote:
| It's reasonable to criticize waste even if the waste isn't of
| my resources.
|
| It's reasonable to criticize and editorialize even over
| squandered opportunity, something that is (in the case of
| such criticism) always someone else's, not your own.
|
| I can reasonably think they're doing a mediocre job, given
| the circumstance that they received $100mm, even if it's not
| a dime of my money.
|
| I think your response is perhaps a red herring.
| bigiain wrote:
| I think this attitude reflects much more on your misplaced
| understanding of what OWS are doing and why, rather than
| anything meaningful about your critizisms.
|
| It's a _really_ poor proxy for most things, but they're the
| ones with $100mm of somebody else money. I suspect your
| opinion that they're "wasting" any of that is much more
| likely to be that you don't understand the goals, rather
| than the people behind _that_ much money letting it be
| "wasted".
|
| You've demonstrated very little understanding of the
| reasons behind the problems you cite. Do you know the
| tradeoffs behind the decision to limit linked devices? Do
| you think OWS's priority on desktop video call quality is
| the same as yours, and do you know the tradeoffs they're
| making by choosing not to prioritise that? You pretty much
| admit you have zero clue how or why they're using SGX -
| which is one of that most innovative privacy techniques in
| the entire space (it's not perfect, but it's about as
| diametrically opposed to how Facebook et al do contact
| discovery as it's possible to get).
|
| [Edit: It's also possible _my_ understanding of what Moxie
| and OWS are trying to do is wrong, and I'm crediting them
| for or at least giving them a pass on a lot of stuff based
| on that. But I don't think so. I've been reading their blog
| since they worked on an Android app called TextSecure back
| in 2014 or so. Moxie is a friend of a friend, and I'd eaten
| and drunk with him. I think I have a reasonable
| understanding, for an outsider, of what is important to
| them and why they're doing the things they do.]
| sneak wrote:
| I am quite familiar with all of the things you asked
| about, including the SGX server attestation stuff. I
| glossed over it for the sake of comment brevity; I browse
| HN comments on mobile and reply with thumbs.
|
| I know their tradeoffs well; I also know the SF rumors I
| hear about the fate of their money.
|
| I think they should have quite a bit more to show for it.
| newscracker wrote:
| > As always, you're welcome to 100% of your money back on
| your purchase of Signal and it's services if you don't like
| the product.
|
| When it becomes possible to change this to "100% of your time
| back", I'll be able to agree with such sentiments. Users
| invest time that they cannot get back.
| bigiain wrote:
| Maybe so.
|
| But there's no way that "investment" makes Signal/OWS in
| any way beholden to them.
|
| If you're going to get upset enough to rant about "all the
| time I invested in using a free app", you're going to lead
| a very unhappy life.
| vernie wrote:
| Elon stans blew up the spot.
| ancientworldnow wrote:
| Some Elon but also a huge amount of Indian users who are
| leaving whatsapp en masse and have a different culture of
| online conduct that many westerners aren't used. The replies on
| the signal Twitter account make this very apparent if you don't
| want to dig through the forums.
| gulabjamuns wrote:
| In what way are the Indians different?
| [deleted]
| trinix912 wrote:
| Reminds me of the 2020 Hacktoberfest. Tons of users would
| submit spam PRs, when you'd close them and tell them to read
| the contribution guide they'd start personally attacking you.
| bigiain wrote:
| I'm up to 50 or 60 new Signal contacts since WhatsApp
| announced their latest privacy policy updates. (That's actual
| friend/acquaintances rather than just people I once added to
| my contact list like ex cow workers or clients/vendors -
| there's probably another 50 of those as well.) This is
| largely (but not exclusively) people in Australia.
| redflame8 wrote:
| Fuck off
| CommieDetector wrote:
| Why? Democrats has finally shown that rules do not truly matter.
| LockAndLol wrote:
| Nice community users: do your part! Don't just be a silent
| majority.
|
| Being nice doesn't mean being passive. If you see something
| wrong, make someone aware of it nicely and if they respond badly,
| flag or report them.
|
| Be nice, be active.
| whalesalad wrote:
| There is a rising tide of hyper vigilance and explosive anger
| that cannot be escaped these days. I hope everyone can wake up
| and realize this - to stop it before it becomes the new normal.
| ve55 wrote:
| Signal is a treasure that shows us that more things than just
| Wikipedia can occupy the holy trio of Good, Popular, and Free,
| all at the same time (I would include having a user-aligned
| profit model such as donations instead of surveillance under
| Free/Good).
|
| I hope that with all of these new users they are free to continue
| to provide their service for free, and even more so, that they
| may inspire us to build a better future with similar apps in
| other domains. They may definitely have some growing pains and
| tough moments ahead of them, but I'm ecstatic to see e2e getting
| so popular and users finally seeing the value in these kinds of
| things (after, for what seemed like a decade, getting anyone to
| care seemed impossible).
| Vinnl wrote:
| Not only that, but it shows us that projects matching that holy
| trio can still gain a footing _today_ , rather than the
| beginning of the web being the only period in which such
| projects could have come into existence.
| tenpies wrote:
| > holy trio of Good, Popular, and Free
|
| Wait do we consider Wikipedia to be "Good" now? Just the
| banning of Fram in 2019[1] should be an indicator that the
| people steering the ship are probably not good.
|
| ---
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_response_t...
| erikbye wrote:
| He was uncivil toward other editors.
