[HN Gopher] Open source projects should run office hours
___________________________________________________________________
Open source projects should run office hours
Author : tosh
Score : 576 points
Date : 2021-03-05 01:08 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (simonwillison.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (simonwillison.net)
| jonas_kgomo wrote:
| You can try, perfect for this https://officehours.com/
| obiwanpallav1 wrote:
| So, the future users/contributors can personally talk to the
| owner/maintainer of the OSS projects. This is good for both the
| parties. The owner/maintainer can get a huge set of
| idea/directions to take forward along with instilling some
| confidence in their users. This idea seems great to me.
|
| Also, this looks vaugely similar to the Pre Sales/Sales call as
| well.
| andrew_ wrote:
| https://liberamanifesto.com/
|
| I'm an old, and any sense of obligation in the FOSS space, even
| self-imposed or projected, is bewildering to me.
| anotherfish wrote:
| Never heard of "office hours" used this way. Must be a US thing.
|
| Its a good idea. Schedule a session with an expert or someone who
| is working on the thing you're interested in / supporting.
|
| I'd definitely link it to money so that the expert doesn't get
| overwhelmed / (ab)used by time wasters.
| hotsauceror wrote:
| "Office hours" is something you hear in college. It's a stated
| time of the week where the professor will be in their office
| and students can stop by to discuss course material,
| assignments, and ask questions in a one-on-one situation.
| franklampard wrote:
| no, false, incorrect
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| People who want office hours should pay open source projects to
| do so
| turtlebits wrote:
| I think the opposite is true as well. Having office hours will
| lead to more companies using and paying for support contracts.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Monetizing by upselling to longer consulting sessions is
| discussed in the article.
| 0mp wrote:
| FreeBSD runs office hours pretty regularly now.
|
| https://wiki.freebsd.org/OfficeHours
| pabs3 wrote:
| Software Freedom Conservancy is one such project, they have
| weekly IRC chats on Thursdays and have done for about a year now.
|
| https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/mar/12/virtualchat/
| https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/jul/29/virtualchat2/
|
| I think the Reproducible Builds folks were also planning to have
| an office hours, not sure if it lasted though.
|
| https://lists.reproducible-builds.org/pipermail/rb-general/2...
| renewiltord wrote:
| The Airbyte guys do this but honestly I find more utility in the
| fact that they have an open slack that they're responsive on.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I have to admit I am convinced.
|
| It hits the big issues of talking to your users and probably
| acting as a good filter for finding contributors.
|
| I am slowly reawakening some projects from deep freeze, and when
| / if they garner any users I will try this ... which of course is
| the downside of the idea. You need users :-)
| simonw wrote:
| Since about half of this thread is (reasonably) taking offense at
| the implication from the headline that this is yet another demand
| for free labor from open source maintainers, I'd like to
| emphasize this sentence:
|
| "I'd like to encourage more open source project maintainers to
| consider doing something similar"
|
| It's a matter of fact that many people (myself included) form
| opinions based on the headline without reading the article - so I
| wish I'd worked a little harder coming up with a headline that
| better encapsulated that message!
|
| "Open source projects should consider office hours" perhaps?
|
| I'm going to change that headline on my blog now.
| simonw wrote:
| I re-titled it "Open source projects: consider running office
| hours" - if a bunch of different people all misinterpret
| something the same way that implies poor communication on my
| part.
| C4stor wrote:
| No it doesn't imply that. Your article is crystal clear, and
| makes a valid point based on your personal experience. So,
| thanks for writing it, and don't bother too much for internet
| points !
| bombcar wrote:
| @dang - can we get the HN title updated to match this?
| aconsult1 wrote:
| I think the problem here is that a lot of people (myself
| included) will understand the term "office hours" as being
| the typical time window that people work in the office - i.e.
| 8am to 5pm.
|
| This might be exacerbated with non-native english speakers
| which you'll see a lot around here.
|
| The new title you suggested doesn't fix anything (at least
| for me it doesn't). Maybe consider using more commonly known
| terms to refer to the fact that your opening up you calendar
| to video calls with anyone that shows up?
| simonw wrote:
| I considered that point of confusion too, but I decided I'm
| OK with people who are unfamiliar with the term "office
| hours" needing to click through and read the article. I
| picked "consider running office hours" because hopefully
| the word "running" there is slightly less likely to imply
| "consider only working 9-5pm".
|
| I've added a note about the better German term
| "Sprechstunde" to both the article and my Calendly
| description: https://calendly.com/swillison/datasette-
| office-hours
| loeg wrote:
| FreeBSD started doing this semi-regularly last year:
| https://wiki.freebsd.org/OfficeHours
| rglullis wrote:
| Interesting. Last week I finally managed to get Github and Stripe
| to approve the GH sponsors page for my project, and one of the
| "rewards" that I am offering to the higher tiers is access to a
| periodic "office-hours" conference call.
|
| Now I'm wondering if I should make it available for the lower
| tiers as well.
| rswail wrote:
| For those that don't understand (and I'm an Aussie so was a bit
| confused too), in US colleges, Professors have "office hours"
| which are pre-assigned times when they are available for 1-2-1
| Q&A etc.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I have deep aversion to "Open source projects should run office
| hours" title.
|
| Maybe "Office hours may be a good idea for open source projects"?
| This would not suggest obligation.
|
| In general, fact that someone created or maintains or supports
| open source projects should not be considered to create any
| obligations beyond lack of malice and abuse.
|
| I am not obligated to support any bugs, create any features and
| it is perfectly fine to delete all my repos at any time (unless I
| declared otherwise).
|
| I am also not obligated to support anything, help with anything,
| there is no guarantee of uptime, office hours, resolving issues
| or anything else.
|
| If you want obligations, guarantees or anything like that - feel
| free to hire a given developer.
|
| Many such things are good ideas and some people may decide to
| promise them (if you describe something as secure then you
| declared to handle security issues timely). But I reject idea of
| being obligated to do any of above.
| tikiman163 wrote:
| The point of this article was to address the fact that open
| source project rarely get good user feedback. Developers
| wouldn't necessarily be the person offering time to talk with
| users, it would be the project owner. I know open-source
| projects don't have traditional roles like a product owner or
| scrum master, but there's still somebody prioritizing a list of
| features that have been requested. Offering to meet with real
| users provides valuable insight into what they actually need.
| This can help with prioritizating features, and even help with
| making decisions about whether to approve a random PR you get
| for a feature you didn't put into the backlog based on whether
| it might make future real needs harder to achieve.
| coliveira wrote:
| You're completely right. However, I notice a change in behavior
| in developers during the last decade. They view open source as
| an extension of their duties as software developers, i.e.,
| something that they have to do. Following this point of view,
| they consider that working on a project brings commitments as
| if they were in a paid job, and started projecting this belief
| on others. I think this is very disturbing.
| akavel wrote:
| You may have gotten this in reverse direction: it's rather
| that users of open-source software often desire support, and
| sometimes speak about it, and developers then tend to have
| hard time managing psychological boundaries with regards to
| answering that desire/expectation. Which is generally a
| nontrivial thing between people in any relation.
| KDJohnBrown wrote:
| Interesting historical note, this is how Chef was born.
|
| Adam Jacobs of Chef was running a Puppet consulting company
| (hjksolutions). He ran into a bug (#1010) that he couldn't
| solve and used up a ton of Luke's time. Luke worked hard on
| it but couldn't reproduce it and after devoting a week or
| two on it told Adam that he was the only one with this
| problem and would need to pay him as a consultant for any
| further effort.
|
| Adam was (is) an incredibly pushy jerk and _demanded_ that
| Luke, who wasn't making a penny off of Puppet, put his life
| on hold to fix this for Adam's customers.
|
| Luke basically said "fuck you, pay me" so Adam started Chef
| (a billion dollar company).
|
| User's sense of entitlement is powerful.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| User's sense of entitlement is probably driven by many
| companies astroturfing FOSS.
|
| People are getting used to the freemium model popular in
| software, apps, games, and the "free" model of
| gmail/youtube/facebook (where you pay with your privacy).
| Aeolun wrote:
| I have no expectations of other open-source maintainers
| that I don't have of myself.
| imtringued wrote:
| Yes, the idea behind the office hours is that you can point
| people at your calendar. If the calendar is full then
| that's how it is. Maybe the team has to grow to accommodate
| the increased demand but the maintainer certainly won't
| spend an extra hour working on the project beyond the time
| he allocated.
