Don't be that guy.
Don't be that guy.
When you're talking to an open source dev, just remember that they are literally giving you their time for free, and they are people who don't like to be treated poorly.
Edit: Just to be clear, I don’t mean any ill will toward the guy. He’s frustrated and he’s just taking it out in the wrong venue at the wrong people, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.
Edit 2: The reinstalling he’s talking about is NPM. So just running npm install. It’s because he tried removing the node_modules directory, which is a reasonable thing to do, but it means you need to reinstall the modules with that command.
Me approaching Foss developer with bug: Pardon me, if you could grace this lowly worm with but a moment of your attention; I with me a bug report, and I believe I have found the section of code responsible. This inadequate being lacks the technical expertise to fix it and would be eternally indebted if you would turn your monumental skills upon its trifling problems. It would please me immensely if my paltry efforts were of some assistance.
This user: SOFTWARE NO WORK FUCK YOU!
211It depends on if the first guy is complaining about having to reinstall this specific software, or if the software borked his entire system to the point that he has to reinstall his entire OS. Because that happened to me once. But in the first scenario he is being a dick, and in the second one not so much.
73User: "I have to waste my whole life fixing this" Dev: "you are complaining that you have to spend a few minutes"
Savage.
50You are wasting my time! I demand a refund, where is open source's manager!?
47This is also any and all Firefox support queries in a nutshell.
"OMG THIS BROWSER IS SO SHIT IT ALWAYS BREAKS OR GETS SLOW"... "No I have not changed anything in ˋabout:configˋ, and what I did is definitely not the source of the problem!"... "Yes with a reset config it works fine, I don't know why, your browser is shit!"
And it's always the same people who do "hardening" and "privacy enhancement", having fuck all actual clue what they're doing but thinking they're oh so smart. 😑
43Couldn't agree more.
For what it's worth I think Brett Cannon wrote one of the best posts ever on the social contract of open source and how Not To Be That Guy :)
https://snarky.ca/the-social-contract-of-open-source/
Should be required reading IMO for anyone ever on Github :P
29Hehe, sometimes I wish that I could be snarky like that. ;) Good for you.
I have been told by numerous people these days that there are no free things in life. I write and contribute to FOSS software, and had that exact discussion.
Apparently, I do it to feel good, and for the prestige, a reward in itself. Also, I probably want to make up for something.
"Doing something for free is no excuse to do it badly."
Some others don't even know what "free" means." And some don't believe it at all, that someone is paying me. Probably thinking about influencers or something. Perhaps they saw an ad somewhere and believed I'd see any of that revenue. ;)
I just went with posting the wiki entry about FOSS, and my ko-fi page, and thanked them for their interest. The first two, because they genuinely didn't know any better, and the third because, well, at least that one is clear. Every user is a tester. Testing is good.
21I don’t mean any ill will toward the guy. He’s frustrated and he’s just taking it out in the wrong venue at the wrong people, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.
But he is a bad person. He's being a fucking idiot and being insulting to the person who made the software for him in the first place.
People like that don't deserve patience and understanding. Perhaps a good response would be "this software is free for you to use, if you don't like it then fuck off and make your own".
17Being polite is better than not being polite, but the way I see it, all user complaints are valid and are better not taken personally if possible. Maybe you as the developer didn't do anything wrong that contributed to their problem, or are not actually in a position to resolve whatever their problem is, but it's worth keeping in mind the bigger picture: how well peoples computers work to benefit their lives.
If someone is getting upset that they have to spend time troubleshooting, maybe because they didn't understand something or made a mistake, there's definitely other people going through the exact same less-than-ideal experience and not saying anything about it. That's information about the state of how well things are working and it's better for it to be out there in some form than not.
15See also: the hard parts of open source.
6This goes for inter-developer communication too. Be nice to one another. Someone just wants to help sometimes.
6this sort of stuff is rampant. A few years old but it makes my blood boil every time I think about it.
Tool Creator should work on this, it ain't making no sense that the default json file (Google) is not updated cause seeing that work on Google tells us that it definitely works on all sites
@drk1wi please resolve google.json file to stop this cookie disabled error
Seems minor but the tone of the demand is wildly entitled.
5Or don't be that "don't use any of my GPLv3 packages in your projects, because i don't want"
Or, that guy who is "My project is free and open source, please don't use for piracy, i don't support piracy"
But yeah, complaining sucks, especially from somebody who doesn't have his hands dirty, to somebody who does
And for free projects, don't pay- don't expect anything And even when paying, don't expect much Just make stuff yourself, only making everything yourself you can be sure it will be good
0Open source developers: Why aren't more people using open source software software for everything. It's better.
Also open source developers: Oh it broke your computer, well that's your problem. You should have had a software engineering degree in order to vet the software yourself.
User goes back to closed source paid spyware.. ahem software.
Open source developers: Why aren't more people using open source software software for everything. It's better.
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