✧✦Catherine✦✧Apr 9
monthly routine ^_^
Show threadBilly O'Neal

@whitequark I feel so conflicted about this. On the one hand I agree with you the situation sucks. On the other hand we have deployed this because we get tends of thousands of meaningless garbage issue reports and we can barely keep up with incoming PR submissions, much less issue submissions.

I guess maybe there's an argument that we shouldn't have issue tracking turned on at all if we can't meaningfully look at them but they're occasionally useful for coordinating something that happens across several PRs.

Apr 9 at 8:43pmWeb
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧6d ago
@malwareminigun can you set ACLs so that only project members can file issues?
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧6d ago
@malwareminigun but also you're at Microsoft right? I think a lot of big companies have an open source strategy that allocates 0 funding to working with the community
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧6d ago
@malwareminigun and this is in itself not necessarily a problem—in fact I have an idea for tackling this that I'll try to write about in a few days—but it needs to be communicated well
Show threadBilly O'Neal6d ago
@whitequark I mean, I am the funding of working with the community. I can't speak for the company as a whole (particularly recently) :/ .
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧6d ago

@malwareminigun here's how i'm thinking about it

let's say my literal actual job is to maintain some project. if i am to keep up with the community engagement, i need to at least split "my job description" vs "community efforts" as 50/50, but sometimes it's closer to 25/75

and i don't think microsoft, or really anybody else, considers does that

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧6d ago

@malwareminigun this is the situation i was in with Amaranth and it generated a pretty big amount of friction with the management (and is a big part of why i eventually left and got an NLnet grant to continue doing so)

though unlike that startup, Microsoft has functionally infinite cash

Show threadBilly O'Neal6d ago

@whitequark At the moment my job description is about 70% keep the community from collapsing 30% prevent us from getting sued into oblivion.

RE: Infinite cash: You and I are together in screaming at the company to fund things; as it is vcpkg is down to effectively 2 heads.

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧6d ago
@malwareminigun yeah! this is so completely nonsensical. NVIDIA's Linux graphics division is I think like one guy? everybody really hates the guy but I don't, it's an unenviable job and every time I would post a sketchy patch on my blog or their forums they'll figure out how to integrate it properly (even if the patch was originally literally "modify these bytes in nvidia.ko")
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧6d ago
@malwareminigun i have no doubt NVIDIA could afford to pay hundreds of people to work on Linux graphics if they wanted with barely a dent in their bottom line. they just... don't
Show threadBilly O'Neal6d ago
@whitequark Doesn't look like it. The only options I see in here are "enable/disable issues" and "enable/disable closing issues based on keywords in PRs/commit messages".
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧6d ago
@malwareminigun right yeah so... that's on github. I think I would not be upset if I encountered auto-closing issues instantly with a message that boils down to "we simply do not have resources to deal with this" (this is better than just letting it to rot); it's really the uncertainty and repeated make-work that's a problem in the original case