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/wikipedia-fram-
| banning-...
| grumbel wrote:
| > Good, Popular, and Free
|
| The lack of federation, crippled data export and requirement
| for a phone number puts it into the "no good" category for me.
|
| Doesn't matter how much Open Source they throw around, what
| matters is how much effort it will be to stop using your
| software. Signal so far, looks to run with the same lock-in
| tactics as everybody else and that in turn gives them the power
| to switch over from nice to naughty mode whenever they want.
| schoolornot wrote:
| I'm still a bit concerned about the unique structuring of the
| Signal Foundation and the 100 million dollar loan it got from
| Brian Acton. Is there an expectation that the organization will
| be disbanded by the time the loan comes due in 2068? Brian will
| be 96 years old.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| I'm betting it was styled as a loan for tax purposes.
| cheald wrote:
| How would that work? Signal is a 501c3.
| matheist wrote:
| Maybe so that the charitable deduction could be split up
| among multiple years (forgive $X amount annually) instead
| of one enormous deduction taken all at once which would
| be ineffective?
|
| (I don't actually know if this would work, just a guess.)
| dionian wrote:
| Wikipedia was definitely like this in its early days but
| surprised how many people think it's a nonpartisan thing
| anymore. Maybe for some topics it can be still
| ve55 wrote:
| It isn't as much that Wikipedia is perfect, but rather than I
| could imagine 100 ways in which it could be so much worse.
|
| It is not perfectly nonpartisan, but compare it to the
| websites that are similar in popularity and you'll find
| there's no contest.
| dionian wrote:
| I'm very cynical, much more so than you, however you do
| make a good point. I like that at least they have a little
| bit of transparency in the talk pages, even if im often not
| always happy with the consensus
| ornornor wrote:
| FWIW I'm very grateful to all the people who work on FOSS
| software. I probably wouldn't be a software developer if it
| wasn't for these tools and libraries. I often wonder how they all
| find the energy do it, I know I wouldn't be able to contribute
| more than the tiny PRs or issues I've submitted over the years.
| logicchop wrote:
| I think it's important to point out that "being nice" also
| involves making room for people that might come across as rude,
| or that have difficulty expressing themselves in a polite way, or
| that are just speaking directly. I often get accused of being
| rude in my writing because I am direct. I've known lots of people
| (especially devs) that don't really understand that their
| phrasing might be interpreted as rude. If someone is clearly just
| lobbing insults, that's one thing, but we also have obligations
| to be charitable when interpreting others, and that charity often
| involves couching their expression as an attempt at being
| "politely informative." I would also say: unless it's flagrant,
| learn to deal with it. It's important to be able to deal with
| people, and that involves dealing with unhappy people, people who
| are stressed or at wits end, and so on. It goes both ways.
| awb wrote:
| > It's important to be able to deal with people, and that
| involves dealing with unhappy people, people who are stressed
| or at wits end, and so on. It goes both ways.
|
| That's a good rule on thumb, provided that the initiator is
| willing to reflect, take responsibility and repair any damage
| caused when the receiver indicates that their communication
| wasn't received well. Or, if the initiator isn't willing to do
| that, then being able to disconnect peacefully without
| judgement and further harming the receiver. "I'm sorry for
| coming across that way" is a pretty simple way to acknowledge
| the receiver's experience without feeling like you need to
| change or that it was your fault. It's amazing how much damage
| to relationships comes not from the initial blow, but rather
| the insistence that no blow was delivered.
|
| Many times I've seen "straight shooters" be received poorly and
| result to calling their receiver sensitive, etc., rather than
| accepting that the "straight talk" doesn't work for that person
| and that neither one of you has done anything wrong, it's just
| that the two styles aren't working for either of you. Or vice
| versa when an initiator tries really hard to "soften the blow"
| with slow, peaceful words when it ends up being more torture
| for the receiver than just spitting it out with whatever
| emotion comes with it.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| So, I agree we should all be charitable, but we also shouldn't
| settle for "well, that's just how I am" because communication
| can be a practiced skill.
|
| As one example, a direct-personality coworker of mine learned
| to compensate by asking others for feedback before sending
| emails (or at least important ones to others outside the team).
|
| As another example, I've seen people with
| http://three.sentenc.es/ in their email signatures, and this
| makes it clear that the brevity comes from valuing the time of
| the reader.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I guess yet another platform is censoring its users /s
|
| JK please be nice y'all
| 0dayz wrote:
| Its why I am always extra nice/kind to those that report real
| issues.
|
| While have a zero tolerance to anyone being even slightly
| annoying/belligerent.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Just be nice, is that hard? Well yes, it can be extremely hard
| for some who are stuck reentering a negative modality constantly.
|
| If you struggle with impulsive thoughts, anger, rudeness, you may
| be in need of a change in your ways, habits, and mental health.
| Try diet, exercise, and clean living to help your body feel
| right, but also meditate and allow your skill of executive
| function to take over. This secretary of the mind will stop you
| in your tracks, reallocating attention into better pursuits.
|
| I think the key is decoupling thoughts from behaviors. It's one
| thing to think, "implement this basic feature already you
| freshman noob." It's another to let that thought pass away,
| without typing or saying anything.
|
| To practice this, meditation is a good start. It teaches the
| simple noticing of thoughts, and practices not acting on them.
| And don't beat yourself up btw, if I get mean thoughts, I just
| laugh it off and notice the primates' mind within me. We are
| running aggressive chimp software 2.0, it's not very refined! You
| can patch it with meditation and healthy living.
| PhantomBKB wrote:
| if someone starts being toxic to me, I'll just let them know they
| have access to the source code like everyone else and that they
| are free to open a pull request if they wish to and close the
| thread. And that's the end of that.
|
| If someone asks why, just tell them you don't entertain any level
| of toxicity.
| grrrrrrreat wrote:
| I believe the Signal app should at least have a token fee. It can
| be donated to the open source community. That would immediately
| get rid of the freeloaders and their annoyances.
| timvisee wrote:
| This is funny. Because WhatsApp seems to be slow to the party
| with most features.
| Markoff wrote:
| I dunno, I could select multiple pictures to share in Whatsapp
| for years, Signal implemented this when, year or two ago?
|
| I can chat online in browser with Whatsapp for years, you still
| can't even do that with Signal, so not sure what features are
| you talking, but Signal is for sure lacking more basic features
| than Whatsapp.
| timvisee wrote:
| I wasn't comparing WA to Signal, but to a load of other IM
| apps. Compared to those, WA is super slow as well.
| RachelF wrote:
| We've found the same thing with other software we make. The free
| users and those charitable organizations and schools we give free
| licenses to, are the least "nice" in their technical support
| queries. Odd that.
| kstenerud wrote:
| The less your customers are paying you, the less they'll value
| you.