|
| Compare that to the usual issue grind. You feel compelled
| to respond as fast as quickly and maybe even spend your
| whole day because you know that the backlog will grow worse
| tomorrow.
| corobo wrote:
| So don't do it? If it doesn't work for you, remove yourself
| from the target audience of this post lmao
|
| Classic SHOULD vs MUST.
|
| This comment thread is being upvoted because.. wait we're not
| supposed to suggest someone didn't read the article here are we
| :)
| kjrose wrote:
| It's a clickbait title. That being said the real idea is the
| freemium consulting concept. Basically open source Devs give
| free consulting for a short time and then upselling to full on
| consulting for extended periods at full price.
|
| In theory it could be a way to fund open source dev.
| simonw wrote:
| It's actually not so much about free consulting where I help
| them, it's more the other way round: they help me figure out
| how to improve the software by showing me what they've built
| or talking about what they want to achieve.
|
| It's more of a market research exercise than freemium
| consulting.
|
| That's not to say it couldn't also turn into a profitable
| exercise through up-selling consultancy, but that's not the
| primary goal.
| kjrose wrote:
| Oh, I get the idea that the market research has a benefit
| as well. However, a major issue with Open Source
| development is funding it so that it becomes self-
| sustainable, especially for situations where the code
| requires significant work to keep it up to date.
|
| I feel the gem in this article is the freemium idea for
| consulting on open source development.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > In general, fact that someone created or maintains or
| supports open source projects should not be considered to
| create any obligations beyond lack of malice and abuse.
|
| I think we need to separate open source products and open
| source projects. A product being the main product of a for-
| profit company or a marketing tool by a for-profit company and
| a project being something that someone released just to be
| nice, to show off, etc.
|
| I literally tried to use a dev tooling SaaS service their
| offical integration broke my build in 3 different ways. What
| makes this all the worse is that the integration shouldn't even
| be enabled in test mode. It was configured not to, but still it
| broke my build in 3 different ways. I literally decided to use
| a competitor straight away. But wanted to at least let them
| know of the issues. The tickets to their offical integration
| were responded to by volunteers. After a few days I noticed no
| employees of this company that raised 65 Million had shown up
| to look into build breaking bugs in their dev tooling product.
| I tweeted that they were relying on volunteers to do support.
| The CTO said that was absolutely not true then said with open
| source people will volunteer and that is a benefit. So in the
| one tweet is contradicted himself, weirdly this tweet was well
| liked. They went on to use the fact I am free to use a self
| hosted OSS version of the product, support is a bit much to
| ask. My issue wasn't that they had volunteers helping out, it
| was that it was literally only volunteers. The volunteers
| rightly pointed out they're volunteers and said the company
| provides paid support. Then went on to say that the company
| won't be able to help since they write and maintain the product
| and they're the domain experts for this area. Again, relying...
| Both the issues ended up being closed because "We don't think
| it's our code and we can't reproduct". Considering these are
| build breaking bugs that you will encounter while onboarding to
| the paid product that response is not acceptable. It is
| acceptable in this is free and unoffical.
|
| Open Source is not an excuse to be unprofessional. Saying "Well
| you don't have to use our paid product you can use OSS" when
| someone points out the support provided for the paid product is
| unprofessional and is not a valid excuse for providing crappy
| support. Saying this is GitHub and not a valid place to expect
| a company to support their techincal products is not
| professional. As an industry, we need to step away from the
| unprofessionalism that open source has brought to the table.
| People literally have talks saying do open source it's good for
| your professional career and in the day tweet complaining and
| asking if an open source project they use to boost their
| professional career is dead.
|
| Honestly, I think free open source for companies should be a
| thing of the past and we should move towards paid license with
| paid support. The number of companies that will be completely
| screwed if one over worked guy in Milan decides to stop working
| on a hobby project is unacceptable.
|
| We should be creating obligiations on things that are clearly
| for professional gain and putting a price tag on those
| obligations.
|
| /rant
| watwut wrote:
| I agree with you, but the article is not about that.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I referred specifically to the title in my comment.
| danaliv wrote:
| Yes, we're aware. The criticism is that you didn't engage
| with the substance of the actual idea, and instead spawned
| a ten-page thread about something the article doesn't say.
| [deleted]
| simonw wrote:
| Headline changed to "Open source projects: consider running
| office hours"
| lolsal wrote:
| Hey you responded to my comments elsewhere, but I just saw
| this - this definitely changes the tone for me, thank you!
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Sadly I can not edit my comment, in this case it would be
| useful :(
| simonw wrote:
| The curse of snappy titles. A clearer version of my message is
| in the third paragraph:
|
| "I'd like to encourage more open source project maintainers to
| consider doing something similar."
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I 100% agree with that version!
| taberiand wrote:
| I just mentally prefix titles like this with [The author's
| opinion is that...]
| mcherm wrote:
| I saw the title and thought to myself, "No one has the right to
| tell open source volunteers how to spend their time! The only
| way an article with that title is acceptable is if it's talking
| about benefits to the DEVELOPER, not the user."
|
| Then I read the article and it IS using "should" in the sense
| of "I found this beneficial, you may too" rather than "this is
| an obligation".
| 1f60c wrote:
| For me (a non-native English speaker) the title was confusing
| for a related, but entirely different reason: it's referring
| to the kind of "office hours" a professor might have, not
| saying that you "should" work on your open source project
| _during_ office hours (i.e. from Monday through Friday from 9
| AM till 5 PM).
| [deleted]
| nxpnsv wrote:
| I don't think this is about obligations. I feel the developer
| had a hugely positive experience in inviting interested
| strangers for 20 minute chats and wanted to spread the
| positivity. Seems like a nice person, with a nice project, and
| clearly some extra time available.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I referred specifically to the title in my comment.
|
| It is part of things personally irritating to me, and
| something what is biggest threat to small open source
| projects that I like.
|
| People are mistaken in thinking that having an open source
| project implies any obligation beyond lack of malice.
|
| And people tired by dealing with that are one of top reason
| why open source projects disappear or are never created.
| shoo wrote:
| Rule of thumb when speaking or writing: replace "should"
| with "could". Simple way to avoid implying obligation.
| Qwertious wrote:
| "could" is true but irrelevant and therefore implies
| subtext. I don't think "could" would be much better, it
| ought to just be re-phrased as a suggestion in the first
| place.
| hewrin10 wrote:
| So we "should" replace "should" with "could"? XD
| shoo wrote:
| You could.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I would.
| whizzter wrote:
| The title is kinda unclear for someone non-English/US, for
| me office hours only means the actual hours when things are
| worked on (rather than any kind of availability time).
|
| So skimming the title it quickly I read it as "Open source
| projects should run on office hours" since my mind filled
| that in, kinda implied that someone in another part of the
| world should adjust their life hours to contribute to OSS.
|
| (Yes after reading the article i realized that it was wrong
| but this is about the title)
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I recognized that it refers to some regular hours when
| person may be contacted for discussion.
|
| Still, I am deeply opposed to formulating in ways that
| suggests any form of obligation/entitlement/expectation.
|
| Though I expect that in many cases it would be a good and
| useful idea!
| bregma wrote:
| The difference in usage is not localized English: it's
| cultural student/academic vs. employed.
|
| To a student with no professional experience, "office
| hours" are posted times when a professor is available to
| further mentor and guide a student. "office hours" are
| designated times outside of the scheduled class times and
| professors are generally required to provide them so
| others can benefit.
|
| To a professional and others with white-collar jobs,
| "office hours" are hours are times when an employee must
| be seen by a manager to be considered working. Times
| outside of the scheduled work times are called "outside
| of office hours" and employees are generally expected to
| provides them so others can benefit.
| okamiueru wrote:
| To clarify the distinction is both academic AND
| language/culture. The concept of professorial office
| hours, and calling it "office hours" is not universal to
| all of academia, as people there speak different
| languages, and use then different words for things. Even
| if they might also use English, it doesn't mean they
| would call it that.
| [deleted]
| ddoeth wrote:
| I think the authors explanation with the german word
| "Sprechstunde" is really great. There is a clear
| distinction between "Arbeitszeit" which is the working
| time and the "Sprechstunde" which is the time someone is
| available to talk to.
