Hacker News Reader

Comment by sethrin | Hacker News Reader

910 contributors, 191 issues, 516 pull requests, and his response is that "reviewing and approving pull requests is a nice-to-happen versus a need-to-happen." While I'm glad I am not in the position of maintaining that (or anything else important), that doesn't really speak well to the long-term prospects for the project. Clearly this is something that I and many others find very useful; It would be a shame to let it stagnate. The glib part of me would suggest either 'stepping up, or stepping down', but I can't really credibly offer solutions, I just am trying to point out a problem.

View on HN

So you criticize the maintainer for their large pile of (unpaid) work in the queue, but aren't willing to help out?

If you're worried about the project stagnating, why don't you offer to donate some cash? Why not offer to help in whatever way you can, even if it's just triaging tickets?

Firstly, this isn't about me. I'm not the one who started this project, I don't have any stake in maintaining it, and I'm definitely not the only one to notice that the tickets are piling up. Frankly I thought it was widely known.[0][1]

As it happens, I am probably in the running for worst/poorest developer on HN, and that's using the term "developer" broadly. To the degree that I have any resources that aren't being put towards subsistence, I'm not sure I could help anyone with anything. It doesn't feel particularly good to have to explain that, especially since everyone on here seems to be in a vastly different social situation, but either way, I'd appreciate fewer personal reflections.

[0]http://joshldavis.com/2014/07/26/oh-my-zsh-is-a-disease-anti... [1]https://www.bountysource.com/issues/102375-move-plugins-to-s...

You could always fork it. It is MIT licensed after all.

Personally, I just built my own zsh config that solves my problems without all the framework mess. Its less than 150 lines + some related dot files for aliases, vim, etc.

Frankly, I'm not sure I'm up to that. I don't have much in-depth experience with this project, with the finer points of zsh, or with maintaining projects in general. I'm not entirely sure I could do a better job than nothing at all. However, even if I were more capable, I still don't think it's right to try to take over someone's project without some more clear sign that they are uninterested in continuing it.

FWIW, prezto is an oh-my-zsh fork and a lot of effort and discussion went into it before it was decided that there should be a fork:

https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto/issues/197

The linked oh-my-zsh issue is an interesting read (or skim).

Sounds like he needs some help. Maybe a linux kernel model is more apt? Have a few people helping and looking at PRs and approving them in just the areas that they are experts in.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com