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.
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.
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”.
Everyone without exception has had moments of weakness where they lashed out at something or someone wrongfully. That’s a bad deed but that can’t be the definition of a bad person.
Especially in this context. The dude isn’t really attacking the dev directly. He actually might just be venting. I wouldn’t do that like that but you really can’t assume anything from such a short exchange.
But he is a bad person.
People like that don’t deserve patience and understanding.
These black and white statements won’t do you or anyone else any good. We understand that an inconsiderate or rude act doesn’t define a person when we can believe that about ourselves and love ourselves despite our many mistakes and cringe-worthy incidents.
When we love ourselves we begin to offer others the same grace and understanding we allow ourselves. We see the myriad reasons we don’t think or act how we’d like to and realize that everyone else’s life is just as difficult and confusing, and often for reasons we’ll never see or understand.
Open 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.
The entitlement of the open source community can be astonishingly deaf. You tell users that open source is better, users try it and your response is, oh it’s free software, you get what you pay for.
Pay who? If I donate do I get paid support? Almost any other paid product/service based off that project almost certainly won’t be open source and probably subscription spyware. So your answer to use open source is don’t use open source???
If this is your attitude on your repo then don’t imply/demonstrate it as for production ready use. It a personal fun dev project not fit for mainstream use. Pick a side, you can’t have both.
There’s a difference between trying to find out what is wrong and being a cunt.
If this person had asked politely after quickly searching for answers, the developer’s response would most likely be different and helpful
Absolutely. Should have clarifying that I’m not defending the attitude and abuse of developers. However driving non technical end users to insanity with ill thought through processes is also wrong. Such as expecting users to write bug reports when an automated tool should be being used. An unclear installation guide where 90% of user run into the same problem. etc.
Linus’s (LTT) Linux challenge was the ultimate test of the open source community and they failed miserably. Blaming linus for bricking the system. Um hello, he never should have been incentivized to open the command line at all.
There is a tradeoff between UX, user liberty, and user privacy. Traditionally, Linux is leaning heavily towards liberty. However now there are systems have locked down core system (like chrome os or mac os), so it is impossible to mess things up. Yet user might complain that they “cannot do anything”.
As for telemetry, privacy is a fundamental pillar of human right. I admire FOSS communities’ stance on privacy by default, and I don’t think they should change that. Although now opt-in privacy preserving telemetry is slowly getting implemented in Linux, I think it is a good thing, but needs still be treated carefully. Privacy-preserving telemetry is good, but it is notoriously hard to guarantee such correctness.
Finally, I think the bug Linus encountered is extremely rare. The flatpak install script is broken, and the apt install removes DE. I don’t think there are any documented incident of both installation methods to have such critical failure. It is even more unfortunate that it happens just as the most popular tech youtuber decides to try Linux.
Don’t be that second guy, use Nix.
I agree with OP, but the whole confrontation could’ve been avoided in the first place if all dependencies were spelled out to the letter in the form of a flake.nix with the latest accompanying flake.lock file.
I think it’s funny. We are the new “I use Arch, BTW” and I’m happy to embrace it.
I just hate having to re-configure all my stuff whenever I set up a new box 🤷
Don’t be the guy who ignores reports that your software doesn’t work with new dependency versions just because you can’t be arsed to test with anything else even if the report looks like a legitimate problem.
I have been testing with the original reporter of the problem. This guy came in, said he had the same problem, then cursed at me.
That was less directed at you and more at the idea that just pinning versions solves the issue which is unfortunately very frequent among proponents of things like vendoring, nix, Docker containers and similar tools that allow a project to stay on an old version for potentially years. Sorry if that came across that way.
@AlmightySnoo @Ashiette us for USA or for us? :stallman:
Yes, but one of our promises is real… Just a real pain in the ass sometimes.
It’s a frontend JavaScript UI library. I can’t control what other dependencies people install alongside my library, or even whether they follow my library’s dependency list.
Isn’t package.json for controlling what dependency versions people install with?
I think I’m missing something.
Yeah JavaScript is a horrible language and ecosystem in a lot of ways, but package.json and friends don’t really give me much trouble.
And even if you hose something, you should be able to clear it out and reinstall easily.
I’m assuming the maintainer didn’t (knowingly) make a breaking change in a minor/patch release. That’s a high crime.
Yes, and I have a package.json that lists dependencies and the versions I test with. You can force a different version though. I don’t think that’s what happened here. I’m guessing it’s a version of some dependency that should work, because it was released as a minor version within the range I specified, but doesn’t actually work.
It could also be an issue with the build system/bundler, which I can’t really control either.
Or 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
It 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.
I disagree, in neither scenario the open source dev owes him anything. You get to use and modify the software for free, but the flip side is you are entitled to nothing.
You’re not entitled to a working computer once you execute a free program?
Honestly, no. It’s your job to vet the software you run. If it’s open source, you had every chance to make sure it wasn’t going to irreversibly break your system ahead of time.
Alternatively, you could pay money for a solution from a reputable company with support.
I guess you are not entitled free support once you execute a free program
The software is almost certainly provided as is, with risks assumed by the person installing it.
Still, I doubt any dev wants a catastrophic outcome and takes steps to avoid that or warn the end user if the code is more likely to bork something.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the dev to do their best but it’s also not like you can sue them and win, most likely.
You are entitled to the truth. If the dev knows their software could have very damaging effects then that should be front and center on the software page.
Usually it is? But ultimately it’s still your own responsibility. You did not pay the dev, the dev does not ask you to pay them, ergo the dev owes you diddly squad.
No. It’s provided without warranty nor guarantee that it’ll work or even leave your system intact. That’s the core of most opensource licenses. Dev owes nobody nothing.
I didn’t say anyone owed anyone anything. I was saying one level of frustration was understandable, one was not. Anyhow, my case happened twenty years ago when creative commons barely existed.
Then you’re right. The frustration would be understandable, the expression thereof towards the developer, not.
In this case, in trying to resolve the issue, he deleted his node_modules directory. So he’s talking about having to reinstall everything by typing npm install and waiting for it to finish.
oh man…
People can be such dicks, you have my sympathy.
I’ve been thinking about open sourcing a Node project of mine recently… concerning that this is the kind of thing to expect
Well, this isn’t usual. This is actually really rare. Almost all of the interactions I have with users of my libraries are great. People are generally appreciative and kind, or at least not rude. This is an outlier, and I try not to let these things sour my experience.
He’s frustrated and he’s being abrasive because of that, but that doesn’t make him a bad person. I try to respond without being rude back, but just stern. Usually when you do that, people will either not respond again or apologize. I’ve never had a user keep being rude, and if I did, I would just ban them.
Sometimes people just kinda forget that on the internet they’re still talking to other real people, you know?
