FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project(taskwarrior.org)
taskwarrior.org
FOQ – Frequently Obnoxious Questions When Doing an Open Source Project
http://taskwarrior.org/docs/foq.html
9 comments
My presumption is that the question is more one of social conformity. Consider "why don't you wear a suit?", "why don't you stand for the Pledge of Allegiance?", "why do you eat fish on Friday?", "why can't you answer the phone on Saturday?"
Those are structurally similar questions, with the underlying premise "you are different." What obligation does the person who is different have to explain to those who don't understand? Very little if any, I think.
Now, your presumption does have some merit. My experience says that it's very minor. Very few people contribute to a project, and infrastructure rarely plays a role.
The FOQ even points out in the second answer, "There have been seven website patches from the community in the last three years". How many more contribution do you think they would get if they switched to Markdown over HTML? And how much work would it be to convert both the website and existing practices? Is it worthwhile?
> at odds with the nature of open source
Well, yes and no. "Open source" is applied to both a development model and a distribution model. My company sells software under a BSD license. I am the primary developer, though I've received a few patches and I paid someone to work on part of the code.
The development is all through my email. Do you call that "open source" or do you prefer a different label?
The difference is less entangled in the free software philosophy. You have the freedom to develop code for yourself and distribute it, and to ignore contributions. Compare that to your view concerning open source software, where there is at least some obligation to consider external contributions.
Those are structurally similar questions, with the underlying premise "you are different." What obligation does the person who is different have to explain to those who don't understand? Very little if any, I think.
Now, your presumption does have some merit. My experience says that it's very minor. Very few people contribute to a project, and infrastructure rarely plays a role.
The FOQ even points out in the second answer, "There have been seven website patches from the community in the last three years". How many more contribution do you think they would get if they switched to Markdown over HTML? And how much work would it be to convert both the website and existing practices? Is it worthwhile?
> at odds with the nature of open source
Well, yes and no. "Open source" is applied to both a development model and a distribution model. My company sells software under a BSD license. I am the primary developer, though I've received a few patches and I paid someone to work on part of the code.
The development is all through my email. Do you call that "open source" or do you prefer a different label?
The difference is less entangled in the free software philosophy. You have the freedom to develop code for yourself and distribute it, and to ignore contributions. Compare that to your view concerning open source software, where there is at least some obligation to consider external contributions.
This "FOQ" does not come off as anything but something written by someone on a very high horse.
For a project owner to need to write a page about these common questions, why would you not instead implement these common requests?
I've often done this in some of my projects, which could be considered a microcosm of this.
I've never heard of this application, but if there is a module system, why not write a few modules for some other people? Unless your api is horrible, it shouldn't be too difficult to implement all of the "Why Didn't You Implement My Favorite Feature?" if you are familiar with the code base.
For a project owner to need to write a page about these common questions, why would you not instead implement these common requests?
I've often done this in some of my projects, which could be considered a microcosm of this.
I've never heard of this application, but if there is a module system, why not write a few modules for some other people? Unless your api is horrible, it shouldn't be too difficult to implement all of the "Why Didn't You Implement My Favorite Feature?" if you are familiar with the code base.
> why would you not instead implement these common requests?
Because time is finite. Apparently you're one of the few developers that doesn't have 10x more feature requests than you have resources to work on them. Good for you. However, that's not the norm.
> why not write a few modules for some other people?
See above. It's a mistake to generalize from young and/or small projects to those that have become large and complex over time.
Because time is finite. Apparently you're one of the few developers that doesn't have 10x more feature requests than you have resources to work on them. Good for you. However, that's not the norm.
> why not write a few modules for some other people?
See above. It's a mistake to generalize from young and/or small projects to those that have become large and complex over time.
On every project that I have worked on, developer support for projects increased with the amount of users.
