The environment that OSS developers work in
github.com
github.com
first post:Hi, it appears that running Pkg.add("IJulia") is broken. Please fix it or stop advertising this module...
first response: This is a volunteer effort. We regret to inform you that reports and issues in the tone of the above complaint are unacepptable. We cannot (and will not) help you until you ask for help in a polite way.
Status changed: from "open" to "awaiting politeness"
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The world contains people who want to act like this @aragnon. It will still contain those people tomorrow. Complaining about their sense of entitlement is not likely to achieve much. And we need to spend very little effort with these requests. We need procedure. We need simple rules, and absolute enforcement.
I don't know that Ijulia is, but I thank you guys for your efforts!
While this is unfortunate, as Faulkner noted, it's not unique to FLOSS. Anyone who is in a position where they regularly interact with the public is going to run into rude people and crazies now and again.
People will start using your projects if they see a use for it, so you "just" need to make something random internet people want, and then sell it well.
That said, thank you for the advice :)
It looks like the user just needed to vent, and the dev seemed to ignore it. And that's what you should do. Trying to interact meaningfully with an emotion that doesn't mean anything will not help you. Pointing to community standards will often only aggravate mad people further. Either help the person or lock the issue and leave it at that.
Calling out specific people publicly in HN posts is not a good idea either. If you must, I suggest anonymizing the content.
Julia is within their rights to enforce a community standard against such rants, but I wonder if those rants are what inspire people to write code and contribute (unpaid) patches...
I volunteer a few days every month to triage bug reports at my developer job just to keep up my troubleshooting skills. I could probably not do this as a technical/team lead, but everyone on my team does, so I wouldn't make them do anything I wouldn't do. I like problem solving as well, so it can be fun trying to hunt down some obscure bug buried in a service that only manifests itself when the moons align in the customer environment.
Seeing some of the difficult customers our support staff have to pull information out of I have a ton of respect for those that organize bug reports in a coherent manner that shows they really care. Those that do, I go out of my way to help make their jobs easier (building them tools, simple scripting training, etc) and they pay it back by helping my development team.