Mastodawn

Dear OSS community on Mastodon,

Every day I scroll through my feed and I see proud announcements like:

“First Alpha Relase of HyperTurboWidget available"

or

“Version 2.7.1 now with improved glorb handlers!”

or

“Flux Capacitor version 4.5 is out”

… and I sit there wondering if I should be excited, terrified, or calling a licensed electrician.

Don’t get me wrong, I love open source. I just have no idea what three quarters of these projects actually do. Are we talking about a web server? A file system? A middleware thingy that keeps the flux from overflowing into the space–time continuum?

So, dear OSS developers of the world: When you announce a new release, please give us (your adoring but slightly confused audience) just a tiny bit of context.

Tell us what your software does.
Tell us why this release is cool.
Tell us what it requires to work.

Example:

We are proud to announce Flux Capacitor version 4.5 is now avalaible. While it creates a nice wormhole to 1955, it requires an underlying gigawatt stack 1.21 to work reliably.

Because nobody wants to cheer enthusiastically for “v2.7.1” while secretly Googling “what is a glorb and why does it need handling”.

Yours truly,

Someone who wants to celebrate your achievements

"Musty Bits" McGee Dec 8

@masek spiked and reglorbed

Hyperbolix Prudens 🎹🖌️⌨️Dec 8

@arichtman @masek I will add this into my daily language...

"Please spike and reglorb"

Thank you...

gorse horse Dec 8

@masek addendum, please tell me what your software does on your social media profile, home page or git repo

Henrik Pauli Dec 8

@masek *this*

Less so with the update notes, those are more aimed at existing users anyway, and those probably know what the project is about.

But fedi (or other) profile descriptions, pinned toots? The project website? The github/gitlab/codeberg/etc. repo description? The actual README.md? The F-Droid/Google Play/Apple Store tagline?

Please, please do it.

There's so many projects going on about how free they are and what toolkits they proudly use in what language.

What. Do. You. Do?!

Simon Eilting Dec 8

@masek enthusiastically agree, and also: Don't tell us what your project is not: "Perflorb is an alternative to HyperFlorb written in Snakey."

And if you don't want to spam this information out all the time, that's what your bio and pinned posts are for.

Marcos Dione Dec 8

@masek I miss freshmeat.org...

Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch)

@masek glorb handler was my nickname in highschool

Martin Seeger Dec 8

@catsalad Finally! Finally someone who can tell us what a glorb is and why does it need handling 😄

Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch)

@masek I've been testing plenty of Android apps, but "glorb handler" reminds me of trying to figure out what the heck an app called Smoke could do... Still confuses me, especially their release notes.

Release Notes

2024.06.25
• GitHub ticket #48. The oid variable in Fire::deleteFire() may not be defined and referencing a tarnished variable will terminate Smoke.

2024.01.05
• Cancel the future.
• Minimum SDK of 25.
• Partially-blocked socket reads.
• Permanent darkness.

https://textbrowser.github.io/smoke/

Smoke

Martin Seeger Dec 8

@catsalad Agreed, it contains either too much unhandled glorb or too little of of handled one 😏

⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe Dec 8

@masek @catsalad YOU WANT GLORB? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE GLORB!

@masek please, do :) Also, I would expand the same idea and logic to the web-pages for your project as well. Because a bit too often it makes me feel like a kid in the following joke:
> "
- Mooooom, can I get some Tampax for my birthday please?
- ??? Do you even know what is it?
- No clue. But I've heard on the TV that you can play basketball, jog and swim with it!"

Ω 🌍 Gus Posey Dec 8

@masek I can't tell if you're pro-glorb or anti-glorb.

Martin Seeger Dec 8

@Gustodon Of course I am not anti-glorb. Some of my best friends are glorbs. But those glorbs are not from here.

Ω 🌍 Gus Posey Dec 8

@masek Genuine LOL.

Martin Seeger Dec 8

@Gustodon This is nearly a quote from Asterix (see Alt-Text).

