Why we never thank open source maintainers
windsooon.github.io
windsooon.github.io
'Hi, can you implement <Feature that takes a month of work>? Thanks!'
Usually from people who have never contributed anything.
Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their laziness.
1. Severely restrict the scope of the project (i.e. do one thing and do it well) 2. Don't feel guilty about saying "no" 3. Realize that people have no malicious intent or are lazy when they request <feature X that takes two months>. It's just like a normal customer in a business: they often have no idea of the cost and difficulties in implementing things. That's okay, it's my duty to inform them of that. 4. Refuse pull requests for features that I don't feel like maintaining. I always try to keep people from wasting their time and ask them to confer before implementing a feature.
I don't feel animosity towards people who (even rudely) request such things. But they can expect a short reply in the form of "I'm sorry, that feature is outside the scope of the project / is going to take too much of my time."
The maintainer does something similar and it can annoy some people to get no for an answer but it keeps things sane. The software has been going well for 8+ years now (with one change of maintainer in that time).
We also implemented a Feature Request forum and people generally use it. Plus 'Issues' are turned off on GitHub. So things generally funnel very well through the forum/mailing list and you know that a post in the Feature Request forum will request a feature, so you can mentally prepare for it.
That helps address the under appreciated mental cost for dealing with an open ended inbox.
If you don't know whether the new message is related to 1.) expression of gratitude, 2.) complaining, 3.) feature request, etc., you have an added amount of anxiety when opening the message to figure out which kind it is.
> you have an added amount of anxiety when opening the message to figure out which kind it is.
I'm pretty sure thats a symptom.
But I think the platform would need to be scalable in some way. Maybe no one will fix it for your $100, but maybe if the bounty were crowd funded, it would get fixed when the bounty got high enough to be worthwhile for the amount of time and effort involved.
When I was an active participant on Cyburbia, the site owner was paying for hosting out of pocket and he was resistant to commercializing it and was equally resistant to taking donations. He talked about commercialization as "becoming a sellout" and taking donations as "I don't want to do a PBS style begathon annually." He worked for the government and seemed just unable to wrap his head around good monetization.
People would complain that the site was slow and kludgey. As it got more popular, the level of hosting service he could afford was not really meeting demand. He would crab at complainers that they needed to be more appreciative of the free service that he was paying for out of pocket and make it clear he could not afford more.
I felt there was an obvious solution: Post a page saying it takes $x to cover better hosting for a year. I can't afford that out of pocket. If you want to see site performance improve, kick in a few bucks. When it hits $y, I will upgrade the hosting service. Then point people to that page when they complained.
I see a lot of potential for your idea. It could be a means to turn complaints into a money stream to help improve open source without victimizing contributors.
As someone who did a lot of volunteer work over the years, I came to resent the idea that I should do everything for free. If we value this stuff, we should be willing to pay people to work on it. Finding a means to do so even though it is voluntary can be challenging, but shouldn't be show stopping. We just have to be creative.
Seems problematic to let the bounty-poster decide if something is completed, but also to put it on a third party to put in the time to verify for various pieces of software they might not be familiar with (and worse to put it on the second party who implements).
BountySource suspended from GitHub | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15747328
Useful discussion on the concept there; they were temporarily suspended for not supporting opt-out.
Whisper Systems supports auto-Bitcoin for suspended pull requests. https://signal.org/blog/bithub/
It's also the root cause of a lot of technical debt, "we added this misfeature years ago because 1 client wanted it, so now we have to support it". It's important there is a proper funnel for what features should be added.
Answer with an estimate based on your hourly rate.
If you don't want to work on the feature (i.e. you're uninterested), it's better to be honest about it.
If you do want to work on it, but your time would be better spent on anything else, and you're willing to work on it for money, first ask if the requester is interested in paying for it and then give your estimate.
The difference between a feature request and a client approaching a freelancer/company is that in the latter case, the other party initiates the conversation with a clear expectation of paying — they only have to decide if they like the terms and price.
