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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:53AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:53AM (#587287)

    You should have ended with "Fork off."

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:10AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:10AM (#587292)

    Firstly, maintainers tell you to fuck off and die in a fire. Second, you fork the project. Third, you come back with a pull request that upstages the original author. Fourth and finally, you get ignored for eternity.

    Here in the real world, that is the lifecycle of a contribution.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:26PM (3 children)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:26PM (#587404)

      Maybe it has something to do with your attitude.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:22PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:22PM (#587506)

        You are a two-faced moronic hypocrite, and here is why.

        Your sig says:

        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"

        Say you spend a month tracking down the root cause of a bug, and you fix it, and you contribute a fix. The maintainer rejects it without comment. You respond, "I just spent a whole month fixing this bug, I have proof of a bug, and I have proof that the fix works. Did you even look at anything I submitted?"

        Maybe it has something to do with your attitude.

        Maybe the maintainer is a moron, just like you are a moron.

        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:55PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:55PM (#587520)

          How is my sig either twofaced, or hypocritical? Trust, but verify.

          It's not like I changed my sig for this exact comment tree, dude. It's been the same thing for the last year or two at least.

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @08:10PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @08:10PM (#587531)

          I love how simplified the stories are when told by the "victims". Given your attitude in a simple article comment section it is highly likely you piss people off on a regular basis. Not saying that is reason to reject a good pull request, but as someone said egos can often be a problem.