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.

naevaTheRat,

Me approaching Foss developer with bug: Pardon me, if you could grace this lowly worm with but a moment of your attention; I with me a bug report, and I believe I have found the section of code responsible. This inadequate being lacks the technical expertise to fix it and would be eternally indebted if you would turn your monumental skills upon its trifling problems. It would please me immensely if my paltry efforts were of some assistance.

This user: SOFTWARE NO WORK FUCK YOU!

adj16,

😆 this is legitimately a work of art

ggppjj,

And yet, this is the issue that gets a response instead of a silent closed offtopic wontfix.

naevaTheRat,

Even if that was true effectiveness is never acceptable justification for cruelty

RealFknNito,
@RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

Never is a strong word when a collection of people all came together and agreed that Windows 10 should force updates.

naevaTheRat,

Oh destroy property or whatever just don’t be cruel to people :p

gravitas_deficiency, (edited )

You’ve clearly never worked with any psychopaths or narcissists. Often, pointed (though importantly, carefully offline and undocumented) cruelty is one of the only ways to effectively punch back and make people like that stop trying to fuck with you, because many people like that only really respond to threat dynamics. It’s not terribly common, and it’s not fun to do, but it definitely is warranted once in a blue moon.

NotJustForMe,

Or even worse:

Thanks. Send a complete log of every software on your system, two videos of the bugs in action, and a detailed analysis of what you’ve had for breakfast.

hperrin,

It is, until it isn’t. I’ve seen devs delete or abandon their projects because of too mush abuse. Nobody likes being yelled at. (Unless that’s your kink. I won’t judge.)

mastefetri,

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.

appel,

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.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

You’re not entitled to a working computer once you execute a free program?

fishinthecalculator,

I guess you are not entitled free support once you execute a free program

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

I can’t say I’ve spoken directly to a dev in a situation like that, thankfully, but if that opinion were dominant, FOSS wouldn’t be a thing. Destroying your data or OS is kind of a no-no, whether you pay for the software or not. Obviously, you can’t sue the FOSS dev, but come on, it’d be amazingly shitty if they didn’t even try to help if there’s any evidence it’s their fault.

Star,

Do most open source projects damage your computer? It’s obvious they put effort into making usable programs.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

Of course not!

agent_flounder,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

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.

daed,

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.

lukecooperatus,
@lukecooperatus@lemmy.ml avatar

Alternatively, you could pay money for a solution from a reputable company with support.

and run the possibly even greater risk that it’ll fuck something up, since you probably can’t even look at their source

daed,

??? You quoted my comment with ‘reputable’ in it. You put a level of trust in anything you use. Reputable companies are unlikely to fuck your shit up with bad software. It happens - not trying to say it doesn’t - but again, you have to trust somewhere.

onlinepersona,

If that’s what you get from a paid product, why would you assume it’s better for a free product?

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

You’re implying that to even install the simplest of programs, I’d need to read and understannd many thousands of lines of code, starting with the FOSS project itself and then spidering out to every dependency. This speaks nothing of the fact that it may be written in multiple languages, some of which I am not familiar with, and even if I am, code can be written in ways that’s almost impossible to understand. This might take a week for a 200 line project.

Reminds me of when my employer said they were going to stop using open source software until a team had vetted it completely. Lol, once they talked to engineers that idea died immediately.

DrRatso,

Who put the gun to your head and made you run the software though?

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

The response to this here is absolutely wild. I guess I should expect my machine to get wiped any moment

red, (edited )

Whenever you choose to run a program that has full access to parts of your PC that may cause issues, you are the person who chose to do so.

Just run apps in a sandbox if you don’t want to risk having to reinstall your OS in a worst case scenario.

The developer owes you nothing.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

Legal obligations that I grasped at age 9 don’t really interest me to talk about. It’s pretty obvious I understand them. What I was trying to talk about was what reasonable people should do. But apparently that’s offensive to many ITT as most responses are condescending af

red,

We might be condescending due to braindead users like this:

You’re not entitled to a working computer once you execute a free program?

Despite grasping legal obligations at the age of 9, taking responsibility for your own actions seems to still be a struggle. Good luck.

Womble,

You’re right to an extent, but there is nuance. No end user goes through the Debian repositories and checking the source code for each package by hand. You would be well within your rights to be annoyed if a rm -rf / got added into a script in the repos somehow. A level of trust somewhere is unavoidable for things to work smoothly.

