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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the changing-your-point-of-view dept.

Snoyberg's The Do's and Don't's of Running an Open Source Project:

Real title should be: how to get members of any open source community to be interested in helping you. But the given title is catchier.

There's an old "ha ha, only serious" joke. If you go to a Linux forum and ask for help fixing your WiFi driver, everyone will ignore you. If, instead, you say "Linux sucks, you can't even get a f*&$ing WiFi driver working!" thousands of people will solve the problem for you.

This story is a great example of manipulating people, but it's obviously a negative take on it. I'd like to share some thoughts on this from a much more positive standpoint, which will help you get people to pay more attention, be more helpful, and—perhaps most importantly—create a healthier open source community over all.

These items will appear in no particular order, and will almost all fall into either the attractor or obstacle category. An attractor is something you can do to make people want to participate with you. An obstacle is something you should not do, which would prevent people from interacting with you.

And it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: this is an opinionated list, written by one guy. I'm including in here things that I personally care about, and things which friends and colleagues have shared with me. No example is specific to any individual, so don't think I'm calling you out: I'm most certainly not. And some people may disagree, or have other items for this list. Sharing such differing thoughts would be very healthy.

The list:

  • Don't waste people's time
  • Demonstrate you've tried
  • Help other people
  • Don't be rude
  • Say thank you
  • Admit if you're new
  • Offer to help
  • Give money

Saying, "Lennart Poettering sucks" is not on the list of recommendations.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:50AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:50AM (#587286)

    Open Source software is about scratching your own itches; you're asking people where you should be scratching.

    Also, you sound like more of a hacker than a programmer. Getting something cobbled together isn't that interesting; script kiddies can do that. What matters is whether your work is fundamentally sound—whether it's beautiful not only now, but for the rest of time.

    Starting Score:    0  points
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    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:02AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:02AM (#587289)

    What matters is whether your work is fundamentally sound—whether it's beautiful not only now, but for the rest of time.

    Cool story, bro. You are fucking hilarious. According to your unrealistically high standard of code beauty, Randall Munroe is Not A Real Programmer, and we all know that is simply horseshit.

    Here is proof, conveniently linked to explainxkcd for you because you are an idiot.

    https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1296:_Git_Commit [explainxkcd.com]

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:07AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:07AM (#587290)

      Chill out, bro.

      Nobody has yet made it to the stars, but it's important to aim for them; it's not enough to fly Cessnas on the weekend.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:31PM (1 child)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:31PM (#587381) Homepage Journal

    In a different comment thread someone wrote: "most support forums have a nasty streak that's really, really offputting"

    I waited several hours to reply to this comment, because I was curious to see what responses it might generate. The comment I'm replying to is a perfect example of that. Rather than addressing my question, AC says: "you sound like more of a hacker than a programmer"

    In fact, I am accustomed to doing solo projects, or at most projects with one other person. However, this includes things like complete ERP systems (yes, plural. Yes, sold to real customers, and supported over many years). So the offhand insult "you're just a hacker" is annoying, but it absolutely typifies what I said about some projects I have looked into: Who wants to deal people like that?

    At least if I'm programming solo, there's only one jerk involved :-/

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:54PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:54PM (#587421)

      So what? I bet your work does stink, like most proprietary crap.