Mark MayoDec 17, 2022
Want to work on Mastodon full time? I’d like to pay a Rails dev for the next 3+ months to implement some auth improvements that matter to me but also just burn down bugs, make perf improvements, whatever is needed as this place grows. Remote 100% ok but ideally need 1+ hrs of Pacific time zone overlap, 3+hrs of GMT overlap, fair pay, meaningful work. [edit: email [email protected] to discuss more] #fedihire #ruby #rails #job
Show threadJuan Luis

@mmayo Honest question: do you have merge rights on Mastodon? If not, how will you ensure that the contributions are merged? Is there agreement from the Mastodon core team about those issues already?

In my experience, pouring time/money to an open source project doesn't do magic. It requires consensus building, a good relationship with the maintainers, and some patience.

Dec 17, 2022 at 7:17pmWeb
Show threadBrian CampbellDec 17, 2022

@astrojuanlu @mmayo You don't need to have merge rights to make valuable contributions.

Sure, in some cases @Gargron might not accept contributions, but the same is true of paid contributor to lots of other major open source projects; there are lots of folks who do kernel work full time, who have patch series rejected and need to either rewrite or drop it.

Even if patches aren't accepted upstream, they may be accepted for local forks or widely used forks like glitch-soc.

Show threadMark MayoDec 17, 2022
@unlambda @astrojuanlu @Gargron I'm with @unlambda this is open source, changes might be interesting upstream or they might not be that's ok.
Show threadMark MayoDec 17, 2022
@unlambda @astrojuanlu @Gargron and to be clear, I also agree with the "there is no magic" conclusion. :) I've had a hand in several open source projects, so I definitely understand the overall dynamics but also know that the best way to start is with working code that solves specific problems I need solving. sometimes those are broadly useful to others, often they're not.
Show threadJuan LuisDec 17, 2022
@mmayo @unlambda @Gargron I asked because you said "work on Mastodon" - naturally having the changes in some other fork is entirely valuable. Thanks for the clarification!
Show threadMark MayoDec 17, 2022
@astrojuanlu @unlambda @Gargron yes thank you that's an excellent clarification worth noting here. and for further clarity I'm particularly interesting in exploring a few optimized onboarding flows for new users. Tangentially, if there was a current Mastodon core dev that could benefit from sponsorship that would be cool, but I'm not assuming that is all the same job/person/thing. :)
Show threadMichael Downey Dec 17, 2022

@unlambda

"Some cases" ... you must be new here 😂

Show threadBrian CampbellDec 17, 2022

@downey Eh, I've had a 100% MR acceptance rate (1/1 MRs), so I may be a bit biased. 😉

Honestly though, I'm familiar with folks' complaints about patches not being accepted, but I also think that we're likely to be hitting the "Gargron doesn't scale" point here which means that he'll need to take on some more maintainers, like Linus did when he couldn't keep up with the merge load individually, or we'll see more instance moving to faster-moving forks like glitch-soc.

Show threadBrian CampbellDec 17, 2022
@downey Heh, and by MR I mean PR. I use GitLab at dayjob so I've gotten used to saying MR.
Show threadNathan WrayDec 17, 2022
@astrojuanlu maybe a better question is, does the person he hires have merge rights
Show threadJuan LuisDec 17, 2022
@wren The person doing the work doesn't need to be the one merging the work, IMO
Show threadNathan WrayDec 17, 2022
@astrojuanlu That's fair. I do like the idea of helping to fund someone who is already a committer, if there is room for that.
Show threadMark MayoDec 18, 2022
@wren @astrojuanlu I’m certainly open to that but certainly am not assuming that’s the kind of help anyone actually needs.