Hug an OSS Developer or just don't be a dick

http://www.theautomatedtester.co.uk/blog/2011/hug-an-oss-developer-or-dont-be-a-dick.html

by huntern • 15 years ago

70 48 15 years ago

theautomatedtester.co.uk

philbo• 15 years ago

I've contributed to a few small open-source projects myself in the past and can only remember polite, well-mannered people in the associated communities. However I think the key point is that those were very small projects, with equally small communities.

When you get to the Mozilla / Selenium level of popularity discussed in the post, it must be a near-certainty that you will also attract your fair share of uninformed and/or plain rude people posting bug reports and comments. In that sense, it can be viewed as a good thing: your project is a success, otherwise it wouldn't be attracting all the bad vibes!

zdw• 15 years ago

If you find a problem with open source code and you can't fix it and provide a good patch, at least identify where in the code is at fault.

If you can't find the fault, provide a fully formed test case that shows the problem.

If you can't create a test case, be polite and extremely specific when reporting the bug.

If you can't be polite... well the bug is probably less of a problem than your attitude.

bkor• 15 years ago

Within the project I help out in, I spend a lot of time replying to people, trying to change their attitude. This usually helps. In the extreme cases it doesn't, I have a big hammer to wield (sysadmin).

If you're consistently (honestly) well-intended and nice, you'll see that it changes peoples attitude. Further, more people will stick around because they like the friendly atmosphere.

However, it has to be managed constantly. I want everyone to be nice, no matter if they're a developer who has worked on the project for 5+ years, or just a random person who saw a crash. Though, long time developer gets a bit more leeway than a new person.

If someone writes a really good rant or troll, I only want to see nice replies. Fortunately, this is usually what happens. Doesn't also make sense to get harsh or angry; just becomes a long thread because emotions get heated and people who are angry always seems to have a lot of time to vent.

Trying to make everyone be nice takes a lot of effort. Usually people do mean well, it is just that they either word it wrongly, culture (Germans :P), or that they're used to harsh communities elsewhere. It takes quite some effort to always respond in the best way, and not behave the same way back.

I'm sort of like a BOFH. Having sysadmin abilities means that I could be a behaving way too radically and there is nobody to easily say otherwise (could moderate them, remove their privs, etc).

I do above for the good of the project. Cannot code in the way the developers do and try to help out in this way.

One big problem is cultural differences. Some people expect really friendly and long language and see anything else as harsh; eventhough it is not intended that way (Northern Europe:P). E.g. a "No" as an answer to a long paragraph.

JoeAltmaier3• 15 years ago

...or try not to get into the situation where your financial/employment status is in the hands of volunteers. (Don't use OS for important things that require diligent support)

wladimir• 15 years ago

Or pay the developers for "diligent support". Many open source projects offer some kind of paid support or commercial license. A lot of people seem to expect fully fledged support for free, and that's pretty crazy.

If you want "free support" you either need to be able to fix it yourself or get on good terms with the developer. In any case, don't be a dick.

JoeAltmaier3• 15 years ago

Well said. So if its mission-critical, expect to take support in-house or pay for it. Or don't use it.

Is there some clearinghouse of OSS support suppliers?

DanBC• 15 years ago

> A lot of people seem to expect fully fledged support for free, and that's pretty crazy

It gets worse; A lot of those people expect fully fledged support for trivial "problems" which are clearly explained in the help file (that ships with the product) on the website, in the forums, and in a wiki. And they'll be dicks about it too.

_delirium• 15 years ago

I've found this to depend more on the project and leaders than open-source vs. proprietary status. For example, I've been quite happy with the responses I've gotten to bugs submitted to Debian, some of which have been fixed on the same day--- which has never happened when I've reported bugs to any other operating-system vendor. With most of the commercial software I use (Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, etc.), I'm lucky if it's at all possible to reach anybody and get a response, much less a fix, even with a quite specific, reproducible test case. Heck, even GNU Octave's team, while understaffed, is more responsive than Matlab's, and we pay some mega-$$$ for a Matlab site license.

tikhonj• 15 years ago

The product is open source--your "financial/employment" status is never out of your control. The worst case is that you have to fix a bug yourself or pay somebody else to do it. In fact, if you end up hiring somebody else to do it, you have a lot more control over how and when it gets done. Also, there is a good chance somebody else wants the same issue resolved, and would contribute the solution back to the project, so you might not have to do anything at all.

