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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

This whole thing seems like focusing on small things and pretending they are big. I think the guys running Requests is eccentric and weird for sure. Weird eccentric guys will do weird and eccentric things. You have to expect that.

The amount of money is ridiculously small. It isn't worth the time to focus on it.

It is too bad the popular library doesn't have a competent maintainer. But at least he hasn't screwed it up.

Maybe someone should just write a replacement with better features and then we can all move on? Sounds like the best solution to me. Probably easier to do than dealing with him or even fighting him.

I guess I wouldn't focus on attacking this guy, it just isn't worth it. Life is short, the stakes are small, and it just isn't worth it.

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$28,000 dollars is small to you? I'd be happy to take that from you, and take unpaid leave from work for a few months.

> The amount of money is ridiculously small. It isn't worth the time to focus on it.

Well, it's donated money... Do you think the people who donated share this view?

I donated a substantial amount - and I agree completely. I knew I was paying Kenneth Reitz, and have no concern whatsoever what happens after that. I’ve gotten several orders of magnitude more benefit from Kenneth and his work than my donation. Hell, for that matter, I’ve gotten several orders of magnitude more benefit than the total of all donations combined.

"I’ve gotten several orders of magnitude more benefit from Kenneth and his work than my donation."

But he hasn't committed code to requests in years, and I don't see any of the other maintainers popping up to say he's doing good work as a maintainer(which could be non-code contributions). It seems like his contribution is mostly marketing at this point.

I suspect they do. Kickstarters and such are so loosely goosey that I donate with an expectation that at least 30% is waste, error, etc.

I typically only pay attention if it just seems out fraud.

I don’t know if everyone else feels the same way, but I suspect so based on the poor documentation.

It’s kind of like, I think, if I give $5 to a busker and she ends up buying an expensive beer instead of the daily special.

It is a ridiculously small amount of money though. You are probably right it is being wasted and misused, but that is half of kickstarters. It is par for the course when donating to a non-charity, it is trust and this guy is eccentric and weird. I think people have unrealistic expectations in this situation.

Maybe you're right that it's a bit naive to throw money at internet eccentrics who don't have a plan and trust that they will manage things well.

I just don't think we should be excusing things because it's (what some people think) is a small amount of money (note - about the average yearly income for a Canadian).

>Maybe you're right that it's a bit naive to throw money at internet eccentrics who don't have a plan and trust that they will manage things well.

I don't expect him to manage it well. I'd have been happy if half of the promised work got delivered and the money was spend on hookers and blow. I know most of the fees for my portfolio are funding that type of thing already.

It is a small amount of money, especially considering the amount of value Requests provides.

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