Of course the difference in level of responsibility between core repos and random code pulled of github is vast.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

The extent to which you’re attempting to sound intelligent would be saddening if you weren’t being so rude. I won’t be replying to you in the future.

daed,

I can see how you got there, but I’m actually not saying you need to understand any programming languages at all. If the code is out there, and the product is worthwhile, the community can and will vet it.

Like I responded to the other guy, you put a level of trust in anything you use. You can pay for a product and expect polish and support, or you can go the open source route, the DIY hobbyist route, and expect to have to do more yourself. You might have to do research on a product before you trust it. This isn’t a radical concept to me. If I was putting together an RC car, I would do research on the motor to make sure it was unlikely to fail catastrophically.

CallumWells,

That’s absolutely a ridiculous stance. Yes, you can personally go through everything, but there’s also searching around to find out what other people say about it, actually look through the issues people have raised. Some of it applies to proprietary software as well, find out what other people say about the software. You don’t need to do everything yourself, but you do have to take responsibility for trying to make sure it will work as you hope it will.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

Whoosh

carlytm,

This. I swear, some people in the FOSS community seem to be convinced everyone who uses a computer is a developer.

TrickDacy,
@TrickDacy@lemmy.world avatar

Right? And it seems like no one is interested in understanding my point, most only seem interested in defending developers of FOSS. I understand there is no legal obligation from FOSS devs… That is irrelevant.

I love FOSS. It’s one of the best products of humanity. I am not attacking devs at all…

My point was only that while devs don’t owe anyone anything legally, if the rare edge case happens where their code is destructive by accident, it would be a dick move to ignore complaints about it. I guess because it didn’t spell it all out like this, I “deserved” all the downvotes (on since-deleted comments) and condescending remarks?

Yes I know that if I use Firefox I can’t sue them if somehow they wipe my OS. Yes I know that would probably never happen, it’s extremely unlikely to happen. But if it did, FF owes us at least a response. And I means owes in the sense that it’s the right thing to do, not “if you don’t do it I can sue you”.

Raxiel,

Malware is free too

appel,

Malware is not usually open source.

RovingFox, (edited )
@RovingFox@infosec.pub avatar

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.

appel,

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.

RovingFox, (edited )
@RovingFox@infosec.pub avatar

Let’s be decent with each other, I don’t think my expectations are outrageous. I consider decent to make sure that the person that will use your software is aware of the dangers. And the best person to know those dangers is usually the dev.

hperrin,

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.

onlinepersona,

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.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

mastefetri,

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.

onlinepersona,

Then you’re right. The frustration would be understandable, the expression thereof towards the developer, not.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

laverabe,

what’s with the link in every comment? just curious

onlinepersona,

It’s a non-commercial copyleft licence for the comment in case the case against Microsoft’s CoPilot is won.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

laverabe,

I don’t quite understand, why would Microsoft sue you for a lemmy comment?

onlinepersona,

Just to be sure, is this a serious question or a troll?

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

laverabe,

serious question… not everyone on Lemmy is a computer expert, lol

onlinepersona, (edited )

🙂 my bad

No, not sue me for lemmy comments. AI is trained with lots of data. The world wide web is full of publicly accessible data like our comments. However, not all publicly accessible data may be used without a license. Examples thereof are news paper articles, videos, still pictures, etc. Normally, if you want to use those commercially, consent has to be given by the license holder and a in some cases a fee has to be paid.

Microsoft Copilot is an AI model to help people write code. However, it was trained mostly on opensource code (code made publicly available) which was very often licensed. And it is done so in such a manner that commercial use is allowed with the obligation to make that commercial code publicly available too. Microsoft does not make the code for Copilot publicly accessible and uses code licensed in many, many other ways - and it does so without asking for consent.

This is often a double standard as companies that hide their code fight very hard to keep it secret and/or pursue those in court who do not get a license to use it. However, they will happily use licensed consent to their benefit without consent nor potential payment.

With some clever tricks, AIs have been duped into revealing their training data (often licensed, sometimes very private e.g addresses, birthday, health information, etc.). Lawsuits have ensued (against the AI owners like Microsoft) and are currently active with a pending verdict. Until the verdicts come, I add the license link to my comments. Who knows, maybe it will have an impact, maybe not.

Hopefully I could explain the situation in an understandable manner for you.

Have a good day.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

laverabe,

I see - thanks for taking the time to explain the backstory, very interesting.

onlinepersona,

You’re welcome. Thank you for reading :)

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.

