aaron1d ago

I made a keyboard because I needed one and nothing on Android was built for blind users. I put it on GitHub because someone else might need one. Then I woke up this morning and Mastodon had eaten it.

New blog post — what overnight virality actually looks like from the inside, the TalkBack problem nobody else bothered solving, Flexy, and why I spent the day building instead of panicking.

https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-made-a-keyboard-nobody-asked-for-my-experience-making-taptype/

#TapType #Android #Accessibility #BlindTech

I Made a Keyboard Nobody Asked For: My Experience Making TapType — fireborn

Show threadAlex Chapman1d ago
@fireborn About the thing about not putting the source out there because of merge requests, I think Github lets you turn off pull requests, or you can just say pull requests will be ignored, I've seen other projects do that and its perfectly OK to do that.
Show threadaaron1d ago
@alexchapman i'll see if that really is an option. In the post I was just commenting on the original reasoning
Show threadAlex Chapman1d ago
@fireborn Ye and that's understandable, when you've got a shitload of other stuff you don't wanna be reviewing pull requests every hour lol. Oh and I just looked it up, there's a page on the GitHub docs about disabling PRs: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/enabling-features-for-your-repository/disabling-pull-requests
Disabling pull requests - GitHub Docs

You may wish to modify pull request access for your repository if you want to restrict contributions, or disable them entirely.

GitHub Docs
Show threadaaron1d ago
@alexchapman Good to know :) I didn't even think to look to be honest. It was messy, like I said, and dealing with prs was not on my list of things to do. For projects that I actually want collaboration on, I absolutely want prs. I'm 100% in favour of open source contributions and free software. It just so happened that in this particular case, GitHub was just my distribution method, like the play store or a dropbox link or an ftp download. It preserves old versions and was almost no friction for me because I was using git to manage the source anyway.
Show threadAlex Chapman1d ago
@fireborn Oh right, well yeah for this you could plop the source in and just turn PRs off on the repo.
Show threadaaron1d ago
@alexchapman I hope the original decision makes more sense than it did before. I didn't really have the words to fully articulate my thought process last night when I had a lot of people asking about this exact thing.
Show threadLight
@fireborn
Another good reason to release the source code under an open license is so that other people can fork it and add the languages and features that you didn't have the ability to add without bothering you with code.
And if you are ever unable or unwilling to maintain it, someone else can pick it up where you left off.
@alexchapman
Mar 24 at 10:05amWeb
Show threadaaron1d ago
@light @alexchapman But then I might end up falsely attributed to a version of the product I didn't create. Forks are a double-edged sword, and no one ever talks about the downside of forks because they are scared of pissing off the FOSS tech bros.
Show threadLight1d ago
@fireborn
I don't think that ever happens. But if you're worried about it you could do what Signal does and keep the name as a trademark to make sure forks pick a different one.
@alexchapman
Show threadaaron1d ago
@light @alexchapman That honestly just sounds like more effort than I want to go to. I might publish the source, but the choice to do so or not will be entirely dependent on if I want to, and not on how many people hound me about it. That will likely have the opposite effect. Not saying people can't ask, but some are refusing to accept that no is a complete sentence.