While this may not be the case in this situation, recently I've noticed that people are becoming extreme wimps..
People, especially younger generation can't stand being treated harshly. You can't criticize them, and every response must be nice, politically correct and helpful.
Sometimes you just have to let it go, or simply fight back. And when you do fight back, be prepared because it's unlikely that you will win every time.. Such is life. Grow a pair.
When I was younger it was normal for kids to fight in school. Nobody really cared if you got your ass kicked once in a while. And often times you kicked some ass. This helped people realize that not everyone in their life will be nice and helpful, and that sometimes you need to have a thick skin and ignore what people are saying. Now it seems kids, when they get laugh at or in some one offended, if they can't get help from the adult they just grab a gun or a knife and start killing people because they simply never had a chance to learn how to deal with competition.
If I've written and published a new algorithm, and my submission to the open-source community is met with "It sucks, go read up on our guidelines"* , I'm not inclined to spend my free time on a resubmission.
It seems childishly wasteful to turn away potential contributors because you simply feel you have the right to be an asshole to people. Personally, if you want to treat me harshly for my work, I expect some good money.
* Paraphrased reaction to software a classmate sent in after completing her thesis
I agree--I once used a library and noticed that it was missing some functionality. The mailing list had a number of people requesting this functionality. I found an older piece of code with the functionality and updated it to the language of the library. I got license permissions from all the original authors. I submitted it and the maintainers raised some questions about code quality--but one of the maintainers thought there was a workaround and didn't really want to add it. I acted on the code quality issues and the code just sat around and was never accepted and the mailing list still (years later) has people asking for the functionality, but I'm not going to spend more time on it when it seems that outside contributions are not welcome. This was after climbing the barriers to entry of trying to figure out the layout of the project, procedures for submission, etc.
In contrast, there was another project where my student and I noticed a bug in a piece of software and patched it. It was quickly accepted and we moved on. I would be happy to contribute to that project again.
It's all about barriers to entry. If a project wants outside contributors, those barriers need to be low. Of course, the project creators/maintainers are also doing this in their free time, so have the right to do what they want, but they should expect less community contributions if they make those barriers high...
"People, especially younger generation can't stand being treated harshly. You can't criticize them, and every response must be nice, politically correct and helpful."
Comments
While this may not be the case in this situation, recently I've noticed that people are becoming extreme wimps..
People, especially younger generation can't stand being treated harshly. You can't criticize them, and every response must be nice, politically correct and helpful.
Sometimes you just have to let it go, or simply fight back. And when you do fight back, be prepared because it's unlikely that you will win every time.. Such is life. Grow a pair.
When I was younger it was normal for kids to fight in school. Nobody really cared if you got your ass kicked once in a while. And often times you kicked some ass. This helped people realize that not everyone in their life will be nice and helpful, and that sometimes you need to have a thick skin and ignore what people are saying. Now it seems kids, when they get laugh at or in some one offended, if they can't get help from the adult they just grab a gun or a knife and start killing people because they simply never had a chance to learn how to deal with competition.
If I've written and published a new algorithm, and my submission to the open-source community is met with "It sucks, go read up on our guidelines"* , I'm not inclined to spend my free time on a resubmission.
It seems childishly wasteful to turn away potential contributors because you simply feel you have the right to be an asshole to people. Personally, if you want to treat me harshly for my work, I expect some good money.
* Paraphrased reaction to software a classmate sent in after completing her thesis
I agree--I once used a library and noticed that it was missing some functionality. The mailing list had a number of people requesting this functionality. I found an older piece of code with the functionality and updated it to the language of the library. I got license permissions from all the original authors. I submitted it and the maintainers raised some questions about code quality--but one of the maintainers thought there was a workaround and didn't really want to add it. I acted on the code quality issues and the code just sat around and was never accepted and the mailing list still (years later) has people asking for the functionality, but I'm not going to spend more time on it when it seems that outside contributions are not welcome. This was after climbing the barriers to entry of trying to figure out the layout of the project, procedures for submission, etc.
In contrast, there was another project where my student and I noticed a bug in a piece of software and patched it. It was quickly accepted and we moved on. I would be happy to contribute to that project again.
It's all about barriers to entry. If a project wants outside contributors, those barriers need to be low. Of course, the project creators/maintainers are also doing this in their free time, so have the right to do what they want, but they should expect less community contributions if they make those barriers high...
"People, especially younger generation can't stand being treated harshly. You can't criticize them, and every response must be nice, politically correct and helpful."
Citation?
A raw assertion is not helpful.