Ω 🌍 Gus Posey Dec 8

@masek Wow, that takes me back...

Still funny.

Henrik Pauli Dec 8

@Gustodon @masek https://pbfcomics.com/comics/skub/

Skub

The Perry Bible Fellowship

The Perry Bible Fellowship

@masek I agree with you. My personal workaround is just to pretend I'm the captain of a spaceship and the crew is yelling techno-babble at me.

VLC 2.9 Foundation Dec 8

@masek Understood. The Foundation will consider your advice.

Martin Seeger Dec 8

@vlc29 ❤️

William Witteman Dec 8

@masek 100% agree and endorse. Also, given the proportion of commit messages that read "bug fix", I'm not sure what to tell you.

@masek
Many apps on F-droid as well.

"A game written in Flutter" seems to be the most popular kind of game to create - but I don't know how to play Flutter, what the rules?🤔

I also see "Glorp - an app for Glorp" pretty often, I know recursive acronyms are nerdy, but could we please drop the recusive descriptions?

Max Resing Dec 8

@masek - I see the advantage of an introduction of the software of each introduction. But isn't that hugely redundant? Often, one can click on the release notes, and ends on the homepage/git repository within 1 click. Which I think is the better trade off. People familiar with a project appreciate the concise update.

Personally, I favor a compact update too, instead of a repetitive, long version that explains the basics each time a version update is announced.

Martin Seeger Dec 8

@resingm Have you read Github ReadMes lately? Those are even harder to decipher…

@resingm @masek
The post should have three words telling what it does, to get people to look at the profile.

The profile should have enough of a resume to get people interested, so they will look at the store/homepage/github page. And the store description as well as the homepage should have the full description. The github page should either have a prominent link to the homepage, or the full description as well.

Often, neither of them do.

When news headlines do this, I call it skip bait. The headline is there to get me interested in reading the article, if it doesn't tell me enough to get me interested, I'm going to skip.

@masek So, I'm not the only one.

Gregg Alley Dec 8

https://youtu.be/RXJKdh1KZ0w

Rockwell Retro Encabulator

YouTube

Martin Seeger Dec 8

@Galley That must be the universal announcement boiler plate 😁

@masek @Galley IMO the funniest part is that there are multiple versions of this video from different companies. 🤣

Third spruce tree on the left Dec 8

@pawv @masek @Galley

You have to watch out for that sinusoidal depleneration of your fumbling lunar waneshafts.

There's a whole subreddit riffing on the joke (/r/vxjunkies).. bit like fight club noone is allowed to explain the joke . The TurboEncaubulator goes back to the 30s/40s if I recall, and the first video rendition was done by an educational GMC film crew: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag

"Turbo Encabulator" the Original

YouTube

@tezoatlipoca @masek @Galley lol, that reminds of (I think) the programming language Songbird. Has an open specification that takes PR's for hypothetical language features that almost sound good, but end up being jokes or puns.

🇳𝗮ꜟ𝖼𝘩 Dec 9

@tezoatlipoca @pawv @masek @Galley
There is also a VXJunkies on Lemmy. https://lemmyverse.link/lemmy.ca/c/vxjunkies

@masek i.e. treat social media posting as marketing.

Theres “tell people what useful thing you make in case they want it”, which I am for, and “invoke clouds of FOMO to make them afraid of not having it”, which I am Against —

I read a MBA marketing textbook once that called the first “advertising“ and the second “marketing” but I don’t know how universal that terminology is.

Jochen Diekenbrock Dec 8

@masek
So true!

David Cohen Dec 8

@masek @briankrebs You are in the wrong sector if you are looking for clear and simple documentation that a layman can understand.

FOSS might as well stand for Free Of Simple Statements

Daniel o secours Dec 8

@masek thanks for publishing the toot I always thought about when seeing new release toots

@masek meanwhile me with my super creative naming scheme of Foxkit List for my doubly linked list class... and then not being able to name anything the moment I need to buy a domain for a new project

@masek
Many times it's even worse. I go to the project's page, read it and still have no idea what this thingy is about...