| simonw wrote:
| I added that paragraph about fifteen minutes ago based on
| feedback in the comments here.
| [deleted]
| msravi wrote:
| I'm not a native english speaker either, but typically,
| in American usage, "office hours" refers to published,
| allocated hours for someone, such as a professor at a
| university, to allow walk-ins where (s)he can answer
| students' questions 1-on-1 above and beyond the classroom
| hours. I guess this expands to other settings too.
| GordonS wrote:
| I am a native speaker (well, Scottish, so some may
| disagree ;), and I didn't get the title either. Maybe
| it's an American thing, by "office hours" to me means
| 9-5, local time - you know, the kind of hours that people
| typically work in an office.
| imtringued wrote:
| When you run your own organization you can set your own
| office hours.
|
| > you know, the kind of hours that people typically work
| in an office.
|
| It's exactly the same thing. There is no difference. This
| guy "works" in a home office on his project and he does
| so by talking with contributors (his customers
| essentially) instead of just sending a message on a
| mailing list or by posting on an issue tracker.
|
| Where do you see the difference between this and a lawyer
| being open from 9-5 for customers? They are still his
| office hours and "office hours" primarily matter to
| outsiders who have to schedule an appointment.
| umanwizard wrote:
| No, this is actually not what it means. "Office hours"
| has two distinct meanings: one is the hours you are in
| the office. That is not what is meant here. The other
| meaning, which is what is meant here, is specifically
| designated times when experts make themselves available
| for random questions about the thing they're an expert
| on.
|
| For example, I work on a project that heavily depends on
| "library foo". The guy who wrote "library foo" (who is an
| employee of my company) holds "office hours" for one hour
| every Monday, where he commits to being in a Zoom call
| that other employees can join to discuss questions about
| "library foo". That does not mean he only works for one
| hour a week.
| RBerenguel wrote:
| To me (non-native, Spain), I read "office hours" as the
| time when I was a teacher in university: you have a set
| period of time where you are marked as available in your
| office for student consultation. I'm pretty sure that's
| what "office hours" is supposed to mean, although in
| Spanish and Catalan the word used would literally
| translate as "consultation hours" (horas/hores de
| consulta).
| joshuaissac wrote:
| The phrase is used in the same sense at universities in
| England.
| umanwizard wrote:
| The term "office hours" in American English can mean
| _either_ of these concepts, but in the current context it
| clearly means the one you suggest ( "horas de consulta").
| [deleted]
| phone_book wrote:
| This is the same in the US based on my experience
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| In American English it can mean that too. The meaning of
| "certain hours where you work" and "certain hours where
| you have an 'open office'" overlap enough to be
| confusing, yes.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Best thing you haven is not contact information out there
| what so ever. If you think i owe you something - fork you.
| Patch is welcome!
| mysterydip wrote:
| Depending on license, aren't you obligated to provide a repo if
| you're using the code (ie GPL)? Or do I misunderstand it?
| bachmeier wrote:
| If you're redistributing someone else's GPL code in binary
| form, you also have to redistribute it in source form. A
| software license doesn't impose any restrictions on the
| person writing the code. It provides the conditions under
| which others can use it.
| layer8 wrote:
| Under GPL-like licenses you are obligated to provide source
| code if you provide a binary. If you don't distribute
| anything, e.g. you only use something privately, then there
| are effectively no obligations. Of course, if you don't
| provide source code for your project (whether legitimately or
| not), then by definition your project is not open source in
| the first place.
|
| Note that the GPL specifically does not require publishing
| the source code, or having to distribute it along with the
| binaries. It allows the alternative of only providing the
| source code upon request by any third party, to that same
| third party.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| > Under GPL-like licenses you are obligated to provide
| source code if you provide a binary
|
| No, this requirement applies only if you are using
| somebody's else GPL code, and it's meant to allow other
| developers and users to benefit from the work done.
|
| It does not apply to the original author because the author
| owns the copyright of that code.
| layer8 wrote:
| That seems to be disputed, see
| https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/27768/is-there-a-
| loo....
| capableweb wrote:
| There are a few MUSTs if using GPL, yes (btw, GPL is
| considered a "free" license, not a "open source" one), but
| providing a repository is not one of them. Although you do
| need to provide the source (in any means you want, as long as
| it's accessible, making a repository is one of the ways,
| bundling a zip file would be another).
|
| Short version of your obligations if using GPL as a license:
| https://tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-general-public-
| license-v3-...
| bachmeier wrote:
| Those are obligations if you're redistributing someone
| else's GPL code. You'd have to sue yourself to ensure
| compliance with your own license if it applied to you.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Should doesn't mean must, the title is ok with me.
|
| See also :)
|
| https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119
| capableweb wrote:
| The IETF is not the ones deciding how the English language
| works, especially not outside of their own specifications ;)
|
| But, if we're using IETFs grammar:
|
| "Should" here implies unless you have a good reason, you
| should do this. For anything related to open source (which is
| based on voluntary contributions and practices), that's a bad
| choice.
|
| "May" would be a better pick here, to remove the assumed
| obligation to run office hours.
| teh_klev wrote:
| This was meant as humour, hence the explicit smiley face on
| the end.
| arkitaip wrote:
| I can't imagine a more HN thing than someone referencing a
| technical specification to define the word 'should'.
| teh_klev wrote:
| It was an open goal, how could I not? :)
| C4stor wrote:
| What happened to the HN rule of "interpret everything with the
| most positive interpretation possible", when this is the top
| voted comment ?
|
| It seems pretty obvious that the author doesn't intend to
| coerce anyone into doing anything.
| HeavyStorm wrote:
| Well, someone changed the title and that will change
| responses to it...
|
| The qualifier "consider" is very important but was removed by
| the OP.
| throwawinsider wrote:
| It seems pretty obvious to me that should means should.
|
| Pro tip: if you don't mean should, don't write should.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Another pro tip: Never use the word "should".
|
| Avoiding reasoning about the nature of your beliefs (and
| why others might be subject to those beliefs) is a weakness
| in thinking.
|
| "Should" is also the easiest way to create a clickbait
| headline to argue about because there are so many
| individual interpretations and following justifications of
| "should".
| ghaff wrote:
| Depending upon the context, "should" can run the gamut of
| "here's an idea that you might want to consider" to "you
| have a serious moral failing if you don't do things this
| way."
| carols10cents wrote:
| Pro tip: the best RFC is 2119
| https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119
| SkyBelow wrote:
| I thought that rule was for interpreting comments to keep
| civil discussion. Identifying possible interpretations of
| what is in an article and the biases it may either imply, be
| sourced from, or create in others seems a worthwhile topic to
| discuss about an article, though care must be taken to
| distinguish from 'could imply' and 'does imply'.
|
| One such use of this is when someone posts an article they
| have some control over, knowing how the title biases or
| primes a reader can be very informative if they need to make
| a change because of an unintended effect, given the chance of
| communities entirely disconnected from hacker news viewing
| and possibly discussing the article.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >What happened to the HN rule of "interpret everything with
| the most positive interpretation possible", when this is the
| top voted comment ?
|
| What makes you think this comment is doing anything except
| providing positive feedback?
|
| >It seems pretty obvious that the author doesn't intend to
| coerce anyone into doing anything.
|
| Subtext is weird and dangerous. Using more accurate phrasing
| costs nothing and potentially averts problems.
| C4stor wrote:
| > What makes you think this comment is doing anything
| except providing positive feedback?
|
| It doesn't address any of the points mentioned in the
| article, and in fact, doesn't address the general theme of
| the article.
|
| There is no subtext at all, the article is simple and
| clear, and one would be hard pressed to think that the
| author is trying to force anyone to do anything while
| reading it.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| The rules are rarely followed. So many times I get bunches of
| silent downvotes just because...
| krapp wrote:
| Unfortunately that rule only applies to comments, not
| voting.
| shadowfox wrote:
| It is overruled by the "law of the topmost comment" - the top
| comment is very likely a negative take on some subpart of the
| topic at hand, sometimes unrelated to the actual article,
| worded in the strongest way possible.
| mariksolo wrote:
| Everything about your comment is just wrong, so wrong.
|
| The Law of the Topmost Comment says nothing about the
| relatedness to the OP's article[1]. I would suggest you
| research the topic further before making any more ill-
| informed comments on it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations
| m463 wrote:
| your take on his take is meta-humorous.