KingThrillgore,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

YOU 👏 ARE 👏 NOT 👏 OWED 👏 CUSTOMER 👏 SERVICE 👏 FOR 👏 USING 👏 THIS 👏 SOFTWARE 👏

YOU 👏 ARE 👏 NOT 👏 OWED 👏 A 👏 WARRANTY 👏

Don’t like it? Pay for your software :)

fuckwit_mcbumcrumble,

Don’t like it? Pay for your software :)

Most people happily will. So the year of the Linux desktop will always be n+1

ReakDuck, (edited )

The nightmare just crawls out to our reality when paid software is less developed on and more buggy than free Open Source software.

CallumWells,

Did you know that “payed” is a naval term. See Grammarly on Payed for more information

ReakDuck, (edited )

Haha whoops. Thanks

CallumWells,

The funny thing is that since it’s an actual word the spell checker might not be of any use to see that it might not be the word you’re actually wanting to use. And with the amount of people using “payed” instead of “paid” the dictionaries will probably include “payed” as an alternative way to conjugate “to pay” in the currency sense.

ReakDuck,

Uh. The spell checker doesnt work on my phone either way. I got lazy to fix anything on my GrapheneOS

hperrin,

That’s because the people making it are doing it for a job rather than for the love of it. (Except me. Surely I don’t do that.)

gomp,

User: “I have to waste my whole life fixing this” Dev: “you are complaining that you have to spend a few minutes”

Savage.

CaptDust,

You are wasting my time! I demand a refund, where is open source’s manager!?

IgnacioM,
@IgnacioM@lemmy.ml avatar

I see this in the comments section of Skyrim mods and it pisses me off so much

blazeknave,

It’s every game and the bigger the community the lower the denominator.

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. 😑

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.

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.

THE_ANON, (edited )

Be him

Be useless to everyone

Use someones open source project

b***h about it

(Lemmy is removing the b word thats why i put it like that)

RobotToaster,

> not know how to use meme arrows

fl42v,

Nope, it’s just that message boards can’t md properly.

THE_ANON,

Fixed

ZOSTED,

rofl “meme arrows”

nomous,

> implying

Sheeple,
@Sheeple@lemmy.world avatar

Why is your comment blank

THE_ANON,

Is it dont know why man it is what it is i guess maybe an issue on your end ? not sure

Sheeple,
@Sheeple@lemmy.world avatar

Time to put in a bug report on the sync app!

ThirdWorldOrder,

Great now I have to spend my whole life reinstalling it

Sheeple, (edited )
@Sheeple@lemmy.world avatar

It took me THIS LONG to understand the genius of your comment. The joke took me 12 hours lmao

ech,

“Lemmy” isn’t, afaik. Certain instances seem to have profanity filters. Probably not a great word to use in general, though.

THE_ANON,

Just meant it like b*****g about it not trying to offend anyone but that guy

ech,

Being offensive and trying to be offensive are not mutually inclusive. And I wasn’t intending that as a personal rebuke or anything. Just commenting that, in the context of profanity censors, that is a word usually better left unsaid anyhow. Sorry if it came off as a comment on you specifically.

EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted, (edited )
@EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

It’s not Lemmy; it’s the instance you’re using.

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 😉

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.

chicken,

Being polite is better than not being polite, but the way I see it, all user complaints are valid and are better not taken personally if possible. Maybe you as the developer didn’t do anything wrong that contributed to their problem, or are not actually in a position to resolve whatever their problem is, but it’s worth keeping in mind the bigger picture: how well peoples computers work to benefit their lives.

If someone is getting upset that they have to spend time troubleshooting, maybe because they didn’t understand something or made a mistake, there’s definitely other people going through the exact same less-than-ideal experience and not saying anything about it. That’s information about the state of how well things are working and it’s better for it to be out there in some form than not.

hperrin,

Yeah, I didn’t take it personally. He’s just venting, but doing it toward the person trying to help you is unhelpful. That’s why I posted here, basically saying to remember that you’re talking to a person, not a punching bag.

DeltaTangoLima, (edited )
@DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com avatar

Nah - don’t make excuses for them. Here in Australia, we call entitled people like this cunts. With a hard ‘c’. Not the nice one, with a soft ‘c’.

CallumWells,

Sunts?

stevedidWHAT,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

When you have blocked most of the troll instances and have no idea what’s going on in these comments

Croquette,

How do you know that someone is on a blocked instance?

Snowpix, (edited )
@Snowpix@lemmy.ca avatar

If you look at the number of comments Lemmy says there are, versus the number of comments visible, the difference is how many people from blocked instances there are.

I’ve seen one post where it said there were 51 comments, but none would appear for me. That’s because all of the comments were from instances blocked or defederated by my instance.

Croquette,

Makes sense, thanks for the explanation

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