The Motivation
After contributing to several open source projects, I realized some of them have serious issues. Many maintainers don't p...
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This was a very long read and I admit I did not read it all. I read a lot of it though, the parts about patterns were a delight.
I make tonnes of shit, but nobody knows about it, so I don't have to deal with issues/PRs/community and I typically disable those features on my projects.
But, I release under the Unlicense and am consequently very unbothered. I suppose that might make me and my projects toxic, idk. Maybe. I am a little territorial. I'm not sure how I would feel if someone were to PR one of my things. But, being licensed (as it were) as they are, anybody is free to take it and do what they want; my level of fucks could not be lower. π
That said, I'm not generally into self-promotion, but I see that you're doing pipeline and concurrency things, and thought maybe you might want to peek at one of my projects. I'm right now in the process of evaluating how I'm going to make it work in browsers, but server-side works great (for me). Take a peek or not at Actioneer.
Great article on solving friction in the community. π€
Thanks for the thorough comment! I really appreciate you taking the time. Your Unlicense approach is a valid way to handle it , different philosophy . I just took a glance to
Actioneer. This project looks like some cool stuff! π₯ I will definitely dive deeper into the pipeline/concurrency implementation. Thanks for sharing your project π.Ha! At least you get reads. I have two articles and a total of checks again 23 combined. π
I will take a look at your articles, and Iβm sure theyβre great! Sometimes it just takes time for content to get discovered. Keep writingπ
Thank you for the write up. Interesting thoughts. The project I am working on is not your fish. That's fine. I just hope I do not have to argue now with people that think my project is now not only dead but toxic too.. π that would be very annoying.
I would like to add some thoughts, I hope they add some value.
An high activity project is that good or bad?
I am not sure if a project where you have around 400 concurrent discussions, with closer times under 2days is something you easily can contribute too. It might pressure you into a higher commit to the project. Or am I wrong?
I wonder how you want to measure project complexity. Some projects are complex by nature, through historical aspects or other reason and not simply accessable. I miss there a category in your assent.
Maybe also a difficulty rating is something advisable?
What do you assume is happening if new contributors do not stick around? That's not clear to me.
Have you thought about multi repository projects?
How do you measure project structures? I mean you have some points there like bots , static or human projects. Some have mentoring programs, or other gate keepers. Others might require you have to bring the motivation and they provide help if you ask the "right" question.
(With right I mean a question that someone can answer)
What I really like is the plan to go for significant commits. I had this (stupid, toