Don't be that guy.

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.

NotJustForMe,

Hehe, sometimes I wish that I could be snarky like that. ;) Good for you.

I have been told by numerous people these days that there are no free things in life. I write and contribute to FOSS software, and had that exact discussion.

Apparently, I do it to feel good, and for the prestige, a reward in itself. Also, I probably want to make up for something.

“Doing something for free is no excuse to do it badly.”

Some others don’t even know what “free” means." And some don’t believe it at all, that someone is paying me. Probably thinking about influencers or something. Perhaps they saw an ad somewhere and believed I’d see any of that revenue. ;)

I just went with posting the wiki entry about FOSS, and my ko-fi page, and thanked them for their interest. The first two, because they genuinely didn’t know any better, and the third because, well, at least that one is clear. Every user is a tester. Testing is good.

Grain9325,

And here I am anxious thinking I might offend the devs so I spend way too much time thinking what I’ve written is not rude

platypus_plumba,

I’ve only had beef with a single dev ever. The maintainer of Prometheus, Brian Brazil, or whatever his name is. His attitude is so shitty towards people proposing actually good ideas that would push his product forward.

DeltaTangoLima,
@DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com avatar

Yeah, I had the same experience with the devs of Pushbullet, after constructively suggesting a few ways they might be able to work with proxy servers, and all I got back was “Proxies are bad, mmmmk?”.

Fucken Peter Pan-level mentality.

jasondj, (edited )

Proxies aren’t bad they are just dated.

Ironically the big problem with proxies is really that software doesn’t support them properly, usually due to lazy or unknowing devs.

ky56,

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.

hperrin, (edited )

It didn’t break his computer. In trying to fix it, he deleted his node_modules directory, and now he’s complaining that he has to run npm install and wait for it to finish.

So to be clear, it was his own action that caused him to have to reinstall everything.

ky56,

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.

hperrin,

I actually offer consulting services for this library in particular, so yes, if you pay, you get paid support.

CurlyMoustache,
@CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world avatar

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

ky56,

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.

baseless_discourse, (edited )

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.

OnlineAccount150,

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”.

mako,

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 cring-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.

KarnaSubarna,
@KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml avatar

Would it be OK if I will be that guy when ranting about NVIDIA Linux drives? Asking for a friend 😉

feoh,

Couldn’t agree more.

For what it’s worth I think Brett Cannon wrote one of the best posts ever on the social contract of open source and how Not To Be That Guy :)

snarky.ca/the-social-contract-of-open-source/

Should be required reading IMO for anyone ever on Github :P

Pika,

just spent a few mins reading it, definitly agree with you, required for any issue reporter

hiramfromthechi,
@hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world avatar

Should be required reading IMO for anyone ever on Github :P

Fixed.

seth,

Are you the developer for SMUI? Small world to see a username I recognized from another site. Nice-looking components! 👍

hperrin,

I am. Thanks! :) I built my email service, port87.com with it.

seth,

Oh that’s an interesting concept, I’ve been using username+label@gmail in a similar way for years, and missed it when I switched to proton

Carighan,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

This is also any and all Firefox support queries in a nutshell.

“OMG THIS BROWSER IS SO SHIT IT ALWAYS BREAKS OR GETS SLOW”… “No I have not changed anything in ˋabout:configˋ, and what I did is definitely not the source of the problem!”… “Yes with a reset config it works fine, I don’t know why, your browser is shit!”

And it’s always the same people who do “hardening” and “privacy enhancement”, having fuck all actual clue what they’re doing but thinking they’re oh so smart. 😑

xan1242,
@xan1242@lemmy.ml avatar

This goes for inter-developer communication too. Be nice to one another. Someone just wants to help sometimes.

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