On the other hand, with a proprietary product, you have no control over the software; if there is a bug you're left hoping the company providing the program is willing to work on it. Also, if the company goes bankrupt or makes decisions you don't agree with you're just out of luck.

JoeAltmaier3• 15 years ago

Spoken like a hacker. But some folks don't actually have the skills to fix a codec or debug a protocol. Almost everybody in fact.

robflynn5• 15 years ago

I spent a good many years managing and developing a popular open source project.

While most of our users were/are good individuals, there were certainly some nasty ones in the bunch. I remember being cursed at many a time simply for politely refusing to implement whatever random feature a user requested.

If a bug were to come up in the software, there were times where threats and/or demands were made that I fix the bug or modify something to the user's liking. (Never physical threats as far as I can recall, but still unwarranted aggression.) They absolutely refused to believe that I didn't directly "owe" them anything. It was a bizarre entitlement feeling some of the users had. It's not like I worked on the project for a living. I had a day job as well.

I finally started transitioning away from the project and handing it off to someone else when I started getting phone calls at my home. A user managed to track down my cell phone number and started calling me in the middle of the night (3am - 4am.) He wanted to talk to me about his "ideas" that I should implement in the code.

That's not to say all of our users were jerks. In fact, it was a very small minority. Out of the hundreds of thousands of users we had, only a handful were dicks. Unfortunately, some took it to creepy levels.

On the other hand, many warm e-mails were received and even on occasion cases of beer for our coding efforts. I still hold a lot of fond memories of that time. Hell, even the legal issues were a learning experience, though the majority of that occurred around the time I was bowing out.

I really don't even know what point I'm trying to make here. I just wanted to share a few brief stories.

`Tis a strange world.

starwed2• 15 years ago

Idly curious: is there a reason you don't just mention the name of the project? (I'm assuming Pidgin.)

robflynn5• 15 years ago

I mentioned it initially but went back and removed it. I couldn't decide if the stating the project specifically was relevant or not. I often over analyze what I'm posting here for some reason.

It was Pidgin, but back when it was called gaim. The pidgin transition occurred while I was leaving. I stuck around long enough to participate in deciding on the new name / logo / branding and then handed everything over to Sean officially.

nodata• 15 years ago

Where does this idea of "owing" somebody something come into it?

If a user is unreasonably forcing a bug to be fixed, okay. But the "owing" part?

robflynn5• 15 years ago

People are really strange when it comes to free stuff.

A friend of mine decided one day to buy a bunch of donuts and hand them out to some folks waiting in a long line out in the cold.

Most people were very thankful or even surprised that someone would do such a thing. A small subset of people complained that he only bought one kind of donut, or complained that he didn't also purchase coffee for them.

ComputerGuru• 15 years ago

Off topic: I had a intermittent crashing bug in libpurple in the XMPP file transfer code. I filed a bug and was more than willing to help patch it myself, but gosh, the development environment to debug Pidgin on Windows or Mac is really something! I just couldn't get it set up to debug properly and the bug is still open 2 or 3 years later :(

robflynn5• 15 years ago

I remember when we first started doing windows builds. I had a guy called Herman (I think? I knew him by that name anyway) handle the builds. I didn't always have easy access to a windows machine and it was a pain getting mingw/cygwin going with all the appropriate libraries installed in the correct places.

Though I am no longer really associated with the project, I am curious what the bug is/was. If you like, fire off an email to me off-site and send a link to the report or fill me in. You can find my e-mail in my profile.

jamesu• 15 years ago

To me an open source project is 1% about the code and 99% about the community. Without a good community, you might as well not bother open sourcing the code.

huntern• 15 years ago

Agreed. That's a huge attraction for me as well, the people around it, working with them, and seeing the product(s) take shape.

gbog• 15 years ago

I don't know how far this is true. I just checked Vim, which for me seem to be written mostly by one person (but I may be wrong here). Anyway, I'm quite sure there are some useful open source project which don't have a big community of developers. FSlint is one I use sometime.

christkv• 15 years ago

The best way I have found is to not look at the child and not talk to the child.