I would understand if there was no one using this project and it was a one-person operation, but if you are getting so many requests that it is literally impossible to comply with the top 5% of them then you should have made friends with enough people in your community who would be suited for doing these tasks.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying do every single request and I am definitely not saying spend most of your time doing requests. But my the developers admission, "Taskwarrior [...] is easy to programmatically convert to any other data interchange format."
If it would make that many people happy, to the point where you need to have a link handy to tell them "no", then it might be worth it just to write the feature that everyone seems to want, even if it is in an optionally usable format like a 'module'.
I would understand if there was no one using this project and it was a one-person operation, but if you are getting so many requests that it is literally impossible to comply with the top 5% of them then you should have made friends with enough people in your community who would be suited for doing these tasks.
Don't get me wrong, I am not saying do every single request and I am definitely not saying spend most of your time doing requests. But my the developers admission, "Taskwarrior [...] is easy to programmatically convert to any other data interchange format."
If it would make that many people happy, to the point where you need to have a link handy to tell them "no", then it might be worth it just to write the feature that everyone seems to want, even if it is in an optionally usable format like a 'module'.
I've haven't noticed any increase in developers with my main project, which is very user heavy. It's a multiplatform GUI application, something which attracts a lot of non programmers. If you write some sort of library, you're going to get a lot of development help. That's not the case for a GUI app lots of people can use.
notacoward(1)
Q: Why won't you spend your free time implementing my favorite feature?
If you're not paying us, you need to convince us that your feature is so great, that it's worth giving up our free time to work on.
This is open source. Scratch thine own itch.
If you're not paying us, you need to convince us that your feature is so great, that it's worth giving up our free time to work on.
This is open source. Scratch thine own itch.
Not everyone knows how to program. If a programmer asks for a feature, tell a programmer to write it, if someone who is interested in programming help them write a feature, but if enough people officially request a feature it's better to just help the lot of them.
I wrote a simple RSS package in 2003. I still get support emails about it. I don't even remember how the code works.
I wrote some introductory Python code 10+ years ago, for one of my classes. I put it online. I now get random college students emailing me personally to ask for help doing their homework.
I distribute some of my software for free. I've since had people demand (yes, demand) essentially hours of free support time to debug their hardware configuration for them because they don't know enough to do it themselves.
When do I get to decide what is "better" for me, rather than do things which are "better" for others?
I wrote some introductory Python code 10+ years ago, for one of my classes. I put it online. I now get random college students emailing me personally to ask for help doing their homework.
I distribute some of my software for free. I've since had people demand (yes, demand) essentially hours of free support time to debug their hardware configuration for them because they don't know enough to do it themselves.
When do I get to decide what is "better" for me, rather than do things which are "better" for others?
When I was in college (15 years ago) I did a course on ancient Hellenistic religious groups. Part of that was to either write a 20-page term paper (on a topic assigned by the professor), or produce a smaller set of Web pages on the topic.
Being lazy, I spent a weekend teaching myself HTML, and did the Web option. It was linked from the course page on the college's site.
Ten years later I was still getting random emails from people who saw it, noted the .edu domain, and assumed I was an academic expert on Hermetic cults. Thankfully, a reorganization of the college's site and course pages seems to have killed it off for good.
Being lazy, I spent a weekend teaching myself HTML, and did the Web option. It was linked from the course page on the college's site.
Ten years later I was still getting random emails from people who saw it, noted the .edu domain, and assumed I was an academic expert on Hermetic cults. Thankfully, a reorganization of the college's site and course pages seems to have killed it off for good.
Do you (or archive.org) has that stuff archived? This sounds to be a cool thing. I'd like to read it if possible. (And I promise I won't mistake you for an academic expert ;) )
Thats equivalent to saying "if enough people have strong feelings about how you should spend your free time, you should listen to them". Would you really support that in any context that didn't involve "open source"?
Depends on how you interpret putting code online, and how it is done. If I started/declared a running club, there maybe expectations on how I spend my time - I initiated the expectation.
For a project owner to need to write a page about these common questions, why would you not instead implement these common requests?