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| People in open source are horrendously bad to each other, this
| likely won't change for a long time.
|
| Make someone pay for software and they always treat you far
| better.
|
| I'm sure there's some cognitive reason/explanation for this.
| imperio59 wrote:
| If you get something for free then it has no value.
|
| Remember the last time you got an item for free. You probably
| didn't worry too much about it, because it didn't cost you
| anything. You didn't treat it that carefully.
|
| Compare that to something you bought for yourself, that you
| had to work hard for. You probably took a lot of care for it.
| You probably really paid attention to ensure it didn't break.
|
| I feel like this is the mentality difference. Something free
| = no value = we can treat it badly. Something not free = it
| has value = we are more careful with it.
|
| The nicest customers I have for my Saas product are also the
| ones who have the largest accounts. The ones that pay $15 a
| month for a single user on the cheapest account are always
| the ones asking for a list of like 50 new features to be
| implemented yesterday or "the product just isn't gonna work
| for us". Yea ok, because your $15 buys you a right to own my
| entire roadmap... not.
| Agentlien wrote:
| I don't agree with the generalisation to private
| possessions.
|
| Apart from gifts, as mentioned by another commenter, I
| often seem to value things higher and be more careful with
| them when I know they're valuable and I got them without
| having to pay.
| fwip wrote:
| How do you measure the value, though?
| auggierose wrote:
| Hahaha, but how do you know they are valuable? Maybe
| because normally, you would have had to pay for it? So
| you are saying, you are a freeloader?
| darkwater wrote:
| It might make sense but personally I tend to complain and
| ask for improvements if it's something I paid for, because
| hell, I PAID for it, I want it to work! If it's free as in
| beer, I care less about the quality (usually I thank the
| authors for releasing it for free).
| conjectures wrote:
| Or, in a competitive market price = marginal cost of
| production and the marginal cost be 0. Value to customers
| is a separate thing.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I think you're partly right but it's not the whole story.
| People (not all but many) notoriously treat service/public
| facing workers horribly. The same people also treat those
| workers' supervisors with more respect, or at least with
| less aggressive behavior.
|
| They're paying for whatever product or service they went in
| for. It's not because something is free, it's because
| they've designated certain people as servants.
|
| I think there's a pernicious attitude that the "free" part
| of open source is an entitlement to service, and that the
| people providing it are servants.
| Cd00d wrote:
| Interesting. I don't know if free = no value. Some of my
| most cherished _things_ are gifts of relatively low
| replacement value.
|
| I think products do have the ability to make us feel an
| emotional response, even when free?
| cycomanic wrote:
| I was going to write the exact same thing. It's even more
| extreme, I generally have much more problems parting with
| a gift, even if it is genuinely useless and holds no
| particular emotional value to me, just because it was
| given to me.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| > If you get something for free then it has no value.
|
| Do you pay for the oxygen you breathe?
| jeromenerf wrote:
| > Make someone pay for software and they always treat you far
| better.
|
| Indirect correlation if you ask me.
|
| "Consumer" users are most likely to behave as consumers, ie
| not being interested with the project but their work getting
| done. Open source distribution channels are often independent
| from the actual project management, opening the possibility
| for varying degrees of quality.
|
| Paid for bugs are more irritating than free bugs. Consumer
| support is rare for "paid for" software (good luck getting
| support from Apple radar, google services, iOS App Store ...)
| where open source projects provide forums, issue trackers ...
| cycomanic wrote:
| I suspect this is related to the phenomenon that people often
| quite strongly need to justify their purchasing decisions,
| leading to fanboism (I know that free systems also have
| fanboys but I think there is a difference in the type).
|
| So if people made a monetary investment they have the
| emotional need to justify to themselves and others that they
| made a good decision (hence you talk positively about that
| purchase), however somehow when they use something free,
| people don't feel that emotional need.
| satyrnein wrote:
| Does making someone pay change that specific person's
| behavior? Or is it that raising your price just filters out
| certain people? Perhaps the remaining people would have been
| nice at any price?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| harry8 wrote:
| There will be many explanations. One explanation not seen here
| yet:
|
| People working for companies who pay are more likely to be well
| paid and both of (a) technically competent and (b) having
| empathy and some amount of charm as qualifying criteria to get
| that well paid gig.
|
| It's no slam-dunk but it's more likely. People who work for
| organisations who don't pay are likely to be paid a little less
| and include some who are working a second choice gig because of
| some deficiencies in (a) or (b) or both. (L. is great but
| difficult to work with and we'll never find someone like that
| to hire to replace them.) As individuals they may improve their
| abilities in time, possibly dramatically too. The young,
| arrogant hotheads, sheesh. None of us were ever like that.
| Obviously...
|
| The paying can be a fuzzy select for kinds of people who behave
| in particular ways rather than the paying itself causing
| particular behavior in a given person.
| andrew_ wrote:
| https://liberamanifesto.com/
| wombatmobile wrote:
| The problem with the directive "Please be nice" is that it's
| unclear what behaviour it prescribes.
|
| "Nice" is self-assessed. Almost everybody thinks they are being
| nice, and fair. Even despots think that when they self assess.