JangoSteve3• 15 years ago

I have found that most people don't even realize they're being dicks when submitting bug reports or feature suggestions for OSS. I recent wrote an article about this phenomenon and what to do about it. [1]

For example, it can be demeaning to OSS developers who have spent much of their time (often unpaid) to build this software for you to use, when you open your bug report with the attitude that it must be broken simply because it doesn't do what you want it to do.

I prefer to start every conversation (bug report, etc), not with the purpose of fixing something that's broken, but to expand the both project's applicability and the community's understanding of the project. For example, consider

    This software is broken on IE.

    Can we make this software work in IE?

You're not starting a conversation because the software is broken in IE, you're starting it because it's an opportunity to make it applicable to the IE use-case.

This is also why I encourage everyone who's having trouble with any of my projects to open an issue ticket. I often get emails or tweets from people asking for help with some problem, and the first thing I tell them is, open a ticket. Their aversion to opening a ticket is because they're not sure if it's an issue with the software, or if they're just doing it wrong. But I say it's ticket-worthy either way, because a ticket isn't made to fix broken software, it's made to increase the project's applicability and the community's understanding of the software. If you're having the problem, chances are someone else is or will have that same problem, and now they can find the solution.

JangoSteve3• 15 years ago

EDIT: Oops, forgot the footnote.

[1] http://www.alfajango.com/blog/communicating-with-engineers-a...

tedunangst• 15 years ago

the attitude that it must be broken simply because it doesn't do what you want it to do

For better or worse, I get snippy when something doesn't work that I was told would work. Like when the included examples don't work or the documentation is wrong. Then I'm not angry because I didn't get the free pony I wanted, I'm angry because you lied to me.

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

I too get snippy when basic functionality doesn't work and the all of the latest commits in the stream do things like add colors or use VT100 line drawing characters to put boxes around something on a serial terminal.

That being said I understand how difficult it can be to contribute positively to some OSS projects. Tired and perhaps jaded core team members responding "Hey if you don't like it just create your own <xyz tool>." don't help.

The Selenium guys are a great example of an OSS project that is both open to outside input (even from relative noobs) and focussed on the right priorities (correctness over speed for example).

JangoSteve3• 15 years ago

I understand it can be frustrating, but saying that the OSS developer "lied" to you is exactly the wrong kind of attitude I'm talking about.

Underlying libraries break, people have weirdly configured environments, browsers ship with new unexpected updates. There are a million legitimate reasons that things don't work at any given moment (yes, even the examples in documentation). Furthermore, the documentation often takes as much time and effort as the code itself, so it's entirely possible that the developer just hasn't had a chance to update the docs yet.

At the time you encounter your problem, you have no way of knowing why it's not behaving as you'd expect, or what led to such a circumstance. Having an attitude when submitting a ticket (as if the developer lied to you) is entirely counter-productive to finding a solution, even if you're right.

illumen6• 15 years ago

No, people should not be mean or rude to developers - or anyone really.

However, Mozilla is getting paid for the software. Just because it is open source, does not mean that people don't get paid.

Mozilla takes money for their software in the form of donations. So some users are actually paying directly to Mozilla.

Also, Mozilla makes most of its money by selling private information to Google (searches etc). Users are paying through giving up some of their privacy, by doing searches through Firefox, and google.

Also, the Mozilla foundation is a non profit organisation which means all the US tax payers give it money indirectly through government support. If it was a company, then it would not get certain privileged treatment.

Finally users contribute to OSS through at least testing products - if not in documentation and many other ways.

Anyway, my point is that you can't really use the excuse that it's free to the users, so they can't expect anything - because it certainly isn't entirely free.

People should try and not be rude - on either the developers side or the users side. I've seen a bunch of rants from Mozilla people about this, so I think their community needs work. They should consider watching how their developers communicate with people as well. Calling people 'dicks' and such is pretty harsh. They should also consider making Bugzilla nicer. Things like WONTFIX, and other communications with bug reporters can really make people angry, and can make Mozilla come across as being rude too.

statictype2• 15 years ago

What private information about you does Mozilla sell to Google? As far as I know, Google only pays Mozilla to provide the default home page and search engine.

khuey• 15 years ago

I'm not even sure how to respond to the "selling private information to Google" bit. If you think choosing a default search engine equates to selling private information I guess that's cool. I don't agree, and I don't think many (or any) people who work on Mozilla do, and we're generally a pretty privacy concerned group.

