9 ms·

Hug an OSS Developer or just don't be a dick

70 points by huntern 15y ago

christkv 15y ago
The best way I have found is to not look at the child and not talk to the child.
philbo 15y ago
I've contributed to a few small open-source projects myself in the past and can only remember polite, well-mannered people in the associated communities. However I think the key point is that those were very small projects, with equally small communities. When you get to the Mozilla / Selenium level of popularity discussed in the post, it must be a near-certainty that you will also attract your fair share of uninformed and/or plain rude people posting bug reports and comments. In that sense, it can be viewed as a good thing: your project is a success, otherwise it wouldn't be attracting all the bad vibes!
zdw 15y ago
If you find a problem with open source code and you can't fix it and provide a good patch, at least identify where in the code is at fault. If you can't find the fault, provide a fully formed test case that shows the problem. If you can't create a test case, be polite and extremely specific when reporting the bug. If you can't be polite... well the bug is probably less of a problem than your attitude.
- bkor 15y ago
  Within the project I help out in, I spend a lot of time replying to people, trying to change their attitude. This usually helps. In the extreme cases it doesn't, I have a big hammer to wield (sysadmin). If you're consistently (honestly) well-intended and nice, you'll see that it changes peoples attitude. Further, more people will stick around because they like the friendly atmosphere. However, it has to be managed constantly. I want everyone to be nice, no matter if they're a developer who has worked on the project for 5+ years, or just a random person who saw a crash. Though, long time developer gets a bit more leeway than a new person. If someone writes a really good rant or troll, I only want to see nice replies. Fortunately, this is usually what happens. Doesn't also make sense to get harsh or angry; just becomes a long thread because emotions get heated and people who are angry always seems to have a lot of time to vent. Trying to make everyone be nice takes a lot of effort. Usually people do mean well, it is just that they either word it wrongly, culture (Germans :P), or that they're used to harsh communities elsewhere. It takes quite some effort to always respond in the best way, and not behave the same way back. I'm sort of like a BOFH. Having sysadmin abilities means that I could be a behaving way too radically and there is nobody to easily say otherwise (could moderate them, remove their privs, etc). I do above for the good of the project. Cannot code in the way the developers do and try to help out in this way. One big problem is cultural differences. Some people expect really friendly and long language and see anything else as harsh; eventhough it is not intended that way (Northern Europe:P). E.g. a "No" as an answer to a long paragraph.
JoeAltmaier 15y ago
...or try not to get into the situation where your financial/employment status is in the hands of volunteers. (Don't use OS for important things that require diligent support)
- wladimir 15y ago
  Or pay the developers for "diligent support". Many open source projects offer some kind of paid support or commercial license. A lot of people seem to expect fully fledged support for free, and that's pretty crazy. If you want "free support" you either need to be able to fix it yourself or get on good terms with the developer. In any case, don't be a dick.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    > A lot of people seem to expect fully fledged support for free, and that's pretty crazy It gets worse; A lot of those people expect fully fledged support for trivial "problems" which are clearly explained in the help file (that ships with the product) on the website, in the forums, and in a wiki. And they'll be dicks about it too.
  - JoeAltmaier 15y ago
    Well said. So if its mission-critical, expect to take support in-house or pay for it. Or don't use it. Is there some clearinghouse of OSS support suppliers?
    - gruuk 15y ago
      > So if its mission-critical, expect to take support in-house or pay for it Pretty much true of any software, proprietary or not; only a blind optimist or someone with deep pockets will use a mission-critical piece of software without developing in-house expertise. Also, free online resources are available for both. We use a mix of proprietary and OSS products here and we've found that paid support is somewhat better for proprietary (easier to get, though quality varies extensively), but free support is typically better for OSS products. Still, the main benefits of OSS have little to do with free support, though it is a nice bonus. I've thanked many developers for their time spent not only creating a program/system I use, but also for supporting it. Especially for small projects, sending a few good words and a few bucks (when you can afford to) shows the devs their efforts are appreciated.
robflynn 15y ago
I spent a good many years managing and developing a popular open source project. While most of our users were/are good individuals, there were certainly some nasty ones in the bunch. I remember being cursed at many a time simply for politely refusing to implement whatever random feature a user requested. If a bug were to come up in the software, there were times where threats and/or demands were made that I fix the bug or modify something to the user's liking. (Never physical threats as far as I can recall, but still unwarranted aggression.) They absolutely refused to believe that I didn't directly "owe" them anything. It was a bizarre entitlement feeling some of the users had. It's not like I worked on the project for a living. I had a day job as well. I finally started transitioning away from the project and handing it off to someone else when I started getting phone calls at my home. A user managed to track down my cell phone number and started calling me in the middle of the night (3am - 4am.) He wanted to talk to me about his "ideas" that I should implement in the code. That's not to say all of our users were jerks. In fact, it was a very small minority. Out of the hundreds of thousands of users we had, only a handful were dicks. Unfortunately, some took it to creepy levels. On the other hand, many warm e-mails were received and even on occasion cases of beer for our coding efforts. I still hold a lot of fond memories of that time. Hell, even the legal issues were a learning experience, though the majority of that occurred around the time I was bowing out. I really don't even know what point I'm trying to make here. I just wanted to share a few brief stories. `Tis a strange world.