Being uninterested to do it for free: Yes. But when I am interested to do it for money, giving an upfront estimate based on the hourly rate is the most honest way imaginable to me.
I would rather say that asking to "implement <Feature that takes a month of work>" for free exudes several more magnitudes of arrogance.
Not all users are at the same level of experience as you (a maintainer); this doesn't make them lesser people or even lesser developers (sometimes they're just good in a different problem space than yours), but it makes their expectations a lot less realistic. Don't offload your annoyance on the requester — sometimes they don't know that their request is significantly harder than they think.
You seem to be setting up a few strawmen here.
I admit that I may be reading too much into the dynamic at play here.
To be precise, naturalgradient did not say anything about the intrinsic value of users, but his/her comment says "people who have never contributed anything" and "supporting their laziness", both valid sentiments. The complaint is that the user is inconsiderate; I'm positing that it's better long-term to teach those users to be better users and eventually good maintainers. It's wishy-washy, but the good attitude of maintainers and other users is what taught me how to behave in open source.
If your policy is to charge for features, please disclaim it in your README. It's not a wrong practice, but you should set up the correct expectations.
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Because this is HN: For anyone looking for brass, this problem is muck and there's a product opportunity here.
I give/gave an estimate based on my hourly rate so that this misconception is cleared of as directly as possible. If you want it for free, you better convince me that it is worth the opportunity cost for me to implement it.
I wouldn't want to assume that someone asking for a feature is willing to pay for it. I also wouldn't want to make an offer unless I'm serious about doing it if they say yes.
But, if you are doing contract work, letting people know it's an option seems like a good thing?
Perhaps I'm advocating for a frivolous courtesy versus a fully rational process. Maybe the rational process works better than my suggested approach, but my intuition says no, and would prefer that it be done in a way that communicates "I can help you, but money is a requirement", not "I really wish you would fuck off, but here's an alternative".
"I'm glad you liked it, I have X hours to dedicate to project Y this month. If you'd like, I'm willing to work on that feature for you under terms Z".
People _pay_.
You'd be surprised just how much of Chromium and other open ssource projects is written by consulting companies paid by third parties to solve a use case.
just like several dev over the years implemented privacy conscious options to restric the referer(sic) header just to have google employees silently remove them later on?
well, I guess it can work if the feature you are paying for is not to improve privacy at the expense of google's Ad business.
all added and vanished at random points in time.
even say one can do it 'better'
Then offer to take up the maintainer role. Debian has institutions to deal with unresponsive maintainers.
For reference, I’m the (co)maintainer of over 80 packages in Nixpkgs. IIRC, I submitted my first PR within roughly a month of using NixOS. Before NixOS, I had used Ubuntu for 4 years. How many packages did I maintain there? Zero. It’s just too difficult to track down the right project, figure out the arcane build/packaging setup, contact the maintainers, etc.
From our experience (http://sheetjs.com/, our major open source library is https://github.com/SheetJS/js-xlsx), even with multinational corporations, they move heaven and earth to find another free solution, or spend in-house time to hack together a solution and try to sucker you into helping them, but paying is by and large the last option.
If I could find a way to say "Yeah, we can get 'support' for this open source library for $xxx per month" my life would be much easier.
I work at a company with less than 500 people and for IT open source is evil.
I've seen people been told by IT to find another software that does the same thing but paid, and we have a law that mandates us to prefer FLOSS when possible...
The best ones who pay are those who directly reach out with a paid offer; which shows that they definitely have explored the market (most likely than not) and you are the best option :). The better than the best and great to work with clients are those who just reach out to you directly, only very rarely would happen!!!
The problem is getting single open source maintainers to commit - and followthrough - with support. They are often way too busy with their job to actually be professional with support and adhere to even a loose SLA.
"Hi, I use your app and it's wonderful."
So far so good.
It's immediately followed by
"But it would be perfect if it had <niche feature only needed by that person's individual use case> "
This kind of feedback is wealth.
Even if the use case seems very individual, maybe a useful generalization of it can be found which still covers that case but is of broader use.