|
| It's more constructive to have guidelines that tell people
| specifically what to do and not do.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| root_axis wrote:
| This criticism seems misplaced, the article very clearly
| explains what is meant by "being nice".
| DeafSquid wrote:
| I've been using Signal for years and love it. Not sure why anyone
| would be angry at em
| newscracker wrote:
| I strongly recommend being kind and polite, avoiding personal
| attacks, in all spaces.
|
| > "How can you write a piece of software that doesn't do y?".
| "It's 2021 and you still can't make a program do z, how pathetic"
|
| Leaving aside the attack with "how pathetic", I can understand
| these sentiments from people who have been following the
| developments (or lack of it) with Signal for several years. That
| the main developers brush aside requests that are important for
| most people or ignore them and don't respond on those would make
| it quite frustrating for the users who care enough to write.
|
| Signal could do a lot better in connecting with the community of
| users who care to connect. Remember that the users have a stake
| in this, so dismissing their feedback as "this is free, don't ask
| for more" is actually condescending. Without users and users who
| evangelize the product in their circles, no such project can
| expand or thrive.
|
| Signal team, you could also practice being nicer and more
| attentive.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| I've read similar sentiments before. After reading between the
| lines it's often clear that the developers have not brushed
| aside a concern or ignored a request. Sometimes they've
| actually explained their side, but a user has not bothered
| searching and reading forum history, they've simply sprayed
| their keyboard into a text box with unreasonable and rude
| remarks.
|
| If I get a terse reply that says "We know this is a pain point,
| we're working on it!" then I take that in good faith and leave
| it be. But some find any reply an excuse to fuel their ranting.
|
| There are definitely some areas, particularly those of
| principles, where the foundation makes a hard line clear. Even
| if this goes against what I think is best, I respect their
| clear message that this is their stance and it's staying.
|
| Lastly I feel your remark that the team could be nicer is
| flagrantly unfounded. I have never come across any user being
| treated unkindly and without the attention one can expect from
| such a skewed user:resource ratio. I'm dismayed you've taken
| something I wrote for good and blemished it with an unfounded
| reprisal.
| wl wrote:
| The two biggest issues with Signal have been
|
| a) Using SGX (brushed aside) b) Inability to export and
| backup chats (ignored)
| DavidSJ wrote:
| I also am extremely frustrated by the inability to export
| and backup chats. In combination with mobile/desktop sync
| problems, it means that I have lots of personal memories on
| one device, with no way to get them off and protect them.
|
| There was no warning when I first installed Signal that the
| usual phone backup mechanism (via iTunes, in my case) would
| not backup this data, or that mobile/desktop syncing
| problems might mean that hundreds of messages just don't
| get synced to my other devices, and that this is expected
| behavior.
|
| So I'm angry, and I can't recommend Signal to others for
| this reason. And the devs just don't seem to care.
|
| I appreciate that it's an open-source project, and the
| developers have no obligation to develop new features. But
| this isn't really a feature request; certain sharp edges in
| a product are actively destructive if you don't warn the
| user about them. It's like someone handing out free food
| which turns out to be poisonous, and then saying, "What are
| you all complaining about? The food is free!"
|
| If any Signal developer sees this, I would personally be
| happy to have a discussion about compensating you for your
| time to fix this problem for the community. My email
| address is in my profile.
| crznp wrote:
| > So I'm angry, and I can't recommend Signal to others
| for this reason. And the devs just don't seem to care.
|
| Could have just been: "I can't recommend Signal to others
| for this reason."
|
| I read the "Please be nice" post as a request to leave
| out the part about being angry or assuming that the devs
| don't care. It is understandable that you feel that way,
| but saying so doesn't fix your issue. It does make other
| people feel bad.
| DavidSJ wrote:
| I guess I'm just saying I don't think it's a reasonable
| request, and this was my way of politely explaining why.
| It's okay for users to express anger over something like
| this. The fact that devs are doing volunteer work is
| great, but it doesn't exempt them from certain
| responsibilities (see my food analogy).
| marci wrote:
| b/ https://support.signal.org/hc/en-
| us/articles/360007059752-Ba... Don't know to what extent
| you can export, but you can at least make backups
| wl wrote:
| If you have an Android phone, yes, I suppose you can
| backup. But I don't.
|
| There's no backup procedure for iOS. There's a migration,
| but the phone you're migrating from has to be working at
| the time. So if it's destroyed, you're SOL. Also, it's
| really buggy and has never worked every time I've seen it
| attempted.
|
| The desktop instructions do not describe a backup. If you
| try to copy your old data over to a new machine in an
| attempt to preserve your chat history, you will break
| things. The procedure doesn't describe how to make things
| work, but rather how to unhose things once Signal has
| prevented you from doing what you want and blown up in
| your face to punish you. There is a way to export from
| the Desktop client, but it involves using sqlcipher and
| is an undocumented, unsupported, discouraged hack.
| greysonp wrote:
| Hi there, Signal Android developer here. I'm sorry if you've
| had any sort of negative interaction with Signal in the past. I
| would personally never dismiss anyone's feedback on the grounds
| that this is a free app (the linked post was written by a very
| kind community member, not a Signal employee, but I also don't
| believe they were being dismissive either). Given that Signal
| has no metrics, feedback provided online is one of the only
| tools we have to know if we're working on the right things.
|
| That being said, we _do_ have a lot of feedback to comb through
| every day, so if you don 't get response (or get a short one),
| the intention is not malicious -- it's sometimes just a result
| of having too much to read and too little time. But we truly do
| read nearly everything (particularly on Github), even if we
| don't have a comment on everything. I hope you continue to
| provide feedback!
| DavidSJ wrote:
| Hello, thank you for your comment and for your work on
| Signal.