|
| If your argument holds, I would expect my agreeable comment
| of mine to be downvoted or replaced by a comment possibly
| critical of your viewpoint.
| [deleted]
| anthony_r wrote:
| Such office hours could have a price. Given how much
| consultants charge it wouldn't be unreasonable to charge
| $500/hour (being a maintainer comes with deep knowledge).
| lhorie wrote:
| The submission title appears to be editorialized. Original
| title is "Open source projects: consider running office hours"
|
| And the article talks about the purpose being for gathering
| feedback (think UX sessions), not for gratuitous support.
| Meaning that goal is for the project maintainer to draw
| benefits from others donating _their_ time.
|
| Personally I think this a really clever idea
| armoredkitten wrote:
| Actually, the submission title is referencing the original
| title of the article, but the author edited it and left a
| note at the bottom:
|
| >Update 5th March 2021: The original headline of this piece
| was "Open source projects should run office hours". This was
| being misinterpreted as yet another demand for free labor
| from open source maintainers, so I changed it to "Open source
| projects: consider running office hours"--less pithy, but it
| better reflects my actual message here.
| susam wrote:
| I maintain a few small open source projects around publishing
| math on the web. I have a Freenode IRC channel and Matrix room
| bridged together where anyone is welcome to join anytime they
| need help. When I am relatively free, I also post a live web
| meeting URL to the channel where anyone can drop in or drop out
| anytime. So the Matrix/IRC channel along with occasional web
| meetings have been my version of office hours so far.
|
| A wonderful side effect of maintaining a channel like this has
| been that there is a tiny group of regulars now in the channel
| and we often discuss stuff other than open source projects too.
| Due to the nature of the projects, they attract like-minded
| people into the channel, so a lot of time is spent in discussing
| mathematics and computer science literature, and Lisp, Emacs,
| etc. What started as a support channel has gradually evolved into
| a tiny book club for mathematics and computer science!
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I think the difference is in office hours you are guaranteeing
| to give people your full attention for those particular hours.
| susam wrote:
| My comment was incomplete earlier and I edited it to update
| it later but you had already posted your comment before my
| edit, so posting this comment to clarify that I do
| occasionally indeed provide my full attention. I sometimes
| post a web meeting link to the Matrix/IRC channel. Anyone is
| welcome to drop in to the web meeting or drop out at any
| time. However, I have not tried the approach of offering one-
| on-one meeting slots via calendar booking and relying on
| audio/video during the meetings and that is something I am
| eager to try out now.
| excolleague wrote:
| It is unfair to propose this as a general idea when you're
| literally paid by a company to do whatever you want to do and
| work on your side projects on company time.
|
| Not all open source maintainers are this lucky (or reached such a
| great level of success such as Simon in this case).
|
| Most open source maintainers have real product obligations inside
| their companies and either have little company time for this or
| have to do it entirely in their own time. Scheduling office hours
| seems like a luxury in these situations.
| simonw wrote:
| Again I feel like the "should" in my title is misleading here.
|
| "I'd like to encourage more open source project maintainers to
| consider doing something similar."
|
| If you consider it and decide that it's not for you that's
| absolutely fine!
| dgwight wrote:
| Hey! I started a platform called Otechie to help open source
| projects build consulting businesses. I believe this is the
| perfect way for open source projects to monetize, because they
| are the worlds experts in something lots of businesses want help
| with.
|
| We've been working with the Nuxt.js team and iterating on the
| product for over a year. It has become a full featured live chat,
| and invoicing system, with a contact widget for onboarding
| clients.
|
| Feel free to email me at dylan@otechie.com if you're interested
| corobo wrote:
| This but get it done in one. Get into live-streaming! The
| benefits of this office hours concept but with the potential for
| subscribers to the meeting-as-content.
|
| It's not an easy run don't get me wrong, but it's gotta be easy
| than using up 25 minutes per person. Open source? Open meeting!
|
| Grab yourself a copy of OBS. Get on Twitch/YouTube!
|
| E: made it sound less of an ad? Idk that's the quickest I've ever
| been downvoted here haha. I watch open source coders stream once
| a week to like 200-400 people if the concept sounds bollocks..
| That translates to beyond ramen for your Silicon Valley types and
| actual cost of living in other places :)
| anonytrary wrote:
| OSS devs rely on donations, but office hours would be a great
| paid service. The demand for OSS is so high, depending on the
| centrality of your library, you could easily charge $10-$100 an
| hour for this.
|
| People always expect free Github replies and responses to PRs and
| issues. But it is almost taboo to expect free consultation and
| office hours. Great way to make some money if you have developed
| a popular library!
| closed wrote:
| It seems like the bulk of OSS developers I know do not get
| paid, but are obsessed with a particular problem domain (or
| have essentially merged with their tool and become a finely
| tuned cyborg).
| imhoguy wrote:
| Does anyone have an experience to share how to organize such
| paid support session online and get paid?
| smashah wrote:
| You can use a platform like otechie. There people are
| required to put in their card details before starting a
| conversation. This is what I do with open-wa
| (https://github.com/open-wa/wa-automate-nodejs#support)
|
| Because I sell license keys to unlock features, it allows me
| to provide generalized support and quick bug fixes via the
| discord for everyone for free. If people need help with
| integration in their specific code base then that's when I
| ask them to go through the "consulting route" - if it's quick
| they use otechie. If it's more involved (1+ days) then we
| work out a contract arrangement.
|
| I hardly get any clients through these means but it does put
| a clear value on my time which results in the community
| appreciating the time and effort into the project and the
| real time support (via discord).
| mikl wrote:
| If you have the time to spare and the mental energy to talk to
| random strangers about their problems every Friday afternoon,
| good for you.
|
| But get right out of here with that "should" nonsense. OSS
| maintainers are already donating time and effort for the common
| good. You'd have to be a complete jerkwad to insist they need to
| do more.
| simonw wrote:
| "I'd like to encourage more open source project maintainers to
| consider doing something similar."
| tosh wrote:
| For Jam (open source Clubhouse) we do a weekly "Jam Jam" which
| basically is an audio space that people can join (no video, no
| calendar slot negotiation, connecting with others who use the
| project).
|
| We link to it in our readme
|
| https://gitlab.com/jam-systems/jam
|
| (can be improved)
|
| I wonder if there is a better name for the concept that works for
| international audiences and people who don't know the concept
| from academia.
|
| For larger projects I can also imagine other formats like "show
| and tell" or "Q & A" where people submit questions (maybe even
| with donations or paid to create an income stream for the people
| working on the project)
| jacques_chester wrote:
| The Knative Project holds "Hacky Hours" every week on Fridays,
| 1-3pm Pacific Time[0]. It's a great opportunity for people to
| drop-in and ask questions, and for folks to show off what they've
| been working on.
|
| [0] https://knative.dev/community/calendar/ , though check the
| @KnativeProject twitter account tomorrow because the video links
| are getting switched from Zoom to Google Meet to make it easier
| for more folks to join.
| SMAAART wrote:
| Why limit to open-source projects? What about ANY businesses.
| mroche wrote:
| Red Hat holds a series of OpenShift office hour type segments
| as part of their OpenShift streaming calendar. The specific
| segments range from weekly to triweekly (every three weeks).
|
| https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=redhatstreami...
|
| https://twitch.tv/redhatopenshift
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| The people who demand the most attention are the last to make
| significant contributions
| bredren wrote:
| Great way to get to know your customers. Given how many folks are
| making side businesses via GH sponsors, this is basically sales
| in some cases.
| shyamady wrote:
| Why don't you use Remotheour for your office hour?
| https://remotehour.com
| logifail wrote:
| This particular developer is fairly open about
|
| "the challenges of taking an open source project and turning it
| into a full-time job, earning a salary good enough to avoid the
| siren call of working for a FAANG company"
|
| and
|
| "this as an opportunity for earning money against an open source
| project, and I think it could complement office hours nicely: 25
| minutes on a Friday free on a first-come, first-served basis
| could then up-sell to a 1.5 hours paid consulting session, which
| could then lead to larger consulting contracts"
|
| So, is the article more about clicks leading to revenue, and less
| about what the headline appears to say, like so many others?
| simonw wrote:
| That section was mostly intended to pre-empt the expected
| complaints from people who would say "so you expect open source
| maintainers to give away even MORE of their time for free?"
| filleduchaos wrote:
| How is it "less about what the headline appears to say"?