- Feature requests should follow ((list your rules)). All requests that don't follow the rules will be ((closed|ignored))
- ((The maintainers of this project)) will only add new features ((at their leisure)). If you cannot contribute a pull request for ((feature X)), make a feature request ((following the rules on item 1)) and wait. Please do not be impatient.
- If you can implement ((feature X)), please do so and open a pull request.
My personal experience is that dealing with third-party code, merge conflicts and waiting for responses can be even more draining than writing code, so there's that.
(Sometimes I'll answer communication from those who don't get it right, almost always they are high-profiled individuals you occasionally have to break a rule for. [I also usually regret it. Maybe I'll learn someday.])
I do not understand your point of view. Should we stop saying thanks in our daily life? Because it does not really do anything for anyone....
To me the following two messages give off two totally different vibes:
'Hi, can you implement <Feature that takes a month of work>? Thanks!'
'Can you implement <Feature that takes a month of work>?'
The reason it bothers me because it sounds like an order to someone who is delivering a service for you, e.g. 'Can I have another drink? Thanks!'? That's not a 'thanks'.
and
> 'Can you implement <Feature that takes a month of work>?'
Are very differently loaded questions! The first one very much indicates no concern about the implementers time, and is very often seen coming from people that have no idea the complexity of the work involved with the "Thansk!" indicating the implementer would automatically accept it regardless of their own priority, while the second one is way more innocent and open for a reply back with "not sure if I have time for that atm".
EDIT: In short, it's a matter of etiquette, the same way nobody wants to deal with a complete fucking asshole (sorry, personal scars here...).
Something like:
> I really like NAME-OF-PROGRAM. Thanks for making it! > > One thing that would make it even better for me would be FEATURE-X. What do you think?
would be much better.
Putting some effort into the request/suggestion also helps. Eg. giving a well written rationale/use case. Saying why existing-feature-Y isn't enough, etc.
The best remedy I find is to know exactly where I stand. Is it something I am interested to work on? maybe, if enough users show interest. Or maybe not. And then communicate clearly to set the expectations.
Want this feature? Sure, either do it yourself or hire somebody from freelancer.com or something. Or at least help me refine the requirements from your vague "this is not working exactly like I want". But yeah, even that is taking energy away.
Related to that, I wish github had an auto-close issue feature that would be triggered if the user hadn't replied for a month.
EDIT: but I also get a lot of really good and respectful feedback. I don't want to push these people away because of my previous snarky comments.
As a user, I have no longer a way of knowing whether an "open source" project's main developers are doing stuff in their free time or on company time. So, I don't see anything wrong with asking for features. Asking for features is how software evelves, whether closed source or open source. If you have a problem with it, put a disclaimer "unmaintained" in the README.md (because not wanting to tirage requests amounts to not maintaining the software).
He didn't discard the notion of non-paying users asking for features at all.
Edit: typo
Perhaps deliberately modest marketing would work better at attracting the right kind of users?
If those users are mad because you won't do free work for them they are entitled jerks.
If those users are mad because your marketing made promises it doesn't keep and they wasted their time learning/installing/integrating your project based on lies, you are the jerk.
Some open source projects are aware of the number of users but focus on getting contributors, so that they can make the product better. They are sharing the workload of solving a common problem so others can stand on their shoulders.
Some focus on user numbers, because then they can be famous, or they have a connected business that will make more money.
These are groups that will work very differently and respond to users differently. They have simply chosen similar software licenses.
There isn’t space for an infinite number of libraries in a niche. So if you show up you are occupying space that someone else can’t. Sort of like if your friends throw a party and you decide to throw one on the same day. Kind of a dick move if you don’t have a really really good reason (like it’s your birthday).
Additionally is nearly impossible to sell a library now. It wasn’t always that way, but that’s the world we live in now, in large part because of FOSS. Writing it in-house or using FOSS are pretty much my only two options. So FOSS has to be some significant fraction of the quality of a commercial alternative because we can’t have those anymore. Without any attempt at sufficiency, FOSS effectively makes the world a worse place.
