Kicking off my little vent drama, I focus on one of my biggest pet peeves to date (next to people tweeting from their main accounts about sport) is about developers who complain bitterly that some opensource project doesn’t work the way they want it to or just doesn’t have feature X that they need. End result is usually some flame posts about said project.
This is very saddening and infuriating
Developers who freely contribute their time to opensource projects, don’t get paid and usually have little free time but are willing and happy to do so in order to get something out there.
I personally have very little free time to myself, let alone to contribute to projects. I have a busy family with 4 children, one of which has special needs. I work full time and do part time work with both my Sons charity (for his condition) and other groups. Somewhere in there though I still find the time to both run and support dozens of opensource projects out in the wild (most notably AdRotator, Monogame but there are many others)
if I see a problem or an issue / gap with an opensource project I get involved, work with the team and offer solutions or even fork the project write a fix and submit it back to the project to enhance it (yes, granted my fixes are not always merged but they are there for anyone else to look at and get ideas).
What really saddens me are comments that appear out in the ether that pull down such projects, some of them get really personal. Such comments are really not needed.
If you have a problem and even better if you KNOW how to fix it, then how about suggesting a fix or even writing the fix and submitting it back to the project in question. yes not all fixes are welcome or accepted, this may be because it is not in the spirit or vision of the project (in which case build your own project built on top of the original solution) or because the admin has left or is just a jerk (I’ve met a few of these as well).
There is no reason to try and flame such offerings as no one is likely paid to publish r maintain it, it is almost always peoples free time they are contributing, don’t like it then put up (and shut up) your own project and see what others think of that.
Let all just try and get along, respect peoples efforts no matter how bad or good they are and if it’s not for you either work with the project to improve it or just move on and find something else.
Don’t flame! (unless they have abused you in which case flame on)
<Feel free to flame this post if you disagree, I’m only ranting>
Simon (darkside) Jackson
Engineer, industry executive, research enthusiast. Avid learner with diverse interests in coding, game development, Mixed Reality (AR/VR/XR) and reinforcement learning. 25+ years of experience working in multinational corporations and startups.
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