HTTP 1.1/418 Teapot Dec 8

@masek Speaking as a licensed electrician, all that shit is just as bafflingly incomprehensible to us, too.

Puppy Cuir Dec 8

@rmd1023 That statement is both funny and frightening at the same time! 😜

Claudius Link Dec 8

@masek
☝🏻
So true 😬

Adrian Morales Dec 8

@masek 👋 That's how I feel whenever I end up on GitHub 😅😬

Karel 'Clock' K.Dec 8

@masek Many OSS projects now even lack a [Download] button, therefore I can't download them. It seems to be related to the fact that their page is on Github. It feels to me like a dissertation thesis just to figure out how to download it.

Henrik Pauli Dec 9

@clock @masek There's even different levels of that :D

Like, I can understand not wanting to support pre-built binaries (the linux distros' packagers will do that eventually), but then it's still a good idea to make a Release and provide a tarball in that github facility.

Or failing that, tag a version at least so people can clone and check out that one. (and provide instructions for building, of course).

But in the earlier days of GH there were projects who were like "just checkout master" 😬

Karel 'Clock' K.Dec 9

@phl @masek I mean this in the red circle, which I can't find on Github pages (not even a text link saying "Download"). This is the webpage of our FOSS Links browser. I assume many people will hear about our Links browser and think "OK - let's give it a try - to give it a try I need to download it first. Where can I download it? Oh, a huge green rectangle saying "Download"! That looks like the thing I have to click to download it!", then they click it and there is a selection of versions to download, binary vs. source download, pre-download prerequisities (libraries). But the important thing is they know where to click to even get into the download section. And I can't find that in the Github interface.

So when I can't find the Download button I can't download it. And when I can't download it, I can't use it. So I abandon the program and google up some alternative to it.

#links2gang #links2 #Twibright

Henrik Pauli Dec 9

@clock @masek Oh yeah, I absolutely get it. There's so little effort to be made by the authors/maintainers to make the users more comfortable, and yet...

(and oh wow, good old Links and ELinks, they always come in handy :D)

(Also what is it with Czech and browser projects, Arachne was also written by someone from Czechia)

Karel 'Clock' K.Dec 9

@phl @masek Thanks! Comfortable is one thing, but this is next level, when I can't even find the Download button I can't use the program.

And I don't want to spend an hour trying to figure out how to download it and also think when the user experience is already so abysmal with such a trivial thing like download, how must the user experience be while using the program? Then it probably won't even compile or immediately segfault so I don't bother, abandon and go next door.

Karel 'Clock' K.Dec 9

@phl @masek thanks and with "handy" you mean it runs both on graphical and text console? 😀

Henrik Pauli Dec 9

@clock I've only ever used it inside a terminal — sometimes it's useful to check things from a remote server via ssh and all that :D

Haven't had to use it as a fallback in a while, for when X11 doesn't work, as it has been rock solid, but there's been that in the past too. (nothing like reading ArchWiki in a Links while trying to figure out what you broke on your system :D)

coldclimate Dec 8

Baloo Uriza Dec 8

@masek Turns out galculator is a stupid name but at least gives you the ability to tell it's probably a GTK calculator.

concretedog Dec 8

@masek I used to see this all the time regarding hardware when I wrote for Tindie. I'd read paragraphs sometimes and it would not tell you what the device was for!

Puppy Cuir Dec 8

@masek I think that's a challenge for many FOSS and other tech projects on their public-facing fronts. Communication and messaging, not just telling people what the benefit is of purchasing it, but what it actually does and a little high-level explanation of what the program does.

James Britt Dec 8

I've gone to websites for such things and still have no idea what it is. Mostly I learn that the thing is beautiful, simple, powerful. Whatever the hell it is doing.

Daniel Gibson Dec 8

@jamesbritt @masek
Yeah, but the same is true for most proprietary software.
Maybe it's even worse there because the websites tend to be even more dominated by uninformative bullshit