Worse case they have to add something and put my request in some sort of backlog. I always say thanks when I ask someone for help though. But I never flat out ask for new features because for all I know they already have a defined way of solving the problem I have.
So a genuine "hi there, thanks for all your work, I've been using your lib for months and its awesome" is an annoyance to you? You must be fun at parties.
A 'thanks' does not do anything for me. I don't write a library for other people's appreciation, I write it because I want to, because I can, and because I have my own interests for it.
Insofar I am interacting with other people on the project, the only thing that does anything for me is if they contribute something.
Appreciation is not worth anything to me but I am also deeply introvert and not very social, I simply do not care. I can appreciate most people feel different (by observation) but I build technology because I want it to exist and do things, not to be thanked.
> Honestly, being thanked in any shape or form does nothing for me, Id rather have users be more considerate of our time and not abuse issues and the community for supporting their laziness.
You’re warping the argument by calling the response a straw man. I agreed with GP on feeling annoyed by thanks that are actually feature requests, but they went on to say that all thanks was unwelcome. Nothing was taken out of context.
$$$? Beer?
I'm 99% sure you meant this purely in the context of your earlier statemetn ("hey, implement this, plz"), but I just wanted to say a plain ol' thanks for me helps a lot in my motivation for doing my OSS projects. Knowing people actually use my shit, and enjoy it is nice :)
This is a very toxic attitude, honestly.
How dare users request features they can't implement themselves... only experienced developers with domain knowledge should request features!
As a maintainer, seeing it every does tend to annoy me a bit. I always try to remind myself people dont usually mean ill though. All bets are off if people continue to disregard the framework for engagement though.
Most people are a bit surprised I do this but are generally receptive after the initial explanation.
My main philosophy in these interactions is just to treat people professionally while being stern on things out of scope.
I've kept some data on how much time I've spent on a somewhat popular open source project (+/-1000 stars on github, if that means anything).
Time to implement to scratch my own itch: +/- 24 hours
Time to write documentation, package, etc: +/- 70 hours
Time to handle bug and feature requests, support: +560 hours
So that's an overhead of around 2500%. If I was paid to do that, it would have cost around €130,000.- (and would have netted me around €5, because dutch taxes ;-) )
The emails and other forms of thank-you's from users make it more than worth it. Plus, I get to give back to the community.
I think I should stress the point that people will pay more for stupid things such as lessons than they will for actually useful things. For example, you can charge twice as much for teaching people how to use Git than you can for actually implementing the frontend and backend for them.
People are really, really insecure about their own abilities. If you can position yourself in the market as someone who can help them with their insecurities, you're basically golden. It sounds a little .. dickish, but really ,you're doing everyone a favor. So many people get hung up in merely(?) having to make a decision. Making it for them it usually a big help.
I guess that's the difference between consulting and contracting.
This isnt just for you, more of a general thing. Ive seen it a lot in this thread alone.
Creating an OSS project doesn't entitle you to be treated a certain way either. Nothing does. Being entitled at ALL is bad, so expecting good or bad is just a waste.
I try to live more by the "give everything you can, expect nothing in return, be grateful if something comes" mentality. Shitty people are going to be shitty people, and most of them are shitty for a reason - so feel bad for them, not angry or annoyed at them. Nobody WANTS to be an asshole...
Entitlement only leads to disapointment. It's bad all around, from my perspective.
You can't be entitled to something AND appreciate it at the same time. So, a lack of entitlement of being treated well leads to appreciating more when you are treated well.
If nothing else, its a fun sociology/psychology conversation.
Choosing to experience negative emotion because someone does something is self-harm.
When you are entitled to something, you expect it, and you can't expect something and be truly appreciative of it at the same time. When you don't expect good though, the bad doesn't upset you, and the good, you actually genuinely appreciate.
For example, if your baseline "expectation" of people is that they will be rude and shitty, then you won't become annoyed when someone is rude and shitty to you. And when someone is nice to you, they have exceeded your expectations and it makes you happy.