|
| I wrote a comment here outlining my frustration over the lack
| of export ability in iOS:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25763997
|
| I feel this goes beyond simply not providing a "feature", but
| rather it is actively harmful to users, especially in
| combination with unreliable mobile/desktop sync. It means
| that people get their memories destroyed, without warning and
| without recourse.
|
| Would you be willing to have a conversation with me over
| email (address in profile)? I would like to discuss what can
| be done about this, and I would be open to compensating
| developers for their time.
| marci wrote:
| https://support.signal.org/hc/en-
| us/articles/360007059752-Ba...
| DavidSJ wrote:
| Yes, unfortunately this is inadequate. Note that only
| transfers to other iOS devices are supported, and also
| "your old device will delete your message history after
| the transfer is complete".
| politelemon wrote:
| > Signal could do a lot better in connecting with the community
| of users who care to connect. Remember that the users have a
| stake in this, so dismissing their feedback as "this is free,
| don't ask for more" is actually condescending. Without users
| and users who evangelize the product in their circles, no such
| project can expand or thrive.
|
| > Signal team, you could also practice being nicer and more
| attentive.
|
| I've been interacting with Signal and observing Signal
| interacting with people for several years now and I have
| observed the opposite of what you're saying here. They are
| nice, they are attentive, and they do a great job of connecting
| with their community. They don't always do what I ask, and
| that's OK.
|
| I will be a little provocative even, and say that you're
| deliberately misrepresenting what has been said in their post
| (dismissing their feedback as "this is free, don't ask for
| more" is actually condescending) - that's bad faith, and maybe
| their post is aimed at you. It will be beneficial if you
| attempt to separate the emotion and try rereading what they
| have said.
| nicbou wrote:
| I often find myself thinking the same about other projects.
|
| A good example is Nextcloud, who keeps growing its feature
| list, but never implements any of them properly. It's a fair
| line of questioning when your Nextcloud install borked itself
| for the third time in a year, and Android synchronisation
| doesn't work reliably.
| cottsak wrote:
| Well said.
| Daniel_sk wrote:
| "Running a successful open source project is just Good Will
| Hunting in reverse, where you start out as a respected genius and
| end up being a janitor who gets into fights"
| https://twitter.com/cra/status/1306694315624796160
| salmon wrote:
| I love this
| cheph wrote:
| Not sure what people see in Signal. Having the client be open
| source without having the infrastructure decentralized is pretty
| pointless and just sets it up for failing again when the
| organization controlling the central infrastructure starts acting
| poorly.
|
| But that being said, if you don't like Signal, just don't use it.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| yeah. you are free to fork but if you do, dont use trademarked
| name which is fine but also not connect to official server
| because brand.
| cheph wrote:
| But also, if I fork the server, where central control can be
| applied, nobody else will be on my server. The client is only
| half the problem, and the most insignificant part in my view.
| I would rather have proprietary client with decentralized
| infrastructure than the other way round if I could only
| choose one of the two.
| orestarod wrote:
| Of course they can stop being nice at any moment and start
| doing nefarious things. But having the client open source means
| that when this happens, you can stop using it without data
| leaks, and until that happens, you can also be sure about the
| security of your data and exchanges. As a plus, you can run
| your own server for you and a group of
| friends/collaborators/whatever, if you wish. In my eyes that's
| a vastly better alternative than (I would say most, but it
| would be inaccurate) all the non-decentralized non-federative
| alternatives. Plus, their whole mission being secure messaging
| (as opposed to a nice-to-have side feature) will probably make
| it harder to do a full turn soon, I guess. Even if Signal is on
| to something eventually, I believe it does no harm to take full
| advantage of it while we can, as long as we are aware of a
| potential turn of events.
| bigiain wrote:
| For some of us, "the organization controlling the central
| infrastructure" is _way_ more trustworthy to not start "acting
| poorly" than any of the alternatives.
|
| For me, Apple comes a close second maybe, but lack of
| interoperability between iMessage and Android makes it a non
| starter amongst my friends/family. Even assuming some self-
| hosted version of an E2EE messaging service exists and I could
| convince enough of my family/friends to use it, I then become
| "the organization controlling the central infrastructure" who
| risks "acting poorly" due to incompetence or lack of resources
| to keep that self hoisted infrastructure running and secured.
|
| Signal is not perfect. I don't agree with all of Moxie's
| choices (I'd strongly prefer it not to need to be linked to a
| real world phone number) and I strongly disagree with some of
| his choices (I get angry every time a "$name (someone in my
| contact list) has just joined Signal" notification arrives.
|
| But it's better than the alternatives for me. And for enough of
| my friends/family that it's my most commonly used comms channel
| outside work.
| cheph wrote:
| To me the end result of this shifting landscape is something
| which has the attributes of Matrix. Matrix may have issues,
| but it's architecture and implementation is very resistant to
| bad actors.
|
| You can fork the server code and the server instances of
| matrix servers and have it work with existing servers and
| clients. Without this capability it is a matter of time until
| bad actors kill it and everyone moves to the next thing. The
| problem is that "trust" is not enough.
|
| You trusting Signal operators more than Whatsapp operators
| does not fix the problem that we cannot run these services on
| trust.
| fartcannon wrote:
| There appears to be a powerful force pushing signal right now.
|
| WhatsApp had the same force behind it when it first hit
| mainstream. I think it signals something nefarious.
| rbancroft wrote:
| I noticed this too. Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey have both
| tweeted weird endorsements of Signal lately.
| ipodopt wrote:
| It makes sense if you look at the founders history:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike#Biography
|
| He co-founded WhatsApp with Brian Action. They both wanted
| cash but also felt bad for selling out WhatsApp.
|
| So Moxie founded Signal and Brain contributed. A new clean
| room project under a non-profit with an endowment. Made as
| what WhatsApp should of been if they didn't sell out.
