[HN Gopher] My FOSS Story (2020)
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My FOSS Story (2020)
Author : Tomte
Score : 76 points
Date : 2021-09-17 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.burntsushi.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.burntsushi.net)
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| What is the convention for giving positive feedback to FOSS
| projects on Github? Giving positive feedback on an issue thread
| adds noise for future people reading the thread.
|
| Does Github have an issue type for praise? Do you attempt to get
| the authors email address and contact them directly? Do you star
| the repo? I'd like a quick way to show my appreciation throughout
| the day as I `yarn add` various packages...
| andrey_utkin wrote:
| I think the conventional and also the most useful directions
| for the praise are your friends and the communities where it's
| relevant and where you are in good standing.
|
| Otherwise it devolves to faceless testimonies and product
| reviews of questionable validity, which hold no inherent
| credibility to others.
| bool3max wrote:
| GitHub recently introduced "Discussions". Issue-like threads
| basically. Whether they're acceptable for "praise" of the
| project varies from maintainer to maintainer I'd suppose.
| paulcarroty wrote:
| It's like life. I meet best friends & worst enemies, crazy
| fanatics, people like to move fast, slow or "just for fun".
| throwaway525142 wrote:
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22095715 - 200 comments
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| In FOSS, user feedback is the worst. Somehow there are a lot of
| people who think that since they did us a favour and are using
| _free and open source_ app we developed, they can boss us around
| and tell us what to do, and give us _stern talks_ if we don 't
| fix the bug they are experiencing on time.
|
| "Is that how you serve your customers?" - some say, despite never
| having paid a single cent. - "you are too immature to run a
| business"
|
| If the app is on Google play or Appstore, it gets even worse: the
| users there can rate your app from 1 to 5, and on this basis
| demand _premium service_. Sigh.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| Lack of empathy abounds in this profession. I am increasingly
| convinced lack of empathy is over-represented among developers.
| It's a controversial thought, and feel free to shoot it down. But
| the article posted here is just one of countless tales that have
| been posted here. Examples of abrasive behaviour in developer
| circles are too numerous to list (in real life and online).
|
| There are many people in the computing field (alive and dead)
| with many accomplishments to their name but utter devoid of
| empathy and social skills. Despite that, many of these figures
| are idolised by other developers, or their behaviour tolerated.
|
| It's not just a lack of empathy towards fellow developers, lack
| of empathy is even more marked when applied to "non-technical"
| users who are often patronisingly viewed as clueless idiots.
|
| So yes, my anecdotal experience of developers (online and working
| in person with colleagues) is that lack of empathy towards other
| developers and users runs through this profession.
| rightbyte wrote:
| FOSS drama is documented in mailing lists. I guess it is unfair
| to compare that with the local boat club that don't have any
| documented debates or discussions. For all I know the boat club
| could be terrible people.
| monoideism wrote:
| I worked in another profession for 15 years before becoming a
| professional developer. I can't say definitely that empathy is
| much lower among devs than among other people I've worked with.
| But I got used to it.
| j1elo wrote:
| > _There are many people in the computing field (alive and
| dead) with many accomplishments to their name but utter devoid
| of empathy and social skills. Despite that, many of these
| figures are idolised by other developers, or their behaviour
| tolerated._
|
| I guess that's natural, isn't it? We value people by their
| feats, not by how well or bad they treated their fellows. I've
| seen this interesting discussion happen several times with
| other fields, such as music or arts: lots of people might
| almost worship someone, e.g. a famous singer, not even knowing
| (or caring, to be honest) about how they were violent with
| their spouse or were racist or something like that.
|
| Practical example: Pablo Picasso. One of the most renowned
| Spanish artists. His work praised everywhere and every time.
| Now go have a look at his personal life...
|
| So it's not a problem in our profession. It's more general: a
| defining characteristic of how we humans generally tend to
| appreciate other people's work.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| You know I have been trying to figure out the right word for
| it. You nailed it. The more frustrating part is when someone
| gets into this mode they expect empathy towards them but do not
| display it at all.
|
| We all have been the newbie. We all have been stuck with a
| program that does weird things. We do not all have years of exp
| on some particular tech under our belts. Not everyone is
| interested in the same things. Not everything is perfect the
| first time, sometimes something is better than nothing.
|
| My moment where I learned this was when I showed someone how to
| use the tool 'wc'. It took something where they were manually
| counting a file to mere seconds. I was able to help them and
| saved them days of work. They just did not know. I helped them
| and did not even realize it until someone pointed it out. I
| thought they were being silly not to use it, but then realized
| they just did not know. They did not even know enough to ask
| the right question.
| j1elo wrote:
| > _I've never had to actually quote the "AS IS" warranty
| disclaimer in my licenses_
|
| I must say that in one of my favorite responses ever, seen in
| some FOSS discussion with an entitled user, the author replied "
| _Please, go read the License_ ". Or " _sorry, but this project is
| released under the Apache license_ ". Something like that.
|
| This was confusing, and had no bearing to the technical
| complaints of the user. Until someone pointed out that " _the
| softwate is provided AS-IS without any guarantees_ ". I laughed
| at that, seemed the right amount of snarkyness to give as reply
| to a snarky user!
| junon wrote:
| I love BurntSushi's work and find the article strangely familiar.
| I had a very similar start at pretty much the exact same time - a
| PHP CMS that I also under-estimated. I was 12, and my pathway was
| very windows-heavy unlike his.
|
| > I had never realized how much Americans like to should you to
| death.
|
| Yep, as an American in Germany this is something I don't miss.
| Germans certainly do this but it's always framed as a suggestion,
| or as an option. I talk to a few American friends back home and
| even on the small things they never fail to chime in about how to
| run my life.
|
| I _have_ noticed, however, that it 's not only Americans. Our
| counterparts from "across the pond" (in the UK and neighbors)
| also like to do this, though to a much lesser degree.
|
| Great read. I see the same thing on Github and over the 10 years
| I've been there it's only gotten much, much worse.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Excellent article. The part about "setting boundaries" is worth
| the "price" of reading it, all by itself.
|
| Documenting bugs so they can be fixed: now that is probably no
| different from a commercial software setting, where I worked. I
| have mixed experiences with that, so some (probably) intensely
| controversial observations:
|
| If the user just reports "it broke when I did X" and you do X and
| it doesn't break, is that the end of the story? What if lots of
| people report similar-sounding bugs?
|
| Too many developers and PMs are happy to stamp it "not
| reproducible" and move on. I think the dev should take it as an
| opportunity to insert more diagnostics to catch it next time. If
| it's an online service, then you will have the logs available.
|
| If it's client software, you have to ask the user to save them
| for you (but if they're so entitled that they refuse, you have
| every right to write them off). Some people will get into the
| adventure and try to help you out, and you can be glad you gave
| _them_ a good experience!
|
| Columbo should be the role model. Someone got murdered and _I 'm
| going to solve the crime, no matter how long it takes._ Obviously
| you can't do this for _every_ random bug that comes in, but if
| you never do it, you 're in the wrong profession.
|
| All the time in one job at Google, Drive and Docs would f&ck up
| (and we all used them all day). No one I worked with would ever
| report them, because "Why bother? They're just going to stamp it
| 'not reproducible' anyway."
|
| I had one memorable exchange where I suggested upping the log
| level so they could diagnose it. The PM said that was impossible
| -- the logs would be too big. Maybe they could up the level _just
| when I 'm the user_? Nah, too much trouble.
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