Eh, this kind of project is begging to be forked, and the original branch deservedly forgotten about. If the intent was to make money out of fixes to the project, it’s absolutely going to backfire instead.
I’m not so sure. I think he has a point that if someone forks, he can still merge those changes back in and still work on things for his paying customers too. I think the number of people who are willing to write patches is a lot smaller than the number who are going to complain. He seems to welcome forks anyway (I’m sure his attitude would be, “let them provide the free support!”). This post is two years old, it might be interesting to see how his project is doing and how many forks there are.
There are a lot of users of open source projects who do act as if they are owed a resolution to every issue they encounter. While I don’t agree with the nuclear option I can’t really blame him.
Well it looks like nowadays they have public issues in their repo which seems like the authors decision and opinion changed. I think both ways are valid ways.
He actually complains about that too in another follow up post last year: https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/blog/case-against-public-bug-tracker-for-open-source-projects/
I suspect it is mostly ignored.
To be fair, it looks like he’d be much happier writing proprietary software in the first place. His goal is evidently to get a source of sustenance first, and to help the community with code second if at all. And in proprietary software it’s already customary to expect no support whatsoever (sometimes not even patches to existing, already paid software) unless you pay for the privilege.
I don’t know, I’m an open source dev too, but my time is valuable and I can’t (and won’t) just work for free on dozens of bug reports from a user that don’t want to investigate first by themselves.
Yeah open source is great, but if you want support you have look at the code and read the damn documentation first ; I lost a lot of time just directing users to docs because they can’t read.
Is there a c/iamverysmart? This could be the seed it grows from.
TL;DR OP wrote a bug ridden piece of shit app and is now overwhelmed with bug reports that will most likely never be fixed.
If the code was actually any good, or if OP didn’t have the emotional maturity of a petulant child, then maybe someone would actually want to contribute to the project and help with fixing bugs. At this point I can see why nobody would want to touch it.
Generally open source has very good support, with fantastic documentation, and nearly every possible issue described either in the documentation or bug trackers. If you find something new, reporting it to the bug tracker will quickly get you help from someone very knowledgeable on the software. But you have to remember these people are unpaid volunteers, and if you waste their time, they will not help you. Read the documentation and search the bug tracker before bothering someone. The devs have no obligation to put up with your bullshit.
TL;DR OP wants you to pay for the privilege of reporting a bug because their time is too valuable, but they still expect the open source community to contribute their time for free to the project. And then OP throws a hissy fit when people tell them what a shitty opinion that is.
Seriously, why would anyone contribute to a project like this?
So obviously this is a very confrontational post, but tone aside, I kind of get it. I think it’s good that the author is up front and has made an explicit decision that they don’t want to put in the effort to build a public community around their software. They’re providing it as-is as a service to the public and they even indicate that they are open to other groups forking and putting the work into building a community. And crucially I’m not seeing an expectation that the community contributes back. I don’t think there is anything wrong in deciding where your interests and limits are, and I’ve seen other open-source projects die or rot when the maintainer runs out of time or loses interest, but without this being clearly communicated.
I agree with you that I personally wouldn’t try to contribute to a project like this since I also have no interest in building a community myself, but at least the project is up-front and clear about all this.
