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Comment by timhh | Hacker News Reader

Yes it's unsolicited "advice" that shows an uncooperative attitude IMO. You can say "I don't want to do that" in a nice way without being patronising. If you look at the other closed MRs you'll see a similar attitude.

E.g. here (I'd forgotten about this actually): https://github.com/lezer-parser/generator/pull/6#issuecommen...

Here https://github.com/lezer-parser/lr/pull/64#issuecomment-1802...

It's nothing major but just emanates "difficult to work with" vibes so I didn't want to spend my time working with a project like that (looks like not many other people do either).

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The onus when working on an existing project is for new collaborators to understand how to work effectively with the existing norms, not for project operators to contort themselves into whatever chimera is expected of them by drive-by patchmakers.

Well yes, he does not want to discuss the direction of developement. He decides that. If he thinks something is not helping, he won't do it.

So sure, taking part in the project would mean accepting his way of things.

So difficult to work with? Depends on your expectations I guess.

And the comment above could have been maybe written nicer, but I see it as a defense of "no, I don't need to accept your PR just because you put work in it, you should have checked with me first, before doing it"

Because he had those discussions quite often I think (I follow decelopement from time to time since quite a while)

> no, I don't need to accept your PR just because you put work in it, you should have checked with me first, before doing it

Which is a bit rude IMO, and not really in the spirit of open source. I never demanded that he accept it. A PR is like "here's some code, let me know if it's ok" not "you should merge this code without question".

Here is what I would have written:

"Hi, thanks for the code but I don't think I want to go in that direction because X Y Z." (he didn't give any clear reasons so you'll have to imagine those).

Anyway he's free to do his thing. I was just explaining why I moved away from that library.

"Which is a bit rude IMO, and not really in the spirit of open source. I never demanded that he accept it. "

Other people did before you. But I can see how you perceived that reaction to you as hostile. It was definitely a bit rude. I disagree a bit though, that it is not in the spirit of open source. Open source does not necessarily mean open for collaboration. He does accept PRs, if they fit his vision .. and get defensive, when they don't, because he don't want to spend energy arguing why not. He does not have to. So yes, it would be nicer, if he would be nicer. But he is the way he is and still he managed to build a great open source product.

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