| alex-mohr wrote:
| Something similar is one reason early Kubernetes was successful:
| many of the core people in the project were in an irc/slack
| channel available for anyone with questions.
|
| That direct two-way communication both unblocked adoption for
| users and was a source of feedback for the devs.
| jhare wrote:
| It's called "support" and many companies pay for it to be
| provided by many of the major FOSS software producers; mileage
| with those services varying I'm sure. Making demands of indep
| producers? This "should" vocabulary I'm not a fan of. Maybe I'll
| write a blog post about all the things "others should do" and
| sure I will be heard? Sounds like there was plenty of extra time
| on the table for this author to make these office hrs to begin
| with
| db48x wrote:
| That sounds pretty hellish. Just send an email!
| thunderbong wrote:
| I think a lot of the comments are concluding from the title that
| open source maintainers should be working on the projects during
| office hours.
|
| That is _not_ what the article is suggesting.
|
| From the article -
|
| >> anyone can book a 25 minute conversation with me on a Friday
| to talk about the project. I'm interested in talking to people
| who are using Datasette, or who are considering using it, or who
| just want to have a chat.
|
| >>A challenge of open source is that it's easy to be starved of
| feedback. People might file bug reports if something breaks, but
| other than that it can feel like publishing software into a void.
|
| >> Hearing directly from people who are using your stuff is
| incredibly motivational. It's also an amazing source of ideas and
| feedback on where the project should go next.
|
| I think that's really a fantastic suggestion.
| detaro wrote:
| ok, gonna make a meta-comment here: Can you point to such
| comments? Somehow I keep seeing people say things like this
| despite there not being any (or only 1-2) comments actually
| doing the thing they say "a lot of" the comments are doing, and
| I don't understand it.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > People might file bug reports if something breaks, but other
| than that it can feel like publishing software into a void.
|
| Easy, request they have a quick 5min feedback chat with you and
| you'll bump their issue on the priority list.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Office hours are work. Soliciting feedback is work. Having a
| chat about your project is work. Rhetorical jujitsu to make
| that work sound like not work is at best a failing of empathy.
|
| The tautology that if you want feedback then you want feedback
| is true. The rest is bullshit.
| haskal wrote:
| I thought "office hours" is a common term in universities?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Beyond unversities, it's also a term sometimes used by Y
| Combinator, which also contributes to its spread.
|
| (That's how I learned it can mean something else than "when
| the workplace is open". English is not my first language.)
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think in this case it's meant to be 'hours when I'm
| guaranteed to be in _my_ office'.
|
| Mostly applicable to academia, because who the hell has
| their own office right now.
| vidarh wrote:
| Well, at the moment my office hours are 24/7, but I'm not
| going to be pleased if somebody drops by.
| ehwhyreally wrote:
| Back in my day I.T was learning how to use microsoft word.
| corobo wrote:
| I've never come across the phrase "office hours" outside of
| describing contractual work hours for a job.
|
| UK if it helps but also I only work for smaller startup sized
| companies maybe it's a corporate thing
| stevoski wrote:
| I went to University in Australia and I don't recall this
| term being in use. (Could be my faulty memory, though. It was
| a long time ago!)
|
| I'm still a little puzzled by exactly what is meant when
| people and orgs offer an "office hours" concept.
|
| I'd love a clear but concise definition that's not simply
| "like office hours in university".
| pbowyer wrote:
| I went to university in the UK 20 years ago.
|
| A few of our lecturers had "office hours". It was a new
| phrase, and invariably they were younger and had worked in
| US universities. We could drop in between 3 and 5 one day a
| week to ask questions.
|
| We thought them snooty.
|
| The other faculty staff had an open door policy.
|
| Now I'm their age, I appreciate how sticking to office
| hours helped these researchers to be productive. But as a
| student, open door flet more friendly.
| c17r wrote:
| In my experience, US professors generally were open door
| as well but it was about catching them being in their
| office. They could be lecturing, faculty meeting, lunch,
| etc, etc, etc.
|
| Office Hours is a way of saying I will DEFINITELY be in
| my office at my desk during this block of time.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I've come across it in various largely-Americentric writing
| and figured out the concept, but yeah, it's not something
| I've seen practised in Australia.
|
| It means "I will always be available in my office during
| such-and-such hours every week, for anyone to come and talk
| to." I think it's normally a walk-in affair rather than
| involving making appointments. First come, first serve, but
| now you don't have to go through the bother of making
| appointments and such and comparing your timetables. Makes
| life easier for both parties. This article is talking of
| making appointments, but most of the benefits still remain
| of having a known block of availability.
| chalst wrote:
| It's common in Germany, called "Sprechstunde" ("speaking
| hours").
| simonw wrote:
| That's a better name for it than "office hours" I think!
| jq-r wrote:
| "Consultation hours" in some EU countries.
| m463 wrote:
| That is how I took it.
|
| I suspect it might also be a synonym for "working hours" or
| 9-5, aka a job.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| It is a common term in different areas, however not everybody
| here comes from an English speaking country and is knowing
| all English terms. For many English is second or third
| language.
| opk wrote:
| In this case, you need to be American to make sense of
| this. And possibly you need to have been to a US
| university. Took me years of seeing people put a confusing
| number 101 on the end of guides on blogs or whatever before
| I realised that meant introduction to Americans.
| xeromal wrote:
| It is where I went at least
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| that means they have to commit to those hours on a regular
| basis
| AshleighBasil wrote:
| Some people didn't go to university, or are too young (I'm 15
| but I wanna go one day)
| [deleted]
| zwegner wrote:
| Do any of the comments actually make that conclusion? The other
| comment you replied to is the only one I saw that even comes
| close, but it mentions "if you can offer office hours..." so
| the poster clearly knew the "office hours" idiom.
| dxdm wrote:
| I came into the comments section to see what this article is
| all about and whether I want to read it, thinking it would be
| about working on open source projects only 9 am to 5 pm. So
| this comment helped me a lot, and I'm voting it up so that it
| may stay on top.
| zwegner wrote:
| Oh, don't get me wrong, I definitely think it's helpful to
| explain the idiom for those not familiar. I just found the
| description "a lot of the comments..." rather weird when I
| didn't see any.
| crashdelta wrote:
| Every team at work (AWS) has office hours, this is a great idea.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| The very short consulting can be pretty intense. People come fast
| and furious and want answers. They sometimes are folks who really
| badly need a larger consulting or training engagement from a
| specialist, but can't afford it. So they sometimes come hard,
| sometimes frantically, looking for miracle fixes.
|
| I thought they could be fun, but you really had to be on your
| toes to do it well. And you need to set really clear expectations
| on what's doable in the short time.
|
| In the end, however, it can sometimes just be easier not to
| charge. If you do larger projects, these short little meetings
| can be a primer for filtering potential clients while giving the
| potential client a taste of what working with you is like.
| josephg wrote:
| I can imagine there's a "right" amount of this sort of thing.
| Like, if you work on a project doesn't have much traction, it
| can be nice to have the people using it meeting up and talking
| about it. It can keep energy and motivation high. And hearing
| what people are working on (with demos) is a blast.
|
| On the flip side, if you work on a project that's already
| popular, you don't want to be spending all your time doing free
| Q&A. Especially not for enterprise folks who have money but
| aren't paying anyway. This is how maintainer burnout happens.
|
| There's a sweet spot here, which will vary by project and by
| maintainer.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| My rule is anything you can do during the time it takes to eat
| lunch is free. If you need to bill something that small you
| need to rethink your business model.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| You must eat a lot faster than I do :-)
| lolsal wrote:
| Anyone can run office hours for any of their open source projects
| they want - that sounds great!
|
| But I won't and I don't feel any sort of obligation to do so, so
| I don't think 'should' is really appropriate here.
| simonw wrote:
| Yeah, with hindsight I should have picked a different word.
|
| The message I'm trying to get across here is that I've found
| office hours to be incredibly valuable, and other maintainers
| should seriously consider adopting the same trick.
| _Microft wrote:
| Keep in mind that you are only going to hear the voices of
| those who did not understand. Those who did had no reason to
| comment on it.
| lolsal wrote:
| There is another option - I understood and did not agree.
| _Microft wrote:
| My mistake - I meant to reply to the discussion about
| people misunderstanding the expression "office hours" and
| attached it to the wrong subthread. This is not related
| to your point about "should" at all.
