Andrew PlotkinI guess the takeaway from the xz backdoor situation is:
If you’re an open-source project maintainer, and somebody starts getting on your case for not doing enough free work for them, you reply “big Jia Tan energy there” and then block them forever.
Mike Taylor 🦕@zarfeblong Hard cases make bad law. I'd want to be careful about adopting such a rule.
beetle_bThing is, it's a good rule to have even if there is no malicious intent.
As a volunteer maintainer, it is wise to always put your sanity and mental well being above the project. If you think you have the energy to deal with rude folks, by all means proceed, but do ensure you *can* handle them.
Personally, I've found the "returns" for dealing with them to be in the net negative. So I ignore/block them. I owe them nothing, even if they spent 10 days writing a beautiful patch.
@beetle_b @zarfeblong I don't really disagree, but ...
If I spent ten days writing a beautiful patch only to have it rejected because of the tone of my communication, I don't the lesson I learned would be "I need to improve my tone". It would be "It's a waste of time trying to contribute".
@zarfeblong @beetle_b That's true. But project maintainers are also perfectly capable of being jerks, and I find myself thinking the Selfish Rational thing to do it not put myself at the mercy of their capricious whims.
No-one comes out of this ahead.
Agree. Some really are jerks - I can give examples 🙂
Thing is, contributing to a volunteer SW project always has been putting yourself at the mercy of their capricious whims.
I certainly don't put much effort into contributing, either - beyond bug reports. It's not a "loss" for these projects that people like me don't contribute, because this has always been the reality.
When Free SW took over the world, it did so despite this perceived flaw.
jelte@beetle_b @mike @zarfeblong Conversely, putting free software out there puts you at the mercy of the whims of random strangers. Sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. The former generally outnumber the latter, in my experience, but the latter have much more impact on the energy and willingness to continue.