|
| And to the commenter below he work for Jack Dorsey as the
| head of cyber security. And Jack supported this project from
| the get go. They probably like each other. Go figure.
|
| I think this comment is low effort, malicious, and
| unreasoned.
| orestarod wrote:
| There is a meta play at worst. Like, someone showering you
| with 1 million dollars, no obligations and no strings
| attached, but having an ulterior motive. But, as in that
| scenario, it's in our hands to make the best use of what we
| are given.
| im3w1l wrote:
| > WhatsApp had the same force behind it when it first hit
| mainstream.
|
| I don't remember this, mind elaborating?
| Markoff wrote:
| TLDR don't ask devs/managers to do anything, they are just small
| company living of 50M donation and other donations
|
| I mean FFS Signal didn't even allowed until 2018 or 2019 to
| select more than one picture to share and people asked about it
| for years. How long it took Mozilla to implement pull down to
| refresh on mobile version until 2020, 5+ years?
|
| These devs WANT their product to fail, they don't want success,
| they don't want users, they just wanna get their weekly money and
| play and implement useless features nobody asked for. This is
| what happens with horrible management in Mozilla with Firefox
| going now extinct, Signal (pretty much same as Firefox not
| growing ant user base, even the uptick in recent days in molecule
| (drop would be overestimate) in Whatsapp ocean) and Wikipedia
| which is also spending money on projects completely unrelated to
| Wikipedia site, yet they dare every year ask users for donations
| to keep Wikipedia running without ads, while reality is they have
| money for years to run and if they didn't waste them on stupid
| things even longer.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| tl;dr: Don't make false assertions and throw insults in the
| exact way that you just have.
| clever_king wrote:
| It is like codecademy forums. I am talking of UI I think creator
| is in hurry for launching website.
| blue-dragonfly wrote:
| It works both ways. I'm not addressing the Signal project in
| particular, but maintainers of free software projects need to be
| polite and professional (in words and deeds) as well. Users who
| take the time to investigate bugs and get involved in fixing them
| don't have "infinite resources to pour down the drain" either.
| Maintainers presumably derive some value, even if not monetary,
| from their involvement in these projects. Having more users than
| they can handle is a problem that comes with the territory of a
| popular project--and needs a solution just like the more
| technical ones. (I translate the term "toxic users" as modern-
| speak for "people who aren't exactly aligned with me".) I often
| contribute to alpha status free software, so I don't always gain
| reciprocal benefit--but I do like to help others. How many times
| have you seen an open issue or pull request on a project that
| isn't addressed at all after years? Often, in my experience.
|
| Last year, I was working on my free software project, and I heard
| repeated blasts of a car horn from my driveway. I have advanced
| arthritis, so it took me a while to get up and go to the door--I
| wasn't expecting anybody. The car drove off before I could get to
| the door. The next day the same car was in front of my mailbox.
| The door of the mail box was drooping down. The car stopped on
| the side of the road, so I had enough time to hobble out and
| approach it. It was pouring rain--I had my shirt up over my head
| to keep the water off. I found out it was my new neighbor. She
| was doing improvements on her home and needed my signature on an
| HOA document. She said, "I'm disabled, and I need a favor. Also,
| I broke your mail box putting the document in it." I said, "I'm
| disabled too". She laughed, "Oh, I see."
|
| The moral of the story being, Signal, be glad you don't have to
| deal with people who want something from you IRL. :)
| jkingsbery wrote:
| I've come to the conclusion in the past couple years that the
| world would be a better place if adults were forced to watch
| Daniel Tiger episodes. So many things it covers (like, how to be
| kind, how not to over react to bad news, how to give a proper
| apology or show gratitude) seem like they ought to be simple but
| turn out to be rare.
| Bishop_ wrote:
| One of the best parts of OSS is that if the maintainers don't
| have the time or the priorities to solve your problem you can fix
| it yourself and get your change upstream, or fork it. It blows my
| mind that some people can take OSS for granted.
| buzzert wrote:
| What happened with the developer of Mastodon?
| shp0ngle wrote:
| It doesn't seem to be the main developer of Mastodon, but some
| developer of some popular software Mastodon-related called
| Fedilab.
|
| https://framagit.org/tom79/fedilab/-/issues/498
|
| > Fedilab is a multifunctional Android client to access the
| distributed Fediverse, consisting of microblogging, photo
| sharing and video hosting
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| not with mastodon developer but developer of foss clients for
| mastodon, peertube and others. the toxic community forced him
| to quit all social media
| thien123 wrote:
| I completely agree, please behave politely
| earth2mars wrote:
| what if the competition is making these comments intentionally to
| fiddle with FOSS developers? People need to be strong and above
| internet comments
| spiznnx wrote:
| I think the community forums will have to rapidly evolve to deal
| with the influx of new users.
|
| If you look at successful, very large internet communities,
| almost none of them look like traditional forums.
|
| I think wiki-like features could be important here, so that users
| can maintain high-quality references to point to during
| discourse. For example, reddit has subreddit wikis, and stack
| overflow allows questions to be repeatedly edited by the
| community.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I was the original architect (but no longer maintain) a fairly
| ambitious FOSS project that is the worldwide standard for a very
| particular demographic.
|
| That demographic is notorious for a propensity to be "not nice."
|
| I kept it going for a decade, sometimes receiving rather...
| _strident_..."feedback." I was called a tyrant (and worse) for
| refusing to deviate from its Core Mission, in order to make it
| easier for certain individuals to use in narrow contexts (that
| type of request is quite common, if you manage a general-purpose
| infrastructure project).
|
| I learned (slowly) to be polite and respectful in my responses,
| even when approached in an abusive manner. The times I "hit back"
| (I'm good at that) were quite self-destructive, and did not do
| the project any favors.
