Good article. As an open source maintainer, I agree. The majority of interactions I have from my users are positive, but every once in a while, some entitled asshat does make unreasonable demands. I usually respond with a stern dressing down, but respectfully. If they continue, I’ll block them from whatever channel.
One thing that annoys me is when people get upset that I use Discord for support. I get it, it has drawbacks, but I’m not going to spend my limited resources hosting an alternative that most people won’t want to use anyway. Everything I use to host, distribute, and support my projects is free for both me and my users, and that’s because I’m not getting paid to make my projects. I also give out my email, so it’s not even a fair criticism.
I agree that Discord blows, but it’s what my users use, and it’s free. Maybe there are free Matrix servers I could use instead of hosting it myself, but the problem is still that my users want a Discord server. Basically the same reason I use GitHub. It at least doesn’t blow, like Discord, but it’s not open. I’d prefer to use something else, but I’d get less user interaction. Hopefully once Codeberg’s federation is complete, that will change. Thank you for being kind. :)
Hopefully once Codeberg’s federation is complete, that will change.
Hopefully. I’m using self-hosted Forgejo, and it’s really quite nice, but I would 100% make a public mirror (and accept PRs) on Github if I wanted collaboration. I get it, the most important thing for a FOSS maintainer is connecting w/ the community so they can both get help and provide help for their little community. Hopefully federation solves that divide, because making a bunch of dev accounts at random places sucks, especially when you just want to file an issue or add some context to a bug to help the devs fix it.
So yeah, I’m not going to judge. I will say, however, that there are tons of free Matrix servers out there if you ever want to try it out. I use Mozilla’s (chat.mozilla.org, for personal stuff) and openSUSE’s (chat.opensuse.org, for development stuff), but there are several others out there as well. I think you can also still bridge Discord in case your users wanted to keep using Discord and others wanted to use Matrix, and it works reasonable well. If not, that’s cool too.
I would absolutely appreciate that any decisions and documentation gets put somewhere outside of Discord, because finding it is incredibly hard if you don’t know to look there (and annoying even if you do). But I offer that not as a criticism (and maybe you already do it), but more as advice for how to take some work off your plate so users can solve problems themselves.
So yeah, thanks again for doing open source dev. I used to be fairly active w/ it, but then I had kids and my time seemed to just disappear. I do make random contributions here and there when I come across problems (e.g. I send some fixes to Lemmy and a few other services I use), but I’m not really at a place where I can really lead a project. But hopefully I’ll be back in that position in the next couple years as my kids get more and more independent.
Good article. As an open source maintainer, I agree. The majority of interactions I have from my users are positive, but every once in a while, some entitled asshat does make unreasonable demands. I usually respond with a stern dressing down, but respectfully. If they continue, I’ll block them from whatever channel.
One thing that annoys me is when people get upset that I use Discord for support. I get it, it has drawbacks, but I’m not going to spend my limited resources hosting an alternative that most people won’t want to use anyway. Everything I use to host, distribute, and support my projects is free for both me and my users, and that’s because I’m not getting paid to make my projects. I also give out my email, so it’s not even a fair criticism.
To be fair, Discord blows, and I highly recommend Matrix instead.
But it’s your project, so it’s your rules. Thank you for making your code available.
I agree that Discord blows, but it’s what my users use, and it’s free. Maybe there are free Matrix servers I could use instead of hosting it myself, but the problem is still that my users want a Discord server. Basically the same reason I use GitHub. It at least doesn’t blow, like Discord, but it’s not open. I’d prefer to use something else, but I’d get less user interaction. Hopefully once Codeberg’s federation is complete, that will change. Thank you for being kind. :)
Hopefully. I’m using self-hosted Forgejo, and it’s really quite nice, but I would 100% make a public mirror (and accept PRs) on Github if I wanted collaboration. I get it, the most important thing for a FOSS maintainer is connecting w/ the community so they can both get help and provide help for their little community. Hopefully federation solves that divide, because making a bunch of dev accounts at random places sucks, especially when you just want to file an issue or add some context to a bug to help the devs fix it.
So yeah, I’m not going to judge. I will say, however, that there are tons of free Matrix servers out there if you ever want to try it out. I use Mozilla’s (chat.mozilla.org, for personal stuff) and openSUSE’s (chat.opensuse.org, for development stuff), but there are several others out there as well. I think you can also still bridge Discord in case your users wanted to keep using Discord and others wanted to use Matrix, and it works reasonable well. If not, that’s cool too.
I would absolutely appreciate that any decisions and documentation gets put somewhere outside of Discord, because finding it is incredibly hard if you don’t know to look there (and annoying even if you do). But I offer that not as a criticism (and maybe you already do it), but more as advice for how to take some work off your plate so users can solve problems themselves.
So yeah, thanks again for doing open source dev. I used to be fairly active w/ it, but then I had kids and my time seemed to just disappear. I do make random contributions here and there when I come across problems (e.g. I send some fixes to Lemmy and a few other services I use), but I’m not really at a place where I can really lead a project. But hopefully I’ll be back in that position in the next couple years as my kids get more and more independent.
Well said.
Seems that 2 of those entitled ones are following you on Lemmy. 😄