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Comment by jlg23 | Hacker News Reader

> This just smacks of arrogance and hostility towards other developers you make your work open to.

You have gotten a sign wrong here in your sensor readings where arrogance and hostility are. Someone gives you a present that comes with a condition. You either take it, or you leave it. But calling the donor "arrogant and hostile" because you don't like a condition just got you uninvited from all future gift exchange parties.

Back then when people still knew what patches were, the whole post of the OP would have been a one liner:

    [x] send patches or stfu

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> Back then when people still knew what patches were, the whole post of the OP would have been a one liner: [x] send patches or stfu

The person who says that is either an idiot or doesn't care about the product. There's really no third option.

It's fine if you made something once that you no longer care about and want to abandon. Really! I understand that free software isn't free! Someone has to make it, and that takes time and effort and energy, and maybe you don't want to give that anymore! That's OK!

But don't for a second think that it's reasonable to give a song and dance about pretending to still care while demanding pull requests for every bug. Mark the project abandoned, and go do something else without stringing people along. Otherwise you're being a prick to your users for no reason. Non-technical users discover bugs that you didn't catch all the time. If the developer/maintainer gives half a shit, they'll listen to those users.

I think you're trying to paint this too black and white. It's perfectly reasonable to be interested in supporting only the proactive user base of your project – that way both parties give and gain something.

> It's perfectly reasonable to be interested in supporting only the proactive user base

If you only care about the bugs that someone else fixes for you, then you don't actually care. They do, and you're just pretending. It's perfectly reasonable to stick your fingers in your ears and go "LALALALALALALA" instead of listening to reports about bugs in your product the moment you stop giving a shit about it having bugs. A competent person who actually gives a shit isn't willing to put their head in the sand like that.

>If you only care about the bugs that someone else fixes for you, then you don't actually care.

You're mischaracterizing the author's post. Notice that the author specifically wrote:

+ "Fork the repo, add a failing test."

+ "Add an example in the repo that illustrates the bug."

Neither of those requests is "fixing" the bug for the author. Maybe those tasks in your opinion is asking too much of users -- and that's fine to feel that way -- but it's obviously false to say that submitting bug reproductions actually fixes the bug. It certainly doesn't.

FWIW `[x] send patches or stfu` is as much black and white.

>doesn't care about the product

Not everything has to be a "product." Sometimes developers toss their projects up on Github just to get it out there. They don't necessarily want to make it a "product." There are plenty of valid reasons to open source something besides just, "I want a bunch of people to use my product so I can become famous."

Word choice aside, I don't think the author is trying to say, "send patches or stfu." I read it as the author pointing out the shortcomings of standard "issues", and exploring alternatives that might encourage closer collaboration.

> The person who says that is either an idiot or doesn't care about the product. There's really no third option.

Obviously an idiot.

> It's fine if you [...] want to abandon [a project]. Really! I understand that.

The idiot does not understand:

It is NOT ok to reduce interaction with endusers when it becomes too tiresome.

It is NOT ok to demand patches instead of bug reports.

It IS ok to just completely abandon a project though, i.e. not even accept patches?

Bwahahahaha.... (that is a good laugh born out of an idiot's blissful ignorance).

PS: The only "prick" in the discussion is the one who feels entitled to something and who calls people names because they don't deliver for free what her/his majesty wants.

Well. If the gift has two buttons, say red and blue. And pressing the sequence blue, red, blue, blue makes the server self destruct. Should there be a way to know that?

Put another way, it's not a gift if it somehow eventually fucks over the receiver. Or perhaps you consider STDs a gift? ;)

Well I'm more a user than a developer but I already have helped others users by responding to issues in someone's else repo.

Recently I've opened an issue on a project I really appreciate, and I'm so sorry I don't have time right now to help the developers solve it. And so I don't blame them either.

When I'll have more time/skills I will totally stick around, keep giving feedback and maybe propose PR if he hasn't solved the issue by then. But I really don't feel like signaling a serious issue without PR was spamming them.

And who know maybe I'll become a contributor one day if I can. But right now, had I been "forced" to submit a Pull request I would have either submitted a really crappy one or more likely censor myself...

Here is the issue if you feel like having a look : https://github.com/pgRouting/osm2pgrouting/issues/167

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