The whole document is about answering each of those common questions individually.
The whole document is about answering each of those common questions individually.
If it gets to the point where someone says "can you implement X, Y, and Z for me, it would make my life much better" isn't it better to just implement it and make everyone happier rather than write a web page just telling them essentially to get out?
Hey, can you rewrite your code in Visual Basic/Objective C? It would make my life so much better to be able to support Windows 95/the iPad.
Hey, can you rewrite your documentation in Swedish? It would make my life so much better?
Hey, can you implement I/O using size in English units instead of metric? It would make my life much better.
Hey, can you add a GUI for me? It would make my life much better than using the command-line.
Hey, can you rewrite your documentation in Swedish? It would make my life so much better?
Hey, can you implement I/O using size in English units instead of metric? It would make my life much better.
Hey, can you add a GUI for me? It would make my life much better than using the command-line.
Come on, you know that is an absolute mischaracterization of what I am saying.
If those where the problems in this document, I would agree. However that is not the case.
If those where the problems in this document, I would agree. However that is not the case.
Okay, "Can you rewrite the documentation in Markdown instead of HTML? That would be so much better for me."
"Can you switch from Atlassian to the Github issue tracker? That would be so much better for me.
"Can you switch from a custom CI solution to Travis? That would be so much better for me."
Then two years later someone comes along and says:
"Can you rewrite the documentation in reStructuredText instead of Markdown? That would be so much better for me."
"Can you switch from git to mercurial? That would be so much better for me."
And so on.
When does the madness stop?
"Can you switch from Atlassian to the Github issue tracker? That would be so much better for me.
"Can you switch from a custom CI solution to Travis? That would be so much better for me."
Then two years later someone comes along and says:
"Can you rewrite the documentation in reStructuredText instead of Markdown? That would be so much better for me."
"Can you switch from git to mercurial? That would be so much better for me."
And so on.
When does the madness stop?
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11054268.
But in the end, I am not talking about the devops around the application. The only opinion that really matters there is the one coming from the project owner.
Your obvious attempt straw-man is nothing but opaque.
What I am attempting to discuss are features for the application that the owner refuses to implement because "get out".
Had Linus said that to the first person who emailed him about building an init daemon, I don't think many people would have paid much attention to Linux.
But in the end, I am not talking about the devops around the application. The only opinion that really matters there is the one coming from the project owner.
Your obvious attempt straw-man is nothing but opaque.
What I am attempting to discuss are features for the application that the owner refuses to implement because "get out".
Had Linus said that to the first person who emailed him about building an init daemon, I don't think many people would have paid much attention to Linux.
You say "see ...", but I've already commented on that comment.
Your analogy with Torvalds isn't that relevant. Building an init daemon didn't conflict with the long-term goals, and the advantages are reasonably clear.
Consider the FOQ "Why is Taskwarrior written in C++ and not something hackable".
We can construct a similar question to pose to Torvalds - "Why is git written in C and not a more modern language like C++?"
We know what Torvalds thinks of C++ ("C++ is a horrible language") and of that proposal.
If he ignored or blew off the first email to suggest rewriting git in C++ then we know exactly where git would be.
This demonstrates that your argument concerning "can you implement X, Y, and Z for me, it would make my life much better" has little predictive or even explanatory power.
Your analogy with Torvalds isn't that relevant. Building an init daemon didn't conflict with the long-term goals, and the advantages are reasonably clear.
Consider the FOQ "Why is Taskwarrior written in C++ and not something hackable".
We can construct a similar question to pose to Torvalds - "Why is git written in C and not a more modern language like C++?"
We know what Torvalds thinks of C++ ("C++ is a horrible language") and of that proposal.
If he ignored or blew off the first email to suggest rewriting git in C++ then we know exactly where git would be.
This demonstrates that your argument concerning "can you implement X, Y, and Z for me, it would make my life much better" has little predictive or even explanatory power.
I will again re-quote myself.