- starwed 15y ago
  Idly curious: is there a reason you don't just mention the name of the project? (I'm assuming Pidgin.)
  - robflynn 15y ago
    I mentioned it initially but went back and removed it. I couldn't decide if the stating the project specifically was relevant or not. I often over analyze what I'm posting here for some reason. It was Pidgin, but back when it was called gaim. The pidgin transition occurred while I was leaving. I stuck around long enough to participate in deciding on the new name / logo / branding and then handed everything over to Sean officially.
jamesu 15y ago
To me an open source project is 1% about the code and 99% about the community. Without a good community, you might as well not bother open sourcing the code.
- huntern 15y ago
  Agreed. That's a huge attraction for me as well, the people around it, working with them, and seeing the product(s) take shape.
- gbog 15y ago
  I don't know how far this is true. I just checked Vim, which for me seem to be written mostly by one person (but I may be wrong here). Anyway, I'm quite sure there are some useful open source project which don't have a big community of developers. FSlint is one I use sometime.
JangoSteve 15y ago
I have found that most people don't even realize they're being dicks when submitting bug reports or feature suggestions for OSS. I recent wrote an article about this phenomenon and what to do about it. [1] For example, it can be demeaning to OSS developers who have spent much of their time (often unpaid) to build this software for you to use, when you open your bug report with the attitude that it must be broken simply because it doesn't do what you want it to do. I prefer to start every conversation (bug report, etc), not with the purpose of fixing something that's broken, but to expand the both project's applicability and the community's understanding of the project. For example, consider This software is broken on IE. vs Can we make this software work in IE? You're not starting a conversation because the software is broken in IE, you're starting it because it's an opportunity to make it applicable to the IE use-case. This is also why I encourage everyone who's having trouble with any of my projects to open an issue ticket. I often get emails or tweets from people asking for help with some problem, and the first thing I tell them is, open a ticket. Their aversion to opening a ticket is because they're not sure if it's an issue with the software, or if they're just doing it wrong. But I say it's ticket-worthy either way, because a ticket isn't made to fix broken software, it's made to increase the project's applicability and the community's understanding of the software. If you're having the problem, chances are someone else is or will have that same problem, and now they can find the solution.
- JangoSteve 15y ago
  EDIT: Oops, forgot the footnote. [1] http://www.alfajango.com/blog/communicating-with-engineers-and-contributing-to-open-source/ http://www.alfajango.com/blog/communicating-with-engineers-a...
- tedunangst 15y ago
  the attitude that it must be broken simply because it doesn't do what you want it to do For better or worse, I get snippy when something doesn't work that I was told would work. Like when the included examples don't work or the documentation is wrong. Then I'm not angry because I didn't get the free pony I wanted, I'm angry because you lied to me.
  - 15y ago
illumen 15y ago
No, people should not be mean or rude to developers - or anyone really. However, Mozilla is getting paid for the software. Just because it is open source, does not mean that people don't get paid. Mozilla takes money for their software in the form of donations. So some users are actually paying directly to Mozilla. Also, Mozilla makes most of its money by selling private information to Google (searches etc). Users are paying through giving up some of their privacy, by doing searches through Firefox, and google. Also, the Mozilla foundation is a non profit organisation which means all the US tax payers give it money indirectly through government support. If it was a company, then it would not get certain privileged treatment. Finally users contribute to OSS through at least testing products - if not in documentation and many other ways. Anyway, my point is that you can't really use the excuse that it's free to the users, so they can't expect anything - because it certainly isn't entirely free. People should try and not be rude - on either the developers side or the users side. I've seen a bunch of rants from Mozilla people about this, so I think their community needs work. They should consider watching how their developers communicate with people as well. Calling people 'dicks' and such is pretty harsh. They should also consider making Bugzilla nicer. Things like WONTFIX, and other communications with bug reporters can really make people angry, and can make Mozilla come across as being rude too.
- statictype 15y ago
  What private information about you does Mozilla sell to Google? As far as I know, Google only pays Mozilla to provide the default home page and search engine.
- khuey 15y ago
  I'm not even sure how to respond to the "selling private information to Google" bit. If you think choosing a default search engine equates to selling private information I guess that's cool. I don't agree, and I don't think many (or any) people who work on Mozilla do, and we're generally a pretty privacy concerned group. The Mozilla Corporation pays taxes on its profits (including its business deals with Google) like any other US company. There's no special "privileged treatment" on the business deals. (Disclosure: I work for the Mozilla Corporation)
thedjpetersen 15y ago
I agree with http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3295720 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3295720 . It would be nice to be in a world where people treated each other well. I have seen the inverse as well though, some person politely pointing out a deficiency in an open source project and getting derided by a maintainer. Reminds me of this HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267885 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267885 .
thedjpetersen 15y ago
I agree with http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3295720 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3295720 . It would be nice to be in a world where people treated each other well. I have seen the inverse as well though, some person politely pointing out a deficiency in an open source project and getting derided by a maintainer. Reminds me of this HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267885 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267885 .