|
| My tyranny paid off, but it took a while. The project has been
| handed over to a team of really sharp folks that will, hopefully,
| never have to deal with the kind of crap I put up with. They will
| get a great deal of positive feedback, and very little of the
| asinine, juvenile garbage I got. That makes me happy. They don't
| deserve it, and I'm grateful they took it over, making it much
| better than I ever could.
|
| It was worth it. If I had to do it all over again, I would (but
| I'm glad I don't have to). I'm a tough, stubborn old coot that
| can take it, and I knew what I was getting into, when I started
| (I'm quite familiar with the demographic). Even so, there were a
| number of times I wanted to bin the project and walk away. I'm
| glad I didn't (and there's many thousands of people that are glad
| I didn't, but don't know it).
|
| Sometimes, we do stuff for reasons other than money, property,
| and prestige.
| nafey wrote:
| > That demographic is notorious for a propensity to be "not
| nice."
|
| FOSS for goblins?
| severine wrote:
| The BMLT, I guess: https://bmlt.app/
|
| _The Basic Meeting List Toolbox (BMLT) is a full stack, open
| source solution for managing Narcotics Anonymous meetings._
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> FOSS for goblins?_
|
| More like Uruk-Hai
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| My first guess would be any gaming community.
| exabrial wrote:
| Just want to say thank you!
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| People will exploit and abuse you, knowingly or unknowingly. The
| amount of idiots and assholes will never go to zero. Never. The
| good news is that there are usually mechanisms to stop them.
|
| 1) If people aren't being respectful, block them.
|
| 2) If they put little effort into bug reports/feature requests
| and are not respectful of your free time - close the issue, link
| to a generic explanation why.
|
| 3) If you are not being compensated and the project burns you
| out: stop doing it.
|
| There is usually nobody else who can or will do these things for
| you. Grow a spine, have self respect, value your time, learn from
| the experience.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Ah yes, the classic "if you are being abused it's your own
| fault". Even have the "grow a spine" trope in there.
| nhumrich wrote:
| Its not so much, "it's your own fault" as it is,"You can
| still take control of the situation"
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Yes, there is some Buddhist-flavoured insight in there.
|
| 1) you cannot control the world around you
|
| 2) you can only control how you react to the world around
| you
|
| 3) to tie your happiness to things you cannot control is to
| suffer
|
| Once you internalize this, you will identify attempts to
| circumvent this truth, and why they are ultimately self-
| defeating.
| Majestic121 wrote:
| Pretty interesting that you map this mentality to
| Buddhism, when I knew it from Stoicism.
|
| I wonder if they ever influenced each other, or if those
| principles where 'discovered' independently ?
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| To me it certainly seems like they share some core
| insights. The main difference is meditation, which is
| really the core of Buddhism.
| drng wrote:
| It may be poorly put, but I think there's some truth to it:
| your most effective strategies for dealing with this kind of
| abuse are those that involve changes to your own behaviors.
| Trying to solve the problem The Right Way (i.e. at the
| source) is high effort and low (or no) reward. I don't think
| advising the pragmatic approach here suggests that abuse is
| the fault of the abused.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| There are three groups; the toxic, their targets, and the
| group saying "grow a spine" every time the targets try to
| make progress against the toxic.
| bzb6 wrote:
| Yes, if someone abuses you and you don't get rid of them then
| it's your fault. Unless you have a magic wand that can change
| the behaviour of others.
| r00fus wrote:
| This advice does not scale. At scale, exploitation and abuse
| require structural mechanisms and a culture/mindset to combat
| it.
| kemitchell wrote:
| > Grow a spine, have self respect, value your time, learn from
| the experience.
|
| Having read the linked post, I sincerely doubt Adam Piggott
| lacks a spine, self-respect, a proper sense of his time's
| worth, or an inability to learn from experience.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| I think the word "kind" is more appropriate here than "nice".
| Being nice is shallow (surface-level, appearances, civility,
| tolerance...), whereas kindness is profound (empathy, connection,
| harmony, respect). The former is certainly better than nothing,
| but the latter is transformative and radically more powerful.
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| I agree but the article was written in a knee-jerk fashion and
| once I'd written the title I felt the need to repeat it a few
| times to help push the point :-)
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Just scroll past if something isn't nice or offends you.
|
| It's easy to dismiss this argument as it's obviously weak (it
| doesn't make any sense) but it sure seems to be a popular thing
| to say. Why do people think their right to act any way they want
| supercedes the right of others to not have to put up with trolls
| and jerks? Do these people have social problems, are they
| legitimately not smart enough to see the problem, or what is it?
| raxxorrax wrote:
| I doubt the people making that argument and those that spam
| toxic messages are necessarily the same.
|
| It is a coping mechanism because it makes no sense to be angry
| at a user that doesn't even care that much in the first place.
|
| From that perspective it makes no sense to be angry at
| messages.
|
| Doesn't always work, obviously, but it is the best way to deal
| with it.
| scoutt wrote:
| > this argument as it's obviously weak (it doesn't make any
| sense)
|
| It's the only mature and sane thing to do. Otherwise, what's
| the alternative?
|
| > Do these people have social problems
|
| I have a theory split in two parts:
|
| 1) Because it's online/remote and anonymous: I think that in
| 99% of the cases, when face-to-face, the toxic persons wouldn't
| even dare to say what they say online.
|
| 2) I learnt that most of the times toxic persons are in the
| 15-25 years olds range. They are just kids that do not know any
| better. If a 15 years old kid starts to insult me in the
| street, I'll just ignore him. It's just a kid.
| enriquto wrote:
| > the right of others to not have to put up with trolls and
| jerks
|
| This "right" does not exist. Scrolling past stupid or offensive
| stuff is an appropriate thing to do.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Then let's rewrite that without the word that bothers you:
|
| "Why do people think their desire to act any way they want
| supersedes the desire of others to not have to put up with
| trolls and jerks?"