"But in the end, I am not talking about the devops around the application. The only opinion that really matters there is the one coming from the project owner. Your obvious attempt straw-man is nothing but opaque."
I am simply addressing the section about the feature requests.
You on the other hand are painting my argument as something it is not about.
Edit: By features I mean anything under "Why Didn't You Implement My Favorite Feature?"
My comments are solely on that section.
"But in the end, I am not talking about the devops around the application. The only opinion that really matters there is the one coming from the project owner. Your obvious attempt straw-man is nothing but opaque."
I am simply addressing the section about the feature requests.
You on the other hand are painting my argument as something it is not about.
Edit: By features I mean anything under "Why Didn't You Implement My Favorite Feature?"
My comments are solely on that section.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11054501 and note that none of the reasoning on that page includes "so we can write this web page".
>Q: Would you guys consider moving off Google groups to a real mailing list?
>Sure if there was a good reason.
I haven't checked their group specifically, but every other Google Group I've tried to join without using my gmail account simply refused to let me join. People seem to insist that it's possible, but every time I've tried it's put me in an endless "verify your email" loop.
>Sure if there was a good reason.
I haven't checked their group specifically, but every other Google Group I've tried to join without using my gmail account simply refused to let me join. People seem to insist that it's possible, but every time I've tried it's put me in an endless "verify your email" loop.
I don't get who this page is for. Those who ask "obnoxious questions" usually don't read FAQs or FOQs so they'll keep asking them anyway.
However, I could see how this kind of document could deter people who actually want to contribute, since they might not want to deal with the condescending tone of the owners.
However, I could see how this kind of document could deter people who actually want to contribute, since they might not want to deal with the condescending tone of the owners.
I have to admit, my reaction to the repeated "Why do you care about our infrastructure?" is "I don't, or about your project."
That's part of the nature of following a random HN link, of course, but after reading that, I'm certainly not inclined to care more about this project I've never heard of. And I say this being completely aware of annoying feature requests.
That's part of the nature of following a random HN link, of course, but after reading that, I'm certainly not inclined to care more about this project I've never heard of. And I say this being completely aware of annoying feature requests.
Sounds like whining when I read it out loud
curious what made you read it out loud? (this isn't a pointed question, your critique applies without the article being read out loud.)
You missed one: "Why don't you rewrite your whole project in Scala now now now?"
I totally understand where this is coming from. Any software project of non-trivial size has a certain kind of inertia. The code is written a certain way, the infrastructure works a certain way, the processes and culture are a certain way, because they have evolved over time and often at great cost. Changing them is not easy, and not to be undertaken lightly. That doesn't mean e.g. that moving to GitHub is absolutely verboten, but the gain in convenience for (some) users might be offset by a total stoppage of development during the transition. Then there's likely to be a general slowdown for a while as new secondary issues are found and addressed, as current developers make mistakes with the new processes, etc. If the same users who demand that change are also demanding that their favorite features be implemented (by someone else) right away, they're putting the developers in an impossible situation. Nobody appreciates that. There always seem to be some users with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, and that can utterly ruin a project for everyone including the other users.
That said, I have to take serious issue with one point.
> We write software. We don't make packages. Talk to your package maintainer.
Wrong. I have lots of friends who are active package maintainers. Theirs is often a thankless job, especially now that so many people seem to think the whole idea of packages is outdated now that we have containers instead (BTW they're wrong). Developers don't have to become experts in every packaging system or its rules, but they can't shirk all responsibility for packaging either. They need to work with package maintainers, fixing (and not re-creating) problems that make packaging difficult. Anyone who can't do that, or isn't willing to, can't claim to have "learned all they can" about software delivery, as I see in the first paragraph of the other Taskwarrior article posted today. Packaging is an essential part of the process.
That said, I have to take serious issue with one point.
> We write software. We don't make packages. Talk to your package maintainer.
