It's currently Hacktoberfest 2020, and developer communities are in an uproar about the impact (both positive or negative) this event brings to open source projects. Just take a look at some of these tweets for context.
That being said, this post isn't just about Hacktoberfest. The third tweet alludes to what open source software (OSS) maintainers face frequently year round: harassment in the form of demands and feature requests.
Now let me make it clear that I am not a current maintainer of any OSS repository and I have only infrequently made pull requests to different repositories on various platforms. But I do keep notifications on the projects I use and some of the users can make some outrageous demands.
The Meaning of Open Source
For context, I do believe that user demands are normal and sometimes even healthy for the direction of the project. I believe that it is the attitude and approach that some of these users are using to treat OSS as the same as a paid commercial product is the crux of the issue. But how can we address this as a community?
Potential Solutions
Better support for communities in OSS repository platforms
For example, I think the 'issues' tab on GitHub has become too all-encompassing, where users are filing every little problem in the issues tab when its usually meant for bugs or feature requests. Now this may not be a problem for bigger projects with dedicated support members, but for any small - mid sized project, this can complete clog up the work tasks. I don't know what form this takes yet, maybe you think a separate instant message platform already fulfills this role, but I think improvements could be made directly on the platform.
More impactful punishments for abuse on public platforms
This second one is a bit more controversial but I believe that people should take responsibilities for their actions and that goes for abusing others on the internet. Platforms such as GitHub and GitLab have outgrown their initial goals as just a hosting platform for public repositories, with people's job searching criteria being linked to these platforms. I believe there should be a call out for blatantly abusive behavior on these platforms, by the platform, so when potential recruiters see the person's online behavior, they would think twice about working with them.
What do you think about open source? Do you agree or disagree with my suggestions? Are you taking the point of view from a maintainer or contributor?
Update (10/03/2020 - 2:30AM UTC)
DigitalOcean has made Hacktoberfest repositories opt-in only!
Happy Coding
- Justin
Top comments (2)
Sure I totally understand that Hacktoberfest are the horror for repro maintainer (sometimes!). But I also understand what do you mean. I'm not in the Open Source / Linux community for over 10 years.
I meet a lot of people at Hackathons, Congresses and more. Some of them are very friendly, some of them are strange and they match the cliché about People who work in the Information science. Like people like Richard Stallman.
some are just very reserved and want to see what you can do first. But some are also arrogant if they don't admit it because they don't know. either you like this community and accept people with their idiosyncrasies or not.
Thank you for your insight and opinion Stephen!
I also agree that there is a spectrum of people, whether friendly or not, who use and contribute to OSS so it's a given that there are bad actors in the community.
From my limited perspective though, I feel like there are more novice developers (not just lay users) who feel entitled to updates or features of packages they use rather than forking the project or submitting a pull request. Again, I admit that this may always come with a user base.
I guess what I want to advocate for is to raise the bar / minimum requirement and tackle the issue of not being held accountable for abusive messages online in the software development community.