70 points by huntern 15y ago

The best way I have found is to not look at the child and not talk to the child.

I've contributed to a few small open-source projects myself in the past and can only remember polite, well-mannered people in the associated communities. However I think the key point is that those were very small projects, with equally small communities. When you get to the Mozilla / Selenium level of popularity discussed in the post, it must be a near-certainty that you will also attract your fair share of uninformed and/or plain rude people posting bug reports and comments. In that sense, it can be viewed as a good thing: your project is a success, otherwise it wouldn't be attracting all the bad vibes!

zdw 15y ago

If you find a problem with open source code and you can't fix it and provide a good patch, at least identify where in the code is at fault. If you can't find the fault, provide a fully formed test case that shows the problem. If you can't create a test case, be polite and extremely specific when reporting the bug. If you can't be polite... well the bug is probably less of a problem than your attitude.

bkor 15y ago
Within the project I help out in, I spend a lot of time replying to people, trying to change their attitude. This usually helps. In the extreme cases it doesn't, I have a big hammer to wield (sysadmin). If you're consistently (honestly) well-intended and nice, you'll see that it changes peoples attitude. Further, more people will stick around because they like the friendly atmosphere. However, it has to be managed constantly. I want everyone to be nice, no matter if they're a developer who has worked on the project for 5+ years, or just a random person who saw a crash. Though, long time developer gets a bit more leeway than a new person. If someone writes a really good rant or troll, I only want to see nice replies. Fortunately, this is usually what happens. Doesn't also make sense to get harsh or angry; just becomes a long thread because emotions get heated and people who are angry always seems to have a lot of time to vent. Trying to make everyone be nice takes a lot of effort. Usually people do mean well, it is just that they either word it wrongly, culture (Germans :P), or that they're used to harsh communities elsewhere. It takes quite some effort to always respond in the best way, and not behave the same way back. I'm sort of like a BOFH. Having sysadmin abilities means that I could be a behaving way too radically and there is nobody to easily say otherwise (could moderate them, remove their privs, etc). I do above for the good of the project. Cannot code in the way the developers do and try to help out in this way. One big problem is cultural differences. Some people expect really friendly and long language and see anything else as harsh; eventhough it is not intended that way (Northern Europe:P). E.g. a "No" as an answer to a long paragraph.