Wrong. I have lots of friends who are active package maintainers. Theirs is often a thankless job, especially now that so many people seem to think the whole idea of packages is outdated now that we have containers instead (BTW they're wrong). Developers don't have to become experts in every packaging system or its rules, but they can't shirk all responsibility for packaging either. They need to work with package maintainers, fixing (and not re-creating) problems that make packaging difficult. Anyone who can't do that, or isn't willing to, can't claim to have "learned all they can" about software delivery, as I see in the first paragraph of the other Taskwarrior article posted today. Packaging is an essential part of the process.
The scenario here is "The <Operating System> package is out of date, why have you not refreshed it yet."
What should the Taskwarrior developers do to fix that?
You suggest the failure is due to 'problems that make packaging difficult'. But perhaps it's the lack of an active package maintainer?
What should the Taskwarrior developers do to fix that?
You suggest the failure is due to 'problems that make packaging difficult'. But perhaps it's the lack of an active package maintainer?
Perhaps. Automatically putting the onus on the developer would be wrong, but so is automatically putting the onus on the packager. It's a collaborative process. Blaming the packager represents exactly the same sense of entitlement that the author complains about among users demanding features. Packagers are often volunteers too, doing what they do in their spare time. Usually they're glad to push out a package for a developer who is doing their best to facilitate the process themselves, but blindly passing the buck doesn't fit that description.
I believe I understand your point.
However, "What should the Taskwarrior developers do to fix that?"
Let's suppose I have a package, which I update quarterly, and I have a public announcements list, set up for people to be notified about new releases, and I answer support emails.
Someone sends me an email saying the version they get through Fink is a year out of date.
What is my responsibility as a developer? Do I contact the Fink maintainer myself? Or is it more effective for a user to ask for help?
I can totally understand the argument that I should track down these people and ask them to update the package.
But I can also understand the argument that I've set up an announcement list, and provide support, so what more do maintainers need?
Yes, the personal touch helps, and maintainers get little feedback or support. But at this point it isn't really "packaging" but "interfacing with third-party distributors".
You made the comment 'Anyone who can't do that, or isn't willing to, can't claim to have "learned all they can" about software delivery,'.
Going back to my hypothetical, if all of the other package distributors are up to date (RedHat, Anaconda, Homebrew, ...) and only Fink is not, how does the failure with Fink show that I haven't learned all I can about software delivery?
Really, however, we don't know the history of why that comment is there. It could be that they tried several times to update their package until finally giving up. If that were true, then they "learned" it was best to let the package users demand updates, not the suppliers.
However, "What should the Taskwarrior developers do to fix that?"
Let's suppose I have a package, which I update quarterly, and I have a public announcements list, set up for people to be notified about new releases, and I answer support emails.
Someone sends me an email saying the version they get through Fink is a year out of date.
What is my responsibility as a developer? Do I contact the Fink maintainer myself? Or is it more effective for a user to ask for help?
I can totally understand the argument that I should track down these people and ask them to update the package.
But I can also understand the argument that I've set up an announcement list, and provide support, so what more do maintainers need?
Yes, the personal touch helps, and maintainers get little feedback or support. But at this point it isn't really "packaging" but "interfacing with third-party distributors".
You made the comment 'Anyone who can't do that, or isn't willing to, can't claim to have "learned all they can" about software delivery,'.
Going back to my hypothetical, if all of the other package distributors are up to date (RedHat, Anaconda, Homebrew, ...) and only Fink is not, how does the failure with Fink show that I haven't learned all I can about software delivery?
Really, however, we don't know the history of why that comment is there. It could be that they tried several times to update their package until finally giving up. If that were true, then they "learned" it was best to let the package users demand updates, not the suppliers.
> I can totally understand the argument that I should track down these people and ask them to update the package.
You shouldn't even need to track them down. If it's a packaging and distribution channel you've used before, you should already be in communication with the package maintainer. Yes, it's possible that there could be a problem with a package you didn't know existed, but such cases are very much the exception. Even then, the right thing to do would probably be to suggest a better-supported alternative and/or introduce yourself to the people maintaining that package.
