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.
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!
And yet, this is the issue that gets a response instead of a silent closed offtopic wontfix.
Even if that was true effectiveness is never acceptable justification for cruelty
Never is a strong word when a collection of people all came together and agreed that Windows 10 should force updates.
Oh destroy property or whatever just don’t be cruel to people :p
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.
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.
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.)
😆 this is legitimately a work of art
The self entitlement in open-source these days never fails to astound me.
As a maintainer of open-source projects, I can confirm… It’s unforunate lol
Nowhere else do people get so much for free and yet be so entitled. It’s rough.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
In this case, in trying to resolve the issue, he deleted his
node_modulesdirectory. So he’s talking about having to reinstall everything by typingnpm installand waiting for it to finish.oh man…
People can be such dicks, you have my sympathy.
I’ve been thinking about open sourcing a Node project of mine recently… concerning that this is the kind of thing to expect
Well, this isn’t usual. This is actually really rare. Almost all of the interactions I have with users of my libraries are great. People are generally appreciative and kind, or at least not rude. This is an outlier, and I try not to let these things sour my experience.
He’s frustrated and he’s being abrasive because of that, but that doesn’t make him a bad person. I try to respond without being rude back, but just stern. Usually when you do that, people will either not respond again or apologize. I’ve never had a user keep being rude, and if I did, I would just ban them.
Sometimes people just kinda forget that on the internet they’re still talking to other real people, you know?
You’re lucky. I left FOSS dev because I got tired of my free time being abused by people like the one in your post
I’ve had to adopt a two strikes policy towards these aggressive trolls, who treat you like your their personal servant, especially since they make up like <1% of ppl on issue trackers. After a warning, if they don’t play nice, then they’re out.
It’s the only way to keep the coding experience enjoyable, and not suffer from burnout.
You’re taking a far calmer approach than i could ever take.
Wait till they realize that’s literally the solution to a lot of Node related issues. It’s in its own folder for a reason.
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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.
Malware is free too
Malware is not usually open source.
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.
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.
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.
You’re not entitled to a working computer once you execute a free program?
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.
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.
This. I swear, some people in the FOSS community seem to be convinced everyone who uses a computer is a developer.
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”.
Who put the gun to your head and made you run the software though?
The response to this here is absolutely wild. I guess I should expect my machine to get wiped any moment
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.
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.
Whoosh
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.
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
??? 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.
If that’s what you get from a paid product, why would you assume it’s better for a free product?
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By this definition of entitled, I’m not entitled to be alive once I walk outside, because I should have known the risk ahead of time.
Lol what the fuck?
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.
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This is the exact point I’m trying to make, to the word.
Your earlier comment was the exact opposite in most people’s eyea.
I guess you are not entitled free support once you execute a free program
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.
Do most open source projects damage your computer? It’s obvious they put effort into making usable programs.
Of course not!
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.
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.
Then you’re right. The frustration would be understandable, the expression thereof towards the developer, not.
what’s with the link in every comment? just curious
It’s a non-commercial copyleft licence for the comment in case the case against Microsoft’s CoPilot is won.
I don’t quite understand, why would Microsoft sue you for a lemmy comment?
Just to be sure, is this a serious question or a troll?
YOU 👏 ARE 👏 NOT 👏 OWED 👏 CUSTOMER 👏 SERVICE 👏 FOR 👏 USING 👏 THIS 👏 SOFTWARE 👏
YOU 👏 ARE 👏 NOT 👏 OWED 👏 A 👏 WARRANTY 👏
Don’t like it? Pay for your software :)
I agree, BUT, you should pay anyways. FOSS developers should be paid
Show me your winrar license!
It is not FOSS, so I don’t pay for it. Checkmate :)
I sometimes feel like I am the only one with that file. Yes sir, I sometimes feel sad when a good piece of software doesn’t have a donation button or license to buy. Even if it does nothing.
Ditched Windows long ago though.
Now flathub has a built-in donate button (for some software)!
It would be great if it is implemented in gnome software too, so I don’t need to search on flathub to donate to developers.
I wish nix had something similar as I rarely use flatpaks
I really want to donate to ublock origin, but they don’t take donations.
