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Comment by digler999 | Hacker News Reader

I've only read that quote, but to me that doesn't seem like a rude thing to say. I interpret it as "This windows branch is awful, it might be better for you to abandon that effort and work on something with more potential". I hear it as criticizing the code, not the person.

Edit: I read a little more, looks like the devs were upset because windows isn't a free platform, and they didn't want darktable's reputation marred by a buggy port.

> This will be very bad for darktable reputation

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It was in the context of building trust, basically "go away and work on another project so we know who you are before you can touch our holy code".

That guy came in with a great attitude and approach, he pretty much got told to pack it.

I dont believe in being rude to people, but sometimes you have to make things clear. In their comment chain they asked the dev to rename the application so it didn't give the reputation a bad name. I can understand that, especially since Darktable apparently is a really good app. Open source means you can take the code and build/modify/play with it, it doesn't mean you can take the name and reputation of a product and apply it in a new direction (using the same name).

So the guy forks darktable for windows, calls it something else. Then when the project reaches a level of maturity the original devs approve of, they take his work back into darktable, produce their own windows port under their 'brand' and his project potentially dies because it doesn't carry the same weight?

I got the vibe from some of the comments that "one guy working on a windows port isn't enough, we don't want to help support it so we're going to discourage any 'one man bands' until a team appears from nowhere to do all the work" is the common view, which I sort of understand that they don't want to have to provide end user support to a platform they themselves don't use, but that attitude might ultimately go against the project.

Exactly! Thanks for summarizing much better than I could.

You can set out requirements for merging upstream while also encouraging users to contribute. They're driving off good developers who do use windows primarily and might want to contribute. Like you said, there's no "team" that's going to materialize if that's the approach that they take whenever anyone brings it up.

I dont see anything wrong with what you just described.

    * Yes it's ok for the *owners* of the project to reject buggy code.
    * Yes it's ok for the owners of the project to accept working code.
    * Yes it's ok for the owners to "take" someones work when said person volunteered to it. 
    Thats what "contributing to open source" means.
    * Yes it's ok for the owners to use a working contribution to better their project for each and 
    every one of the users.
    * Yes its ok for someones fork to die.  Thats the fork maintainer's problem. 
    Is there anything preventing him from checking out the latest version of the code (serious question, 
    I dont know), the one that the owners incorporated and improved ?

Also, it's not "his" (the windows dev's) project. It's his contribution, which is to port the original owners' project to windows.

I dont see anything wrong here, other than the owners weren't exactly welcoming, encouraging, or perhaps helpful. That sucks, sounds like they were rude (or perhaps they turned rude when the original "dont call this fork Darktable, please" didn't get heeded ?).

What a shame, I've heard similar stories about people who try to contribute to open source and get treated badly. But again, other than being crass, I dont see any problem. It's great that windows dev contributed so much and improved. He deserves a big Thank You from everyone, especially the owners (and maybe they did ?). But the bottom line is he volunteered. He isn't owed anything.

It's an unfortunate situation, but the way _they_ put it (two sides to every fight) is that they don't know if he'll drop out in a week and all those who downloaded it will come screaming "Were's our updates!!"

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