| lolsal wrote:
| Thank you for clarifying!
| gwbas1c wrote:
| At my previous job, I used to run "office hours" originally as
| a way to onboard new engineers. They later turned into
| discussions on technical topics when someone needed it.
|
| It really depends on the nature of your project and knowing the
| limits of async communication. If you have lots of
| contributors, it might help.
| lolsal wrote:
| You're talking about a 'job' and 'onboarding' engineers -
| that's quiet a departure from what I think most people
| imagine when they imagine an open source project.
|
| Office hours for an office-like job sound totally reasonable.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| I think the 'should' is targeted at developers who want their
| projects to grow (which is not all open-source developers).
| lolsal wrote:
| I understand that, but a person new to the development world
| might see this as something expected for anyone starting an
| open source project.
|
| I don't mean to exaggerate or make an unfair comparison, but
| I had very similar experiences 15 years ago when I was
| _considering_ being interested in trying to get a
| contribution (any contribution) merged into the linux kernel.
| That process is so off-putting I lost interest. Granted,
| kernel development is an entirely different beast and I
| understand (better now after a career) why it 's partly the
| way it is.
|
| I think I'm rambling - tl;dr: this sort of attitude is off-
| putting from open source, even as someone who's been in
| software a long time.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| To riff on this I think this weird expectation of projects to
| "grow" is a side effect of the increasing corporate influence
| on F/OSS.
|
| So many conference talks' second slide is a "numbers" slide
| wit how many github stars, active contributors and other
| vanity metrics. It strikes me that the point is not just to
| convey that the project has an ecosystem behind it (with the
| implication there being that you can get free feature
| development and support), but to hit some sort of weird OKR-
| ish goal set.
| sellyme wrote:
| Open source developers presumably tend to work on projects
| that they genuinely like and are passionate about. Aiming
| to help as many people as possible in a subject you're
| passionate about seems extremely natural to me.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| Agreed, this is something that is incredibly obvious when
| there's no money involved. It's naive, wasteful in a
| sense (your time could theoretically be used for other
| things), but that's the open source that everyone
| respects/admires.
|
| Every once in a while I go back and think of the origins
| of the F/OSS movement -- the idea is _insane_ on it 's
| face. Labor to make software, then give it away, and
| license it in a way that anyone who uses it is _also_
| forced to give it away? Who would fund /contribute to
| such a thing? How insane I think that concept is
| assurance that I consider myself a capitalist on the
| economic policy spectrum.
| simonw wrote:
| My goal with Datasette is to grow a plugin ecosystem that
| provides a wide range of extra feature which I didn't have
| to build myself - so in my case I have a strong incentive
| to attract more users for non-vanity reasons.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| This riff was much less about Datasette and more about
| other projects (let's say the latest CNCF incubation
| stage project). Not that I'm important but I distinguish
| small-ish (or even projects that have grown larger)
| trying to publicize to attract more talent, but that
| smells different than large professional-looking efforts
| for open-core software or shareware which I often also
| see. Someone putting a "hey we're 1000 strong, come join
| us and contribute" at FOSSDEM is different than a company
| with some light VC funding talking about Github stars and
| "engagement" at Kubecon.
|
| Datasette is a great project and in the traditional F/OSS
| sense is delivering an intense amount of value off the
| backs of passionate volunteers (for better or for worse)
| -- Thanks for making it and persisting in making it
| better.
|
| Office hours working great for Datasette is fantastic
| (thanks for sharing) and you arguably an objective
| benefit to the world with the amount you've already
| created and released. I don't think it's right for every
| single open source project but more power to you. This
| riff definitely wasn't meant to poo-poo your approach.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >To riff on this I think this weird expectation of projects
| to "grow" is a side effect of the increasing corporate
| influence on F/OSS.
|
| Or it's because in the end people like being popular and
| always have. Social standing, social cred and all that. I
| mean, look at all the people who obsess about their
| instagram or twitter follower counts. Being a FOSS
| developer doesn't remove all the usual human drives and
| desires that most people have.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| Right, but human propensity to seek status hasn't
| changed, and if anything it's been amplified by corporate
| interests _more_ than simply just the internet 's ability
| to connect.
|
| > instagram or twitter follower counts. Being a FOSS
| developer doesn't remove all the usual human drives and
| desires that most people have.
|
| This is corporate influence. Those companies are
| manipulating that innate status-seeking behavior and
| amplifying it. In my opinion most F/OSS developers or
| most creative subcultures clout chase in different ways
| but it's usually not so overt and it certainly isn't
| trying to show "hockey stick growth" on slide #2.
|
| I'd argue that for most F/OSS developers making cool (and
| maybe some overly complicated) things used to be the main
| way to clout chase, until some corporations came along
| and helped us "connect" but also sought to make profit
| from those connections and encourage the connecting.
|
| Let's take HN for an example -- how do people clout chase
| here? HN's major moderation innovation/advantage is that
| they've tried their hardest to make clout chasing here
| equivalent to submitting interesting
| projects/products/thought/discussion. I'm sure they have
| the metrics internally, but I just never see HN bragging
| about how much "engagement" they get.
| klingon79 wrote:
| I was told that internally at Redhat if you're assigned to
| a project and the project becomes unsupported by the
| company, you have a certain amount of time to be picked up
| by another team, after which, if you aren't, you are let
| go.
|
| I know that this is kinder than just firing someone
| outright if the project they were on failed, but the
| thought of it makes me feel uncomfortable.
| xahrepap wrote:
| This is more or less also how IBM operates. I know
| someone who had to interview for other teams at IBM
| because their other IBM project ended. After a while of
| trying to navigate the politics of it all they just gave
| up on IBM completely.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| Sorry maybe I don't have my moral sensors tuned properly
| today but would you mind explaining what makes you feel
| uncomfortable about it?
|
| Is it more because RedHat carries itself like a
| consultancy than other large enterprise businesses? Is it
| that the possibility of being let go after a large
| project that you performed a relatively specialized role
| on feels just about right for a consultancy, but not for
| a business that carries themselves like a long term
| player? I feel like I'd expect this behavior from Pivotal
| for example (not implying that they'd do that).
| klingon79 wrote:
| > Is it that the possibility of being let go after a
| large project that you performed a relatively specialized
| role on feels just about right for a consultancy, but not
| for a business that carries themselves like a long term
| player?
|
| This. Someone there could hire me onto a project that
| fails for some reason out of my control, and then,
| because I'm older, I wouldn't get picked up by another
| team.
|
| I don't know if project-pickup retention is still how
| they operate; it's several-year-old anecdotal information
| from a past worker there before they were acquired by
| IBM.
| loosescrews wrote:
| I used to work on a reasonably sized open source project (10k+
| stars on GitHub). We held approximately monthly office hours on
| Zoom. Very few people ever came to them. I think the average was
| less than one person.
|
| And no, I don't think the issue was that no one had any
| questions. We got plenty of questions via Gitter chat, mailing
| lists and GitHub issues. We advertised the office hours on the
| same Gitter chat and mailing lists too.
|
| We also tried moving the time around to various times of the day,
| also with minimal effect on attendance.
|
| The only thing we had any success with at all was convincing a
| few larger users to give short presentations on what they were
| doing with the project and what their pain points were. When we
| did this, that user would come, but few other, non-project
| members would come.
|
| I still really like the idea, but I am not sure that the open
| source community really wants office hours.
| simonw wrote:
| Maybe the big difference here is getting people to book slots?
|
| Booking slots helps emphasize that this us a one-on-one
| opportunity for a conversation - not a situation where you
| might feel awkward that there are several others on the chat
| who already know each other.
|
| It also sets up a small obligation that you'll actually show
| up, since if you reserved a slot it's rude to cancel at short
| notice.
| gmac wrote:
| In the educational setting, this is a massive effect. If I
| offer students feedback slots they can book, generally a
| majority will book a slot, and around 90% of those will turn
| up. If I just offer times they can drop in for feedback, I
| get maybe 5% dropping in.
|
| (The course is behavioural economics and this is a kind of
| interesting behavioural phenomenon).
| [deleted]
| neartheplain wrote:
| For me, the way to consult with open-source maintainers has
| always been through their projects' Freenode IRC channels.
| mperham wrote:
| I've been running a "happy hour" at Friday 10am for 4-5 years
| now. Some weeks no one shows up. Some weeks 3-4 people will show
| up. The important thing is that I'm talking with users regularly
| so I get to help them and hear their pain points.
|
| https://sidekiq.org/support.html
|
| Office hours are great because they remove the admin overhead of
| scheduling individual appointments.
| oryx1729 wrote:
| I am a maintainer of Haystack, an open-source NLP search
| framework leveraging latest NLP models & information retrieval
| techniques. My Twitter DMs(same handle as here) are open if
| you're looking to revamp the search experience in your products.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I hate articles like this. Or maybe it's just the headlines but
| it follows a set formula:
|
| 1)Person X finds a way of doing something that works for _them_.
|
| 2)Person X writes an article either saying outright, or implying,
| that this is how it should be done _for everyone_
|
| About the only universal statement I've every found useful is the
| one that says "Universal statements should always be treated with
| skepticism".
| simonw wrote:
| "I'd like to encourage more open source project maintainers to
| consider doing something similar."