The Mozilla Corporation pays taxes on its profits (including its business deals with Google) like any other US company. There's no special "privileged treatment" on the business deals.

(Disclosure: I work for the Mozilla Corporation)

illumen6• 15 years ago

hi,

my main point over all is that both parties should be nice, and improve their communication to make the community a nicer place. It's not just the users that are 'dicks', and they should stop being 'dicks'. Other things can be done to make the community nicer on both sides.

Concerning the private searches part that you take issue with... My main point was that Mozilla gets money from the users indirectly (and directly), so the argument that users are not paying so can not expect anything is silly.

Mozilla also gets money from Google "for click-throughs on ads placed on the ensuing search results pages", not just the default search engine bit.

You're right that people can argue over what the search arrangement with Google should be called. The private searches which people type into Firefox go to Google. Google pays money to Mozilla for this. It reminds me of when people try to work around liquor laws by making up some 'work around'. For example people sell tickets which can then be used to buy alcohol... and because you're not directly selling people the alcohol people think that is ok. But really, the laws still say you can't do that clever little ruse. Now, people don't have to agree on this, but I'm pretty sure many people would think of it as their information being sold to a corporation if they knew that arrangement was in place. I doubt most users of Firefox realise that google pays mozilla for the search arrangement though. We don't need to agree on this, or that the world is flat either, but I think it is the case.

To your second issue you raised, "The Mozilla Corporation (abbreviated MoCo) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation". -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation The Mozilla Foundation is a non profit, as such gets special treatment. The government, and tax payers give non profits a break because they are contributing something good to the community - like all the good stuff Mozilla does.

cheers,

[edit: removed thing about google getting sent url bar entries in ff]

jimevan• 15 years ago

But how do you square your views with OSS projects that aren't Mozilla? How about those that truly are volunteer OSS projects that the developers don't get paid for? I contribute to a large, popular OSS project, and much of the blog post rings true for me.

Full disclosure: I am not an employee of Mozilla Corporation.

illumen6• 15 years ago

Some communities do better than others at making it a nice environment for all involved.

For example, post a question on some mailing lists and you'll get flamed or told RTFM noob stfu. On other projects everyone is nice, happy and it's all warm hugs.

If the developers or other community members are getting abused, that is not on. There's really no excuse. However, having developers call their users 'dicks' is also something that should not happen.

There's things that communities can do to make them develop nicer for everyone involved. Community development is a massive topic, but basically people need to work on making the communities nicer. The basics like: managing peoples expectations, being transparent, respecting the time people put into things can go a long way towards making a better environment.

I think bug trackers like Bugzilla don't do an awesome job from the perspective of the bug reporter. Once they report a bug, they have an expectation that someone is going to fix their problem. I think that's the wrong way to get people to think about open source projects, and it sets the wrong expectations - which leads to people getting angry, and frustrated. This post, and others from developers and users show to me that Mozilla has a problem which is being caused in part by their bug tracker, or how the bug tracker is used.

Big communities can often turn out bad too. Which is why growing a community may not be the best thing to do. A famous comedian is asked about where he does his experimental comedy - and he answers that he is not telling, because he wants his little club night to stay small. The comedians who run it do it as an artistic thing, and they don't want too many people coming along and spoiling it. So this famous comedian did not want a plug on the radio show by this journalist, because it would grow his community too big.

Some of the nicer open source communities keep commercial things away from the project because that would spoil the fun. The project could probably be better with more commercial involvement, but some projects choose not to have that happen. Mixing commercial and non commercial development is another hard thing that mozilla does. I mean, why are the bug reporters and testers not getting paid, but some developers are? I know the reasons, and am not saying it should be different - just that can cause tensions.

Open source communities are a very important thing to talk about, and to make better. Especially if people are going to be interacting in them so much. We all have a lot to learn and improve on, since we have problems now.

thedjpetersen• 15 years ago

I agree with http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3295720 . It would be nice to be in a world where people treated each other well. I have seen the inverse as well though, some person politely pointing out a deficiency in an open source project and getting derided by a maintainer. Reminds me of this HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2267885 .

Hug an OSS Developer or just don't be a dick

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