185 lines
7.3 KiB
Markdown
185 lines
7.3 KiB
Markdown
Title: FLOSS Development Sucks
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This Article Is A Work In Progress
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====================
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I'm not even sure where I'm going with this.
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Maybe I just needed to vent.
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I think there might be advice in here somewhere,
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but right now I'm tired of feeling pissed off,
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so I'm just going to save this and move on with my day.
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------------
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This morning I thought I'd mention to a couple old colleagues
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that I was still working on our codebase,
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and I was considering splitting it off into something new
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because it was looking like it might diverge pretty significantly.
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I've been on this IRC channel for about a month.
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There have been a sum total of 5 lines pasted,
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all of them saying "hello" and "help" before anybody answered.
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5+ years ago,
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it was just me, the author of the package,
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and another guy (the author of ratpoison),
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mostly just shooting the breeze about bicycles.
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The author had mentioned several times that the package was basically out of his hands,
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once it got merged into emacs.
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I've submitted a couple patches in the past,
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and they've been accepted upstream.
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So I tossed this out there expecting, if anything, a multi-day turnaround,
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hopefully from the author:
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> 08:32 neale> hello
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> 08:32 neale> I think I'm going to have to fork rcirc :(
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> 08:33 neale> I'm making too many changes and I don't have time to get them merged into emacs.
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And then went back to work.
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> 08:44 ams> what changes are you doing?
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Whoa, somebody responded!
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> 09:09 neale> I added a notion of "network" so you could have and distinguish multiple connections to the same server
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> 09:09 neale> umm...
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At this point I struggle to do a diff against the upstream source,
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to see what else I've done.
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I definitely wasn't expecting this right away,
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I figured I'd maybe put things up on github or something.
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> 09:11 ams> you can already do that afaik
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> 09:11 [neale raises an eyebrow]
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Who is this person?
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I read over the code pretty thoroughly before I added this in,
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I think I would have noticed if anything resembling my changes had existed already.
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Back do the diff, it looks like all my prior changes have actually been merged upstream,
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after five years or so!
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That's a pleasant surprise!
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> 09:12 ams> but if you cannot .. that doesn't seem like a hard thing to merge
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> 09:12 neale> I'm going to have to figure out a way to hack in support for channel passwords
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> 09:12 neale> that's going to probably need to break syntax
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> 09:12 ams> break syntax? of what?
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> 09:13 ams> you are being incoherent.
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> 09:13 neale> next on the list is I need a way to have channels default to lowpri/ignore when created, so, probably going to tack that on to rcirc-server-alist
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This happens sometimes on IRC.
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While I was writing that long line, they posted two more.
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I see I should now answer their other questions.
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But now they're insulting me?
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Who *is* this person?
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Are they just wasting my time because they like arguing?
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> 09:13 neale> of /join
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> 09:13 neale> right now /join takes a space-separated list of channels, I'll probably need to bring that in line with how other clients handle multiple channels with a single join (or more likely change it to space-separated)
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> 09:14 neale> sorry, change it to comma-separated
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I'm getting flustered here.
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I wasn't expecting to need to defend my changes.
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> 09:14 ams> why?
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> 09:14 ams> setting default priority should be trivial, and no need to change rcirc-server-alist
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This didn't even register with me until I started writing this paper.
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I told them I needed channels to start with a certain priority,
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so I was going to add that to the list of channels to connect to at startup.
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They referred me to the mechanism to set a global default.
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> 09:14 neale> ams: see, this is what I was saying about not having time to merge upstream :)
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> 09:15 neale> but it's good to know that there's somebody alive in here :)
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Yeah, I think this person isn't going to help.
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It's pretty typical that you have to do a sales pitch,
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over and over,
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to get your changes accepted.
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And I don't have time for that.
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I've already wasted enough time just trying to convince this one person
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that there was even a need for the work I've done so far.
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> 09:15 ams> you just said you haven't even written it ..
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> 09:15 ams> there is nothing to merge.
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> 09:15 neale> LOL okay
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Still feeling this person is just trying to waste my time and get me into an argument.
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I probably should have just stopped here, but...
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> 09:15 ams> and half of the things you mention can already be done
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> 09:15 neale> maybe you could write up how to do those things then, because it certainly wasn't obvious from the code :)
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If this person had been paying attention,
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a full 20% of last month's channel traffic had been requesting this exact feature.
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> 09:17 ams> i don't see the use for multiple connections to the same host on the same port, most networks prohibit that.
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> 09:17 neale> hahaha, excellent
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> 09:17 ams> you can already connect to multiple hosts though with different port numbers
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> 09:17 neale> Stop Wanting That!
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Now I'm mad!
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They're not even interested in why I would want the feature I coded up.
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They just want to tell me I'm wrong.
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This is the point at which I completely gave up,
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and was just saying words out of anger.
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I don't do well when I'm like this,
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but I know some people who are *excellent* in this situation,
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like my friend Nick.
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Sometimes I wish I were better,
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because people like this,
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I feel,
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need to be put in their place,
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and stop being hostile to everybody.
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> 09:17 ams> simply specify a different port
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> 09:17 ams> ok, you are trolling. i'll go back to doing something else.
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> 09:18 neale> I'm trolling, eh?
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> 09:19 neale> Man, look, I'm coming in with a need, you're telling me that a) it already does what I want, b) I don't actually have changes, and c) there's no need for me want what I said
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I'm still trying to (angrily) convince them
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that this is a horrible way to treat people they don't even know.
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> 09:19 ams> no, i didn't say that at all. now you are just spouting lies.
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> 09:19 ams> 17:19 /ignore neale
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> 09:19 neale> Who's trolling? Anyway what happened to rcy and sabetts? They were friendly :(
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> 09:20 neale> Wow, infuriating.
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But it's a lost cause.
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----
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This is pretty frequently how things go.
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I wish I'd saved the 20-minute argument I had to endure
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to convince some plan9 people
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that some users might want a their three-button mouse to have a scroll wheel.
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They eventually accepted that,
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yes,
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some users might actually want that,
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and what was the mouse I'd found that does this?
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This is not okay.
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The community is selecting for people who are good at arguing.
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We should not require every code contributor
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to champion their code's worth
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by besting the local troll in combat.
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Even though I envy Nick's level-headedness during empassioned debate,
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that skill has no correlation to the ability to make useful code contributions.
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In the troll's defense,
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this is just human nature.
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Say there's this group of men discussing mortise and tenon joints,
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and you have a better technique.
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The way things work in FLOSS, currently,
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is that you must step into this group an tell them they're doing it wrong.
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It takes an extraordinary individual to *not* tell you to fuck off.
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And you know that,
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which is why your social instincts are screaming at you to be very uncomfortable.
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So when the "fuck off" happens,
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you've steeled yourself for it,
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and then you get a slap fight.
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There has got to be a better way.
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