There’s a huge problem with OSS projects being toxic to newcomers, already existing maintainers get annoyed when they have to explain the peculiarities of their codebase they believe should be simple to understand (it’s not).
I’ve personally stayed away from contributing in the meantime because I have more often than not “asked the wrong question” or have had genuine ones responded with “read the code” or “rtfm”. I understand that some stuff is definitely simple to grasp just by looking at it, but I wouldn’t be asking if I did, right?
The projects that will survive will have good communities and good CoC’s, there’s definitely outliers in that, the biggest being the Linux Kernel itself, though the problems have been reduced quite a bit in recent years.
Nah, it’s not that bad. I’ve contributed to free software for almost 20 years now and it’s not remotely that bad. I get thanked a lot. Maintainers take time to review my ideas and incorporate them so I can use their software how I like. I’ve learned a lot myself and I get to use all that stuff. So I gained a lot and generally it’s been nice interactions.
Occasionally there is some drama. And I’d say there are some computer nerds with behavioral pecularities. It’s rare but it happens. I’d say we’re all just humans. I’m okay with that, and I’ve only had that happen to me in like 1 out of 100 interactions or less. I get annoyed by people way more frequently in my every-day life, so I’d say on average the free software world is a nicer place.
Curious what you contribute to such that you have not had a bad experience, since I see people talk of bad experiences with the people in FOSS on every thread like this, and since you were downvoted for sharing your personal experience which, as far as I can tell, seems to be on-topic and civil with no hint of rudeness or “your bad experience definitely never happened/was your own fault”.
Speaking as someone who also has no/few bad experiences with certain situations where the majority’s experience (at least that I have seen online) is having a lot of negative encounters, so I believe you. I ask because maybe people who want to contribute to FOSS can try contributing to the (type of) things you do too ;)
I have no idea what you contribute to but thank you for your work!
There’s a huge problem with OSS projects being toxic to newcomers, already existing maintainers get annoyed when they have to explain the peculiarities of their codebase they believe should be simple to understand (it’s not). I’ve personally stayed away from contributing in the meantime because I have more often than not “asked the wrong question” or have had genuine ones responded with “read the code” or “rtfm”. I understand that some stuff is definitely simple to grasp just by looking at it, but I wouldn’t be asking if I did, right? The projects that will survive will have good communities and good CoC’s, there’s definitely outliers in that, the biggest being the Linux Kernel itself, though the problems have been reduced quite a bit in recent years.
Nah, it’s not that bad. I’ve contributed to free software for almost 20 years now and it’s not remotely that bad. I get thanked a lot. Maintainers take time to review my ideas and incorporate them so I can use their software how I like. I’ve learned a lot myself and I get to use all that stuff. So I gained a lot and generally it’s been nice interactions.
Occasionally there is some drama. And I’d say there are some computer nerds with behavioral pecularities. It’s rare but it happens. I’d say we’re all just humans. I’m okay with that, and I’ve only had that happen to me in like 1 out of 100 interactions or less. I get annoyed by people way more frequently in my every-day life, so I’d say on average the free software world is a nicer place.
Curious what you contribute to such that you have not had a bad experience, since I see people talk of bad experiences with the people in FOSS on every thread like this, and since you were downvoted for sharing your personal experience which, as far as I can tell, seems to be on-topic and civil with no hint of rudeness or “your bad experience definitely never happened/was your own fault”.
Speaking as someone who also has no/few bad experiences with certain situations where the majority’s experience (at least that I have seen online) is having a lot of negative encounters, so I believe you. I ask because maybe people who want to contribute to FOSS can try contributing to the (type of) things you do too ;)
I have no idea what you contribute to but thank you for your work!