|
| Because, y'know, that still seems like a reasonable question.
| wruza wrote:
| Maybe because trolls and jerks have no goals beyond heating
| the discussion? Most calm and constructive forums and
| mailing lists I've ever seen had an unwritten rule (written
| actually, but who reads 'em, right?) to ignore "hot"
| messages or at least the hot tone in these. It doesn't
| prove that it's the only way, but once the reply is done,
| every other user feels urge to add to that, because it is
| in a human nature that something said repeatedly or upvoted
| has more weight than something stated once, but it is
| harder if you're first (crowd psychology). It is a culture
| of a public place (a thing that supports healthy
| cooperation) and they have to learn it, no matter how
| strong is their desire to respond.
| bigiain wrote:
| One forum I'm on has a very strong community standard of
| "This place is like a local pub. If you show up mouthing
| off you'll be called on it by the regulars who may all
| look like they're shit talking each other, but who have
| mostly spent time together in real life, and who as a
| group have each other's backs against outsiders. If you
| keep it up you'll be asked to leave, possibly if needed
| by the managers (forum mods) who'll ban you for a short
| or extended time."
|
| It works remarkably well for that particular group of
| people. It's almost certainly turned a lot of people away
| who _may_ have pulled their head in and become
| contributing members of that community, but largely they
| don't care too much. The forum has stayed small (it was
| recently characterised only a bit unfairly as "12 cranky
| old cunts" by someone who wouldn't/couldn't live up to
| the community standards there.)
| enriquto wrote:
| > "Why do people think their desire to act any way they
| want supersedes the desire of others to not have to put up
| with trolls and jerks?"
|
| There are two answers to this question, a "not nice" answer
| and a "nice" answer.
|
| _Answer 1:_ Because it does. Freedom of speech is more
| important than "your desire of not putting up with things
| you dislike"; so yes, the rights of trolls do actually
| supersede the comfort of the trolled.
|
| _Answer 2:_ It doesn 't really matter. Just ignore the
| stupid trolls and go on with your life.
| tremon wrote:
| Freedom of speech does not validate abuse, no matter how
| you spin it.
| enriquto wrote:
| I agree. But saying stupid or abhorrent things is not
| (necessarily) abuse.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| It doesn't validate it the slightest, but it is a common
| problem that people claim to be abused if they don't like
| the content, which results in obvious problems.
|
| Minorities profit most significantly from freedom of
| speech.
| bigiain wrote:
| Freedom of speech is genuinely important. Critical even.
|
| But it certainly does not extend to my lounge room, Your
| right to freedom of speech does not mean you get to act
| like a troll or jerk in my house, or to expect to be able
| to behave in ways you think I should "just scroll past".
| You will be asked to "be nice", and asked to leave if you
| choose not to (and ejected of you continue and refuse to
| leave). Your "rights as a troll" do not superseded my
| comfort in my home.
|
| Your (assuming you're in the US) "Freedom Of Speech 1st
| Amendment" rights mean your government may not pass laws
| to inhibit your free expression. It does not mean your
| choice to freely express yourself will be free of
| consequences (as the well known "yelling 'Fire!" in a
| theatre" example illustrates), nor does it mean that
| owners/managers of private spaces are required to put up
| with your free speech in their venues.
|
| Whether an internet forum is closer to a private home or
| Speaker's Corner in a public park is a good question. But
| claiming the forum regulars and owners should "Just
| ignore the stupid trolls and go on with your life." is
| not the only possible answer to that.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| sedatk wrote:
| Maybe, there should be a Kickstarter for GitHub issues to
| prioritize them. You can prioritize them by money put in, and
| whoever wants their feature IMMEDIATELY, puts their money on it
| so, necessary resources can get allocated, and the rest can shut
| up about something not being done.
| chme wrote:
| Something like https://www.bountysource.com/ ?
| aarchi wrote:
| This looks like a great service. There doesn't look like
| there's a way to post a bounty for a repo that's not already
| signed up though.
| Y-bar wrote:
| There used to be a Signal project on Bountysource with a
| bunch of pledged money, but I can't find it anymore. I had
| pledged. Odd, I can even find the PayPal receipt for my
| pledge.
|
| Edit, found it:
| https://www.bountysource.com/teams/whispersystems the old
| links did not work
| 0800LUCAS wrote:
| The entitlement those people have is ridiculous. They are
| literally not paying anything for the service and come in
| demanding things.
|
| It's funny that all these people moving away from WhatsApp (for
| no good reason, IMO. Facebook can't read your private or group
| messages anyways thanks to e2e) and think the free app they
| downloaded will have the same level of features as the one funded
| by a multi-billion company.
|
| Get real.
| pictur wrote:
| excessive and unnecessary emotional
| proactivesvcs wrote:
| Is the exact demographic I was aiming for when I wrote the
| post, with the aim of making them stop for a moment to gather
| themselves, before being part of the problem.
| kumarsw wrote:
| Is this a typical outcome of an open-source project that gains
| widespread popularity? It's a trend that popular projects get
| criticism that is too personal. This is a tricky problem. The
| obvious answer is to be anonymous on GitHub and not care when
| complaints get too shrill. This hurts the professional value of
| being an open-source contributor. How to achieve a balance
| between this and the need to insulate oneself from haters in the
| (unlikely) case your open-source project hits the big time?
|
| I recall a similar story, I think it was the guy who wrote the
| Python library for the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins. In his case, I
| think he used his main email for commits and that was included by
| the Debian package maintainers who refused to change it.
| PIKAL wrote:
| The guy who runs signal said that he believes science isn't about
| discovering truth. I still can't wrap my head around it.
| throwaway19991 wrote:
| Posted one day ago? Sorry Adam, I imagine that you're witnessing
| the refined etiquette of the Parler refugee influx.
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