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yes, it doesn't make for a convenient headline. I'd just like
| to avoid "Everyone Should Do X" headlines.
| draw_down wrote:
| Yeah just give yourself a new job moonlighting for free.
|
| But look on the bright side: if you build something really useful
| and it gets picked up by Amazon, you'll get zero dollars! Mmmmmm
| yummy.
| mmq wrote:
| I had some good success running similar but not as organized
| sessions for our open-source project[1] in 2018-2019. There was
| no specific day of the week and calls were between 30-50 min.
|
| I think this format is much better and more organized, so I
| highly recommend that open-source maintainers who would like to
| learn more about how their projects are used to give it a try.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/polyaxon/polyaxon
| mraza007 wrote:
| This is a great idea and this can be really helpful for beginners
| who want to contribute to open source
| oauea wrote:
| Sure if you want to kill open source. I'm working in the office
| during office hours.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Those office hours could be on the weekend if you wish, and
| nobody says that you have to have a longer time window to book
| than one or two hours a week. That's more than some lecturers.
| gneray wrote:
| Agreed. We do this at Oso (batteries-included library for
| application authorization).
|
| https://www.osohq.com/ https://calendly.com/osohq/1-on-1
| bcardarella wrote:
| Services with notifications like GitHub should allow you to delay
| notifications until your indicated availability. Ignoring them
| isn't good enough and some people have them sent to their
| personal email.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there are ways to filter and organize your
| emails already.
| [deleted]
| acemarke wrote:
| FWIW, we've got a #redux channel in the Reactiflux Discord where
| I and a couple other Redux maintainers hang out and answer an
| ongoing stream of questions. Not sure having specific "office
| hours" slots would work well for us, but we're happy to answer
| questions whenever we're around.
| dfee wrote:
| Mark's Twitter feed is also entirely redux based. ;p
| acemarke wrote:
| Hey, not entirely!
|
| I also tweet about a lot of React stuff:
|
| https://twitter.com/acemarke/status/1365874077177700361
|
| https://twitter.com/acemarke/status/1366102388399087619
|
| and on rare occasions, things that are _not_ React or Redux
| related :)
| iainctduncan wrote:
| this is a great idea, I'm adopting it.
| carols10cents wrote:
| Has anyone had success using office hours to bring on new
| _contributors_ to an OSS project?
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Isn't this kind of a paradox? Most open source maintainers work
| in their free time on those projects, and have an additional
| fulltime job to cover the bills.
|
| Assuming that everybody has the luxury to have additional office
| hours available is a bit far from reality in my opinion.
|
| I mean, if you can offer office hours for an open source project
| you probably are already so popular that you are able to work on
| it fulltime, right? And if you're not that popular, you cannot
| offer office hours due to your daytime job; as you would have to
| decrease the rest of your remaining free time that you probably
| need to sleep and eat.
| siegecraft wrote:
| I assumed this was written from the perspective of someone
| trying to turn an open source project into a paying gig by
| attracting sponsors, patrons, etc.
| simonw wrote:
| In my case I'm still very much trying to encourage people to
| use my project. The time investment for office hours isn't too
| high - I actually dropped it down to three sessions every
| Friday for a while due to other commitments, so it's only an
| hour and a half a week.
|
| In exchange for that I get extremely high bandwidth feedback
| from real users of my software!
| iainctduncan wrote:
| It's a great idea, thanks for writing it Simon.
| thunderbong wrote:
| Looks like you're drawing conclusions from the title, which I
| also did!
|
| Per the article, he's not saying you should work on the project
| during office hours. Instead, to get feedback from users, he's
| allocating some time where users can have a talk with him about
| the project. He's calling that 'Office Hours'.
|
| I think that it's a really valuable suggestion.
| EE84M3i wrote:
| I don't understand what you're saying. How is time spent
| gathering feedback from users not time spent working on the
| project?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The article describes a practice for gathering feedback for
| your project: announce a set time when people can get on a
| call with you for a few minutes and discuss your project.
| The author calls this "office hours".
|
| It's a useful piece of advice for people who are in need of
| such feedback, and can afford to block off a bit of time on
| their schedule on a regular basis. It doesn't apply to
| everyone, but it's a good trick if it does apply to you.
| sellyme wrote:
| I think you're missing the distinction between "office
| hours" (what most people would read as 9-5 Monday through
| Friday) and "Office Hours", the term Simon is using to
| describe the 4-5 hours a week that he specifically
| allocates to having discussions with his users. Which is
| completely understandable given that there's not actually a
| consistent capitalisation difference.
|
| Of course the latter is still time spent working on the
| project, but it's certainly not in direct conflict with
| having a full-time job paying the bills.
| DukeBaset wrote:
| It's more like office hours in the college sense where
| you go talk to the prof/ta to get your doubts cleared and
| stuff, the way i see it.
| EE84M3i wrote:
| Ah, I see what you mean. People generally wouldn't say
| "run office hours" to refer to the first sense. That
| might be "work office hours" or "standard office hours"
| or "keep office hours" perhaps.
| franciscop wrote:
| If I consider US-times, being based in Japan, I can probably
| use my Saturday morning to answer support queries for free
| vasquez wrote:
| > Most open source maintainers work in their free time on those
| projects, and have an additional fulltime job to cover the
| bills.
|
| Are you certain? I'd think most open source development is done
| by paid developers, on company time.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Eh? You just make a little time for open-source in your day job
| by using the projects you want to work on :)
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| This is a great idea. Also any free slots could be opened up to
| general questions, perhaps via a Twitch or YouTube stream, so
| that the more general questions can be recorded for posterity and
| documentation.
| bovermyer wrote:
| This is a great idea. It's time-bound, so the maintainer doesn't
| feel set-upon, since they can change the hours whenever. It's
| also a (reasonably) guaranteed opportunity to talk directly to
| the maintainer of something you care about, if you're on the
| other side.
|
| I love this.
| _0o6v wrote:
| I look forward to hearing how the mother who has kids to look
| after, and already has to work far beyond working hours to
| satisfy psychotic hiring practices focussing on algorithm
| knowledge and open source contributions, can then afford more
| time to do "office hours" with people using the software she has
| BUILT AND PROVIDED FOR FREE.
|
| Alternatively: Tech Bros go ahead!
