Why I didn’t fix your bug

http://magnusmanske.de/wordpress/?p=518

by davidgerard • 8 years ago

89 20 8 years ago

magnusmanske.de

whatyoucantsay3• 8 years ago

The tortured protagonist is a core online archetype.

dullgiulio• 8 years ago

Read the article. He talks about things to do in his private time.

I don't know about you, but working after a full day of work is not really pleasing in the long run.

You hear this often because it's a common problem in Open Source.

whatyoucantsay3• 8 years ago

I did read it. It fit the archetype.

A high agency individual looks for and finds solutions. Sidekiq is a great example. So is WordPress. Even Github was. Watch Tom Preston-Werner's Mixergy interview and you'll see that he specifically put thought into making sure it would generate revenue in a sustainable fashion if it were to become popular.

jcrotor• 8 years ago

Which is a big problem IMO. Many employers are willing to lean on open source tech to reduce cost. Much, much fewer are willing to let employees spend time contributing to open source as a way of paying back the open source community. Thats incredibly short sighted, as it reduces the resources contributing to the technology the company now relies on.

ktpsns• 8 years ago

FYI Magnus Manske wrote the first version of MediaWiki, the PHP software which is underlying Wikipedia. It is constantly evolving and nowadays still a state-of-the-art code with a mature code base, a great documentation, API, extendability. Ontop of MediaWiki, people built WikiData or the semantic MediaWiki extension which can be used in a way to write complex web applications right ontop of a wiki with a minimum of code (wrote a video portal once based on SMW).

Having that said, the wikipedia ecosystem lives from a number of seperate tools which query the wikipedia database. One of the early well-known tools was the editcounter which allowed people to count their edits on wikipedia, for instance.

I think it is fair enough to let these tools be tools. Either they work for you or they don't. Many of them are open sourced and you can go on, fork and host them on your own.

Instead, this tells nothing about the quality of MediaWiki, IMHO. There are a number of maintainers keeping up quality and progress in MediaWiki itself.

jorvi• 8 years ago

Their API and documentation is pretty great. It allowed me to whip up a script to access WikiPedia in my shell in no time.

(https://github.com/jorvi/shiki, in case anyone wants it)

jasonmaydie• 8 years ago

What a strange way to categorize whose bug it is.

oneeyedpigeon• 8 years ago

Are you referring to "Why I didn't fix your bug"? Because that struck me too. I agree with the thrust of the article, but it's a shame the title implies a slightly misguided attitude. I say "implies", because it's probably a 'mistype', but it's certainly one worth addressing for future readers, IMO.

hermitdev• 8 years ago

I think it's just poorly phrased. He's referring to the proverbial "you" and the bug "you" reported, not the bug "you" introduced.

__david__• 8 years ago

That seems like a deliberate misinterpretation on your part. There's clearly an implied "report" that comes after "bug".

oaiey• 8 years ago

His time calculation is more than friendly to the community! Dedicate 6 hours to non work coding is insane.

Take care of you!

phatbyte• 8 years ago

-2h private (eat, exercise, shower, read, girlfriend, etc.)

How to manage to do all of this in 2h? Just for Gym it's always around 40-50m, not counting the time to get there and back. Eat unless you always order out it takes also 40-50 (prep and eat).

sli• 8 years ago

The author immediately qualifies those numbers, which addresses your question.

Now, 6h left is a high estimate, obviously; work and private can (and do) expand on a daily, fluctuating basis, as they do for all of us.

makemoniesonlin• 8 years ago

Many people can (prep and) eat in much less time than 40-50 minutes.

antisthenes• 8 years ago

I'm a slow eater. It would take me 40 minutes just to finish the meal, without counting prep and cook.

I frequently wish I didn't have to eat at all - it would more than double my productivity and free time.

Sir_Cmpwn• 8 years ago

Very good article. I always reiterate that I and everyone else involved in my open source communities are volunteers. Everyone has their own agenda and unless they explicitly ask me for direction, they work on what they want. Maybe you can convince them to take on your bug, but if it doesn't affect them then it's probably not going to get looked at expediently, if at all. Send a patch!

Why I didn’t fix your bug

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