JoeAltmaier 15y ago

...or try not to get into the situation where your financial/employment status is in the hands of volunteers. (Don't use OS for important things that require diligent support)

wladimir 15y ago
Or pay the developers for "diligent support". Many open source projects offer some kind of paid support or commercial license. A lot of people seem to expect fully fledged support for free, and that's pretty crazy. If you want "free support" you either need to be able to fix it yourself or get on good terms with the developer. In any case, don't be a dick.
- DanBC 15y ago
  > A lot of people seem to expect fully fledged support for free, and that's pretty crazy It gets worse; A lot of those people expect fully fledged support for trivial "problems" which are clearly explained in the help file (that ships with the product) on the website, in the forums, and in a wiki. And they'll be dicks about it too.
- JoeAltmaier 15y ago
  Well said. So if its mission-critical, expect to take support in-house or pay for it. Or don't use it. Is there some clearinghouse of OSS support suppliers?
  - gruuk 15y ago
    > So if its mission-critical, expect to take support in-house or pay for it Pretty much true of any software, proprietary or not; only a blind optimist or someone with deep pockets will use a mission-critical piece of software without developing in-house expertise. Also, free online resources are available for both. We use a mix of proprietary and OSS products here and we've found that paid support is somewhat better for proprietary (easier to get, though quality varies extensively), but free support is typically better for OSS products. Still, the main benefits of OSS have little to do with free support, though it is a nice bonus. I've thanked many developers for their time spent not only creating a program/system I use, but also for supporting it. Especially for small projects, sending a few good words and a few bucks (when you can afford to) shows the devs their efforts are appreciated.

robflynn 15y ago

I spent a good many years managing and developing a popular open source project. While most of our users were/are good individuals, there were certainly some nasty ones in the bunch. I remember being cursed at many a time simply for politely refusing to implement whatever random feature a user requested. If a bug were to come up in the software, there were times where threats and/or demands were made that I fix the bug or modify something to the user's liking. (Never physical threats as far as I can recall, but still unwarranted aggression.) They absolutely refused to believe that I didn't directly "owe" them anything. It was a bizarre entitlement feeling some of the users had. It's not like I worked on the project for a living. I had a day job as well. I finally started transitioning away from the project and handing it off to someone else when I started getting phone calls at my home. A user managed to track down my cell phone number and started calling me in the middle of the night (3am - 4am.) He wanted to talk to me about his "ideas" that I should implement in the code. That's not to say all of our users were jerks. In fact, it was a very small minority. Out of the hundreds of thousands of users we had, only a handful were dicks. Unfortunately, some took it to creepy levels. On the other hand, many warm e-mails were received and even on occasion cases of beer for our coding efforts. I still hold a lot of fond memories of that time. Hell, even the legal issues were a learning experience, though the majority of that occurred around the time I was bowing out. I really don't even know what point I'm trying to make here. I just wanted to share a few brief stories. `Tis a strange world.

starwed 15y ago
Idly curious: is there a reason you don't just mention the name of the project? (I'm assuming Pidgin.)
- robflynn 15y ago
  I mentioned it initially but went back and removed it. I couldn't decide if the stating the project specifically was relevant or not. I often over analyze what I'm posting here for some reason. It was Pidgin, but back when it was called gaim. The pidgin transition occurred while I was leaving. I stuck around long enough to participate in deciding on the new name / logo / branding and then handed everything over to Sean officially.

jamesu 15y ago

To me an open source project is 1% about the code and 99% about the community. Without a good community, you might as well not bother open sourcing the code.

huntern 15y ago
Agreed. That's a huge attraction for me as well, the people around it, working with them, and seeing the product(s) take shape.
gbog 15y ago
I don't know how far this is true. I just checked Vim, which for me seem to be written mostly by one person (but I may be wrong here). Anyway, I'm quite sure there are some useful open source project which don't have a big community of developers. FSlint is one I use sometime.