So what you perhaps "expected" is that people generally would not be rude, which led to your disappointment when you encountered a rude person, which ultimately just generated annoyance/unhappiness for yourself (i.e. their rudeness is static regardless of how it made you feel).
The point is not really to go around bleakly expecting everything to be shit all the time, but just in general, the lower your expectations are, the less power you give people to disappoint and upset you, and the more you appreciate people for exceeding your expectations. It's not really about whether it's "right" or "wrong" to be annoyed at them but just a mindset shift for your own contentment.
Buddhism, Daoism, etc... its the same idea. Don't have expectations, good or bad, simply be in the moment.
[edited for spelling]
Hi :-) Fascinating comment. Do you really live that, or just it's something you read/heard and aspire to?
Trying to unpack that a little: Calling experiencing negative emotion (i.e. feeling bad) "choosing to experience negative emotion" seems psychobabble. Do you choose all your feelings? I doubt it. So, you will never feel bad because of anything anyone does, because why would you, and that would be self-harm. All that just strikes me as jargon out of a bad self-help book. It doesn't sound human, but like a robot, or maybe a guru. (e.g. Nisargadatta: 'In my world, nothing ever goes wrong.') I guess that's why gurus/monks/priests aren't supposed to have wives, girlfriends, careers, possessions etc. Because ordinary humans do get upset about stuff. And feel good about stuff. The way you call people "someone" and reduce most of life to "someone doing something" I find absolutely chilling.
That last bit about expectation sounds likes the ridiculous pessimism I thought made sense as a child. If you expect things to turn out for the worst, you will never be disappointed. That was before I realized that in life your attitude makes a huge difference to how things turn out. In the real/everyday world of someones doing somethings anyway.
There is an entire philosophy built around that concept, buddhism.
[1] Some examples of useful tools include: TextBar for OSX, git-annex assistant ... someone wrote a great encfs tutorial ... etc.
Just because soneone “donates” money, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to pay taxes.
So in general it only pays off if it is above a threshold. If a company offers to donate 2000€, I would find a way to make it work. But if it’s just a one off donation of 10€, I’d rather not bother my accountant with it.
It's interesting that we have much simpler payment methods available in the EU, but apparently EU people don't like to pay for things.
to take someone up on something = to accept an offer or invitation from someone
I have asked a few for help or clarification too and thanked those who responded. And I have bought a few a beer or beverage of their choice when I could by donating, but that's really not much at all for what I got.
I have never asked anyone to add a feature or fix a bug, but I've not run into to many. I have offered a few hacks when I thought they were worthy of review but it's been a pretty long time since I've done that.
Since it's "Thanksgiving Day" here I will say I am very thankful for the work they do and freely give, and I know I couldn't do what I do without them. Not even.
It's truly an amazing thing for me. I grew up building "custom cars" and worked my ass off to buy tools to make things. Early on I spent at least half of every paycheck to buy tools.
Now, I use tools that are "free" and it's amazing what you can build with them.
Very little in the history of man can compare to it. It's one of the most amazing and best things I've ever seen happen and I've lived in one of the most amazing eras ever.
Open source has been _tremendously_ cost-effective for me. I do it for fun and because I genuinely like building open tools people like using.
This is me https://github.com/benjamingr https://stackoverflow.com/users/1348195/benjamin-gruenbaum - I have done some work but there are _a lot_ of people who have made bigger contributions than me.
Wondering if other people feel the same way or not. I _do_ give around ~30$ a month on patreon to projects I like just as a nice "thank you for maintaining this".
Don't we all get spammed by these, regardless of where we work?
Also, conference invites usually cost money rather than return money.
Some conferences also offer to do paid workshops which are a big factor too.
Conference speaking is often worth it if it's effectively part of your job that someone else is paying for or (selectively) if the exposure for marketing yourself is worth it.
