David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)3d ago

It is okay to release a F/OSS project where the expected set of users is you.

It is okay to declare that a F/OSS project that you maintain is feature complete and stop.

It is okay to stop writing new code in a F/OSS project and just review patches from other people.

It is okay to stop reviewing patches once other people are familiar enough with the codebase to do so.

It is okay to admit that a F/OSS project that you created has so much technical debt that people would be better off reimplementing it than depending on it (especially if you write down the lessons that they should learn).

It is okay if your F/OSS project doesn't meet the requirements of some potential group of users, as long as no one applies pressure to force them to adopt it.

It is okay to tell a company that depends on your F/OSS project that it's unsupported and they can pay developers to contribute if they really need it.

It's okay to say 'I created this F/OSS project to meet my personal needs, but someone else made something that meets those needs better and so I'll use theirs instead'.

It's okay to say 'I made this F/OSS project as an experiment, and the result was that I learned that this approach is a bad idea'.

Show threadScale Theory3d ago

@david_chisnall

Wow, that's 1195 characters, (with spaces) you must be with privilege.

Show threadDavid Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)2d ago

@SCALETHEORY

infosec.exchange has a 11,000 character limit, which is big enough that I've never hit the limit.

Smaller limits exist because of a theory that it encourages concise posts. There is zero evidence that this actually works. In practice, people write long things and split them across many posts, and write 3/11 or whatever at the end. This ends up being much worse both for usability and performance: sending a single 4,000-character post across ActivityPub requires almost the same amount of data transfer as a 280-character one. But sending ten 280-character posts takes a lot more.

I wish Mastodon would make the defaults sensible instead of requiring instances to patch it.

Show threadeclexic2d ago

@david_chisnall

I have evidence it works on me specifically! I very rarely use chain posts, (but it happens when I really really need to).

It has forced me to write more concisely, when I would make my point in 501-850 characters. Inside that 500 characters though, it does nothing to stem the flow of my madness.

@SCALETHEORY

Show threadStephen Bannasch (316 ppm)

@theeclecticdyslexic @david_chisnall @SCALETHEORY

I’m on a server with a 500 char limit and sometimes write chain posts. There are very few that wouldn’t be better as a single consolidated post.

A few of these actually do work better as chain posts because they are just fun sequential stories with pictures.

https://ruby.social/@stepheneb/116669599349993468

Stephen Bannasch (316 ppm) (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 video Chewing a stick is a very important job! 1/3 #DogsOfMastodon #Stella

Ruby.social
Jun 4 at 6:22pmWeb