JangoSteve 15y ago

I have found that most people don't even realize they're being dicks when submitting bug reports or feature suggestions for OSS. I recent wrote an article about this phenomenon and what to do about it. [1] For example, it can be demeaning to OSS developers who have spent much of their time (often unpaid) to build this software for you to use, when you open your bug report with the attitude that it must be broken simply because it doesn't do what you want it to do. I prefer to start every conversation (bug report, etc), not with the purpose of fixing something that's broken, but to expand the both project's applicability and the community's understanding of the project. For example, consider This software is broken on IE. vs Can we make this software work in IE? You're not starting a conversation because the software is broken in IE, you're starting it because it's an opportunity to make it applicable to the IE use-case. This is also why I encourage everyone who's having trouble with any of my projects to open an issue ticket. I often get emails or tweets from people asking for help with some problem, and the first thing I tell them is, open a ticket. Their aversion to opening a ticket is because they're not sure if it's an issue with the software, or if they're just doing it wrong. But I say it's ticket-worthy either way, because a ticket isn't made to fix broken software, it's made to increase the project's applicability and the community's understanding of the software. If you're having the problem, chances are someone else is or will have that same problem, and now they can find the solution.

JangoSteve 15y ago
EDIT: Oops, forgot the footnote. [1] http://www.alfajango.com/blog/communicating-with-engineers-and-contributing-to-open-source/ http://www.alfajango.com/blog/communicating-with-engineers-a...
tedunangst 15y ago
the attitude that it must be broken simply because it doesn't do what you want it to do For better or worse, I get snippy when something doesn't work that I was told would work. Like when the included examples don't work or the documentation is wrong. Then I'm not angry because I didn't get the free pony I wanted, I'm angry because you lied to me.
- 15y ago

illumen 15y ago

No, people should not be mean or rude to developers - or anyone really. However, Mozilla is getting paid for the software. Just because it is open source, does not mean that people don't get paid. Mozilla takes money for their software in the form of donations. So some users are actually paying directly to Mozilla. Also, Mozilla makes most of its money by selling private information to Google (searches etc). Users are paying through giving up some of their privacy, by doing searches through Firefox, and google. Also, the Mozilla foundation is a non profit organisation which means all the US tax payers give it money indirectly through government support. If it was a company, then it would not get certain privileged treatment. Finally users contribute to OSS through at least testing products - if not in documentation and many other ways. Anyway, my point is that you can't really use the excuse that it's free to the users, so they can't expect anything - because it certainly isn't entirely free. People should try and not be rude - on either the developers side or the users side. I've seen a bunch of rants from Mozilla people about this, so I think their community needs work. They should consider watching how their developers communicate with people as well. Calling people 'dicks' and such is pretty harsh. They should also consider making Bugzilla nicer. Things like WONTFIX, and other communications with bug reporters can really make people angry, and can make Mozilla come across as being rude too.

statictype 15y ago
What private information about you does Mozilla sell to Google? As far as I know, Google only pays Mozilla to provide the default home page and search engine.
khuey 15y ago
I'm not even sure how to respond to the "selling private information to Google" bit. If you think choosing a default search engine equates to selling private information I guess that's cool. I don't agree, and I don't think many (or any) people who work on Mozilla do, and we're generally a pretty privacy concerned group. The Mozilla Corporation pays taxes on its profits (including its business deals with Google) like any other US company. There's no special "privileged treatment" on the business deals. (Disclosure: I work for the Mozilla Corporation)

thedjpetersen 15y ago

I agree with http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3295720 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3295720 . It would be nice to be in a world where people treated each other well. I have seen the inverse as well though, some person politely pointing out a deficiency in an open source project and getting derided by a maintainer. Reminds me of this HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267885 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267885 .

thedjpetersen 15y ago