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I would suggest that you read the article. This is not about
| locking you down, this is about the benefits of opening a more
| direct communications channel with your users.
|
| Generally, communication with your users is a good idea,
| because it gives you insights in how your tools are being used,
| and gives you a chance to - by asking the right questions -
| improve your code, and your relationship with the community.
|
| It is about building and applying soft skills.
|
| Your full-time-working, full-time learning, open-source-
| contributing mother of several children may choose not to do
| so. Or maybe she can cut some time from the full-time learning
| and train her people skills, and make her open source product
| better. Because in the end, a well-run, useful OSS portfolio
| helps building reputation that is more useful in a hiring
| situation than deep knowledge about the shortfalls of the
| Dijkstra algorithm for edge cases.
| xiaodai wrote:
| Ppl should pay open source projects
| iainctduncan wrote:
| Note: the author has changed the title. it is now "Open source
| projects should consider running office hours", precisely for the
| reasons highlighted here.
| daveed wrote:
| Hi! If you're thinking of giving office hours for your project...
| I've been working on a site (http://booktime.xyz/) that's meant
| for this. It's like a calendly where you can manage different
| meeting types more easily, they can be paid or unpaid, and we
| keep your contact private. Feel free to email me at
| (david@booktime.xyz) too. We've been polishing it up, and I'm
| happy to take feedback.
| vinger wrote:
| Can I book a slot in your office hour window to talk about
| using your service or do I need to email you?
| daveed wrote:
| You can do either, my own link is
| (https://booktime.xyz/p/david-chen) if you'd like. You can
| also just sign up on the top right.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Github / Gitlab / etc. are not free software universities where
| maintainers are professors enjoying their tenure. In my opinion,
| if you don't pay a maintainer for their time you are not entitled
| to it.
| simonw wrote:
| This isn't a one-sided exchange: I'm getting just as much, if
| not more value out of each conversation.
|
| If I wasn't then I wouldn't be doing this (or suggesting it to
| others).
| robinhood wrote:
| Big no.
|
| On the open source projects I supervise which have a fairly big
| reach, it's simply impossible to do that, especially since I work
| on it a few times at night each week.
|
| Having office hours would mean dedicate even more time to them,
| which I can't.
|
| It would mean speaking in a common language, probably English.
| Writing in English is one thing - talking in English is another.
| It's super tough for some foreigners (including myself).
|
| It would also mean much more organization. Calendar invites, Zoom
| or whatever tools, etc...
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I've had massive success with this in ML. My twitter DMs have
| become almost-daily office hour sessions with people trying to
| solve hard ML problems. The last fellow was so happy he venmo'd
| me $250 after I merely asked for "pay whatever you thought that
| was worth."
|
| Apparently putting "DMs open" in your twitter bio is an excellent
| way to meet new people. Also, tweet (often!) about what you're
| working on. Post lots of questions, notes to self, and
| screenshots or videos.
|
| To get followers, you'll need to go inject yourself into
| conversations. That seems to be the most reliable way to get
| noticed.
|
| We also run an ML discord server and do informal office hours for
| people working on various ML products. It may sound cheesy, but I
| try to emulate what pg would do in a YC office hours session. It
| seems to keep them pretty focused.
|
| So, yes! Glad to see office hours are becoming mainstream. Try it
| out; you'll probably be surprised.
| victor9000 wrote:
| What are some of the more interesting problems you've
| encountered using this approach?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I helped a fella figure out how to imbue their GPT model with
| emotional awareness. That was one of the cooler ones, and we
| solved it in about an hour or so.
|
| The actual technique will take a month or so to execute, but
| the core idea is pretty much guaranteed to work.
| victor9000 wrote:
| Interesting! Are you able to share what you came up with?
| It seems like at minimum you could verify that the
| sentiment analysis for your generated text matches that of
| the input prompt.
|
| I've been working on getting GPT2 to write poetry and I've
| made a fair amount of progress by fine-tuning on a poetic
| corpus. Then during generation I constrain tokens that
| would break the style of the previously generated text. It
| has already produced a few samples that are surprisingly
| moving. Here's one of my favorite cherry-picked samples
| which was generated with a prompt of "The sea grew":
|
| "The sea grew angry, and turned to fire,
|
| And all the stars did mourn for earth and sky.
|
| The wind did moan, as when one who hath lost
|
| Love through some evil counsellor, hears
|
| A lamentable voice that sobs and sighs;
|
| Or when some old sorrow's semblance doth appear"
|
| It makes me think of someone describing the meteor strike
| that killed off the dinosaurs.
|
| To achieve this, I simply perform analysis on the tokens as
| they are generated, then turn off the logits for tokens
| that would break the current flow. I'm currently working on
| enforcing meter and rhyme using a similar approach. I've
| also had success with creating checkpoints by pickling the
| model state at a good stopping point, like at the end of a
| line, then letting the model do its thing and reverting
| back to the checkpoint if it produces something that
| doesn't match what I'm looking for.
| carols10cents wrote:
| "DMs open" in your twitter bio as a woman is an excellent way
| to get lots of "hello" messages from randos...
| arch-ninja wrote:
| It's kind of neat observing the same economics that drive
| Instagram influencers also drive sharing logical thinking. I
| wonder if both sides of the human brain behave the same way?
| (organic v. ogic). Actually it's far more likely that social
| effects are the cause, and social effects benefit both organic
| runaway trains as well as logical runaway trains.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| On the other hand, $250 was probably way too little money. I
| question the wisdom of helping people who are professional
| be-at-the-right-place-at-the-right-timers. That includes
| people working for giant companies messaging open source
| maintainers, or any number of total inequities.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| What if you want a referral into one of those giant
| companies someday? Can't hurt to know a guy...
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| you could just write a post on teamblind.com if you are
| that level or just make a tweet
| dylan604 wrote:
| you're putting a lot of weight on someone having the
| right followers or someone casually reading some
| rando.com website. comparing that roll of the dice big
| bang level of random vs having direct contact with
| someone that uses code you created and can vouch for you
| seems skewed in the wrong direction to me.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| I'm stealing that too. "DM's open" coming right up.
| [deleted]
| jmacjmac wrote:
| I think all companies should run office hours, not just
| individual developers. Many companies I worked for were missing
| feedback from their user base.
| flerchin wrote:
| Oof the title.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Many projects that I use already have IRC with permanent log, so
| you can just go in there and estimate the times when the regulars
| hang out from the logs. And then you join at that time, too.
|
| It kind of is like office hours via chat.
| detaro wrote:
| I think having the explicit concept still has some value: a)
| "you can just go and ask" is a surprisingly large cultural
| barrier for many people (as are other conventions around
| developer channels), b) an explicitly set time will have higher
| success rate than guessing based on logs and c) it's also
| something the devs can structure and plan around. I.e. sure,
| I'll answer questions when I see them and have time, but
| steering people to ask when convenient to me also improves my
| experience maybe?
| fxtentacle wrote:
| In my experience, you want a slightly inconvenient barrier,
| or else you'll be swamped with beginner's questions only
| partially related to your project.
|
| For computer vision topics, StackOverflow is recently full of
| people who did a "deep learning expert in 4 hours" course and
| now need help with things that are covered in every textbook
| on the topic, like "what is disparity?".
|
| Not everyone strives to be a teacher. Some of us also just
| want to work on cool stuff with like-minded people.
| detaro wrote:
| Sure, and that's a valid choice (although if IRC is the
| best filter, or just a convenient one, is arguable), but
| that's even more an argument that having an IRC channel is
| not quite the same as "having office hours by chat",
| especially if you don't want to have office hours. Maybe I
| just misinterpreted your initial comment, but to me it read
| like "we don't need office hours, our IRC channel does the
| same thing".
|
| What works best entirely depends on what your goals,
| personal preferences and audience are.
| jabo wrote:
| I've been thinking about doing office hours recently and this is
| just the motivation I needed to set it up! So thank you OP.
|
| Paranoid me is a little nervous about putting up a scheduling
| link publicly, but here goes:
|
| I work on Typesense [1], which is an open source alternative to
| Algolia and an easier to use alternative to ElasticSearch. If you
| want to talk search and/or Typesense - DMs and Office Hours open:
| https://calendly.com/jason-typesense/typesense-office-hours
|
| [1] https://github.com/typesense/typesense
| Aeolun wrote:
| Did all your slots get taken, or didn't you open any up in
| March?
|
| I need to find some place/way to use this. It looks
| interesting.
| jabo wrote:
| I only had 2 weeks opened up, just opened up to 4 weeks in
| advance. Looking forward to chatting!
| pbiggar wrote:
| Agreed. I recently added my calendly to Dark's contributor docs
| [1] for people who want to get started. No one has taken me up on
| it yet, but we'll see how it goes.
|
| [1] https://docs.darklang.com/contributing/getting-started
| daguava wrote:
| Expecting maintainers to establish regular hours is basically
| asking them to work a job with no pay
| nicbou wrote:
| Have you read the article?
| tbrooks wrote:
| Mike Perham from Sidekiq (OSS Ruby background worker) has office
| hours every Friday for an hour. I've gone before and he was
| really helpful.
|
| https://sidekiq.org/support.html
| musicale wrote:
| And they should buy me a new M1 laptop. And a pony.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I think it's time to take open source to the next level.
|
| There are armies of retired, under employed, and even just people
| bored at work, ready to start making an impact.
|
| What are your ideas?
|
| More Open source projects For hardware and physical items
|
| Involve people of all skills, marketing, PR, event planning, who
| knows!
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