NoScript was my favorite add-on and I have no doubt that it will be once again, but it really is heartbreaking to read some of the reviews[1]. Constructive feedback is a good thing, but I just don't understand why some people feel that they have a right to use the f* word when reviewing the new version. Just simply describe what is broken and say you have disabled it until the issue is resolved, and thank the man for his hard work.
Thanks again, Giorgio Maone!
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/revi...
I've thanked authors of small projects which are unique and useful to me just by dropping a short email (not en masse) - Not out of some obligation, but because it's an encouraging thing to receive. I want them to know someone is finding utility in what they have done and appreciates it enough to tell them.
I don't think the larger projects are in need of this though, it would just become noise. This is probably just the cynical misanthrope in me speaking but I can't help but think it looks more like a popularity contest when it's public like this... not that i'm suggesting it could be done any other way for large projects, but then, who is going to read all of them if it's a large project?
Unfortunately, you are getting more random malformated issues (ie. “DOESN’T WORK. WHEN FIX”) than thanks!
Very much so. I like if people find actual issues in software I helped write and report them. At least if there's some information to go on, or friendly asks for pointers what information to provide.
It's the "BROKEN! NEED FIX URGENTLY" without further information that's insulting.
I'm even OK with somebody expressing urgency, as long as it's clear they're willing to invest enough time themselves.
I haven't originated any popular repos myself, but of the few I have contributed to, these types of issues can be quite common. One of the projects is a math library and a swear 1/2 issues are people discovering for the first time how floating point math behaves and complaining profusely that it's the authors fault.
If you can gain some contributors to help you do the weeding in your issues list it can help with your sanity greatly.
This is one feature that I wish hosting platforms like github/gitlab etc had to help authors and maintainers: ability to grant issue management permissions (separately from full repo access).
You'll be happy to learn that in GitLab a reporter can manage issue but not the repository already. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/permissions.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/71fupc/foss_develope...
Putting the link here might make it more obvious.
Using Github only to say "hey, don't forget about this piece of software that you shouldn't be looking for on Github" is a terrible habit as it artificially inflates the importance of Github for Free Software and ... we already have search engines for that kind of thing.
I just wanted to know what bureaucratic hurdles one has to jump in Germany to even be able to receive donations on your webpage. I don't want to go into the gory details, but just come with something that I say for years very often: The surest way to become a terrorist very fast is to read up into law.
And this is only for being legally able to receive and not about the taxation issues that arise when you concretely receive donations.
Also in countries there are lots of preferred ways on the methods for money transfer. For example in Germany many people don't want to use a credit card and prefer SEPA money transfer/direct debit for paying in the internet.
Yes, of course one could use some fancy cryptocurrency, but the legal/taxation issues remain.
I paid a bug bounty to someone in Germany from Canada with Bitcoin. I guess I'm a terrorist now.
But I would wager that the receiver (accidentally!) did tax fraud, since the legal situation around taxation of Bitcoin payments in Germany is not really clear. I can nearly say for sure that if he is not a professional who specializes in international taxation laws (or at least has access to an expert in this area) he probably did a criminal act (which does not imply that he will be prosecuted etc.).
Also I would bet he did something wrong in the accounting of these donation (which can easily happen, since there are so many formal details to consider - do something wrong and you are in trouble). Again a source for big legal trouble. This will rarely be prosecuted, but is nearly always a sword of Damocles.
Unless of course, you say you are non profit - then they have to accept that, complicated, yes.
But if you want small donation money for a webpage, it is very easy. You register a small company for it (cost 20-30€, time 20 minutes at the finance agency. and you can use that company for many other similar things). And then you are legally good to receive money in all forms, bitcoins or not. They don't care how you got that money. All that matters to them is how much profit you made in a year. If it is below 16000€ you don't pay (company) taxes - and they totally ignore you for being not important. If you make higher income, well, then you start having a serious business, with taxation and probably more regulation, true.
But for small things I found it not so hard.
Which makes the tax declaration much more complicated. Additionally this can easily cause lots of trouble with the employment contract.