Yes sir, I sometimes feel sad when a good piece of software doesn’t have a donation button or license to buy
Yep, I feel that too. There is too much gratis software that’s actually good and I want to pay for but many FOSS developers are scared to ask for money for some reason
I only used winrar when I was a kid. I’ve been using linux (and macos) for most of my life and before that I used 7zip for my zipping needs, so no winrar license for me.
Don’t like it? Pay for your software :)
Most people happily will. So the year of the Linux desktop will always be n+1
The nightmare just crawls out to our reality when paid software is less developed on and more buggy than free Open Source software.
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.)
Did you know that “payed” is a naval term. See Grammarly on Payed for more information
Haha whoops. Thanks
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.
Uh. The spell checker doesnt work on my phone either way. I got lazy to fix anything on my GrapheneOS
User: “I have to waste my whole life fixing this” Dev: “you are complaining that you have to spend a few minutes”
Savage.
You are wasting my time! I demand a refund, where is open source’s manager!?
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. 😑
I see this in the comments section of Skyrim mods and it pisses me off so much
Worse, I see this with Fediverse platforms like Lemmy. During the initial Reddit influx so many people expected the exact level of polish and user experience as Reddit and there were tons of threads (on Lemmy itself) basically complaining how much Lemmy “sucks” compared to Reddit, despite them coming over to Lemmy because Reddit was being enshitified. Same with Mastodon when the Twitter people were coming over.
I mean to be fair it’s still terrible. Better than the early days and in my opinion better than using Reddit which is why I’m here. But basic functionality is just awful. Trying to discover new content outside of your particular instances incredibly tedious. So many large instances won’t stop trigger happy Banning practically every other goddamn instance out there which isn’t helping. The whole thing that originally made Reddit popular was that it was an easy place to go to find almost any topic of Interest but I now have to hunt through many different instances to potentially find what I’m looking for on top of that the community for any one particular interest could easily be scattered across multiple different instances that don’t Federate with each other and if I subscribe to all of them I’m going to likely be subjected to a lot of repeating posts
I fully understand why a lot of people were not on board with that I put up with it because I hate Reddit more than I hate that but a lot of people will not share that opinion
Keep in mind though that Lemmy is very much still in open beta while Reddit has been a mature product for years now. Lemmy only started federating like two years ago, and even compared to other Fediverse platforms Lemmy is still very new. Most of the “must have” features people associate with Reddit took a while to materialize as well, in fact when Reddit launched it didn’t have subreddits or even nested comments on posts. Not saying your grievances are invalid, but give it time and things will improve as Lemmy gets more development.
IIRC it always had threaded comments but yes subreddits took years. Shamefully I was very much in the anti subreddit camp and argued fiercely for tags instead like Flickr (RIP)
Lemmy with Sync is pretty baller though not sure what everyone is complaining about.
It’s every game and the bigger the community the lower the denominator.
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”.
Everyone without exception has had moments of weakness where they lashed out at something or someone wrongfully. That’s a bad deed but that can’t be the definition of a bad person.
Especially in this context. The dude isn’t really attacking the dev directly. He actually might just be venting. I wouldn’t do that like that but you really can’t assume anything from such a short exchange.
Exactly. Although you should still not be rude to the Devs if they don’t deserve it.
Just reading a mild, reasonable, even keel’d post made my day. I appreciate you!
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 cringe-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.
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 :)
https://snarky.ca/the-social-contract-of-open-source/
Should be required reading IMO for anyone ever on Github :P
just spent a few mins reading it, definitly agree with you, required for any issue reporter
Should be required reading IMO for anyone ever ~on Github :P~
Fixed.
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It’s not Lemmy; it’s the instance you’re using.
“Lemmy” isn’t, afaik. Certain instances seem to have profanity filters. Probably not a great word to use in general, though.
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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.
> not know how to use meme arrows
rofl “meme arrows”
> implying
Nope, it’s just that message boards can’t md properly.
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Why is your comment blank
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Time to put in a bug report on the sync app!
Great now I have to spend my whole life reinstalling it
It took me THIS LONG to understand the genius of your comment. The joke took me 12 hours lmao
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.
When you have blocked most of the troll instances and have no idea what’s going on in these comments
How do you know that someone is on a blocked instance?
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.
Makes sense, thanks for the explanation
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.
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.
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’.
Sunts?