> It could be that they tried several times to update their package
It could be. We're giving rather a lot of benefit of the doubt to the developers, aren't we? Why not give some to the packagers? They have their own standards they need to maintain, for the sake of their users. As often as not, packaging delays are the result of developers just throwing stuff over the wall for someone else to fix up. We need to proactively fight against that tendency.
> they "learned" it was best to let the package users demand updates, not the suppliers.
Again, it's not either/or. Both developers and packagers need to be part of that conversation. Neither gets to walk away and say it's somebody else's problem. As always in open source, collaboration is critical.
You shouldn't even need to track them down. If it's a packaging and distribution channel you've used before, you should already be in communication with the package maintainer. Yes, it's possible that there could be a problem with a package you didn't know existed, but such cases are very much the exception. Even then, the right thing to do would probably be to suggest a better-supported alternative and/or introduce yourself to the people maintaining that package.
> It could be that they tried several times to update their package
It could be. We're giving rather a lot of benefit of the doubt to the developers, aren't we? Why not give some to the packagers? They have their own standards they need to maintain, for the sake of their users. As often as not, packaging delays are the result of developers just throwing stuff over the wall for someone else to fix up. We need to proactively fight against that tendency.
> they "learned" it was best to let the package users demand updates, not the suppliers.
Again, it's not either/or. Both developers and packagers need to be part of that conversation. Neither gets to walk away and say it's somebody else's problem. As always in open source, collaboration is critical.
> Yes, it's possible that there could be a problem with a package you didn't know existed
My limited experience may well be the exception, but I'll bring it up anyway. I wrote an RSS module in 2003. Someone else later added it to PyPI, the Python indexer. It has also been distributed by multiple packaging systems. I had no clue. No packager has ever said anything about it to me.
Looking now, it's distributed by Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, and more. It's also used in PyMediaRSS2Gen, dilbert-rss, and loads more packages.
It took me two days to write that package, and another few days of maintenance in the 12 years. Until now I believed this hand-off mechanism, mediated by PyPI, was the way to go. Because it would take me much longer to interact with all of those distributions than to write the code in the first place!
> Why not give some [doubt] to the packagers?
Because the statement you made earlier, "They need to work with package maintainers, fixing (and not re-creating) problems that make packaging difficult. Anyone who can't do that, or isn't willing to, can't claim to have "learned all they can" about software delivery, as I see in the first paragraph of the other Taskwarrior article posted today." gave no doubt to the developers.
My limited experience may well be the exception, but I'll bring it up anyway. I wrote an RSS module in 2003. Someone else later added it to PyPI, the Python indexer. It has also been distributed by multiple packaging systems. I had no clue. No packager has ever said anything about it to me.
Looking now, it's distributed by Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, and more. It's also used in PyMediaRSS2Gen, dilbert-rss, and loads more packages.
It took me two days to write that package, and another few days of maintenance in the 12 years. Until now I believed this hand-off mechanism, mediated by PyPI, was the way to go. Because it would take me much longer to interact with all of those distributions than to write the code in the first place!
> Why not give some [doubt] to the packagers?
Because the statement you made earlier, "They need to work with package maintainers, fixing (and not re-creating) problems that make packaging difficult. Anyone who can't do that, or isn't willing to, can't claim to have "learned all they can" about software delivery, as I see in the first paragraph of the other Taskwarrior article posted today." gave no doubt to the developers.
The condescension on this page is staggering.
Cool, I'll continue not using and not contributing to this project I've never heard of until just now.
Presumably because it affects how difficult it would be to contribute to the project? This sort of "us v them" outlook seems to be at odds with the nature of open source.
I know a few Haskell projects moved from Darcs to Git recently. While it's sad because Darcs is awesome and underused, lowering the barrier to contribute is probably a net good. Questions about infrastructure like this are by no means unreasonable.