I mean sure, since I am a libertarian, I prefer there to be no hurdles and no taxes at all, but the majority of people think different. And you are not even a libertarian I suppose? So you just want a excemption from taxes/buerocracy for you? Or just for small things like donation? Yeah well, this is the case right now, but they need to somehow verify that it is indeed small. I found the current situation reasonable. A bit more effort with tax declaration, but not really much, having a small business.
"Additionally this can easily cause lots of trouble with the employment contract."
And this is a problem with your contract then, which you negotiated and nothing for which the state is responsible.
I am not against taxes per se, but I am a deep hater of bureacracy.
The thank you that comes attached to issues does make me more inclined to help quicker, because I just feel the person is being polite and respectful of the effort.
Personally I would "thank" someone for example by upvoting their post, commenting on it, or posting their project here or on Lobster, staring their GitHub project, etc. Those are more concrete stuff and personally I would appreciate this kind of actions more than a thank you note.
Speaking for myself, thanks is fine but I don't need it; thanks doesn't do anything for burnout. People using my software is enough thanks. The biggest thanks is someone contributing a useful bug fix or needed feature. Time and effort is the currency in open source.
As a maintainer of a project¹ that many use, I've had private messages encouraging me to commit suicide etc. Not ideal.
＼(^o^)／
Any human group has all the problems that comes with us. Some people are insensitive, self centred, selfish, entitled, immature but there are also others who are helpful, warm, polite, genuinely wonderful human beings.
There is little reason for cynicism or negativity. You get to meet and interact with all kinds which in itself opens your life up to a whole new set of experiences.
Star their repo
Tweet or email them my thanks
Donate cash
If I make it to the point where I develop strong competency with the project and have something meaningful to contribute, I'll start looking at issues and helping people troubleshoot.
For what it's worth, in our work on the TechEmpower Framework Benchmarks [1], we have received a great deal of positive feedback and gratefulness. We really appreciate it since it makes the project so much more fun and meaningful for us when we hear that people have found it useful (or at least interesting). We never cease to be amazed at the generosity of the community. All of this often makes me wish we could spend more time on the project. (We're working on getting Round 15 out soon!)
[1] https://www.thankyouopensource.com/letter/155/Fucking-dead/
[2] https://www.thankyouopensource.com/letter/154/Fuck-%22Open-S...
These are terrible people
Right now in this discussion there are a lot of recommendations but without knowing more about the context in which they are applied it is hard to take them seriously. Specifically, are commenters making the suggestion having put it into practice in an open source project/community, and (if so) what impact has it had there?
As an attempt to provide something similar to what I am suggesting, here is an anonymized conversation regarding a tool I have barely maintained for a few years (merging bug fixes). The tool is used by many database administrators so not programmers but technical. It provides some of the functionality that commercial software charges hundreds of dollars to provide, so it is easy to suggest paying someone else real money to solve any problems.
>On Sat, Jul 4 at 8:06 AM, Maintainer (me) wrote:
I will not be able to resolve these issues in what it sounds like is the timeframe you need.
My recommendation would be that you install the trial version of a tool on the list of commercial alternatives (link). One that I have very limited experience with is [specific recommended alternative]. The page also lists all of the free tools that I am aware of.
Thanks for reporting these problems; I will create issues to track the progress of resolving them.
>On Fri, July 3, User wrote / forwarded:
Can you please help me?
>On Fri, Jul 3, User (#2?) wrote:
I'm getting another one issue. Ie the [tool] generate the script like
"ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN ... [bigint] IDENTITY (1,1) NOT NULL".
While i'm executing this script i'm getting error like "Msg 156, Level 15, State 1, Line 1
Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'IDENTITY'".
[tool] generate a is wrong one? Let me know the reason for this one . and Please address the above issues . I'm eagerly wait for your response.
^^ I liked this. Very nice and very true.
Edited to add a link
(Admittedly, that does describe a certain %age of open source projects).
Hi X,
I love your patch! Yet something to improve:
Shout out to everyone who worked on ublock origin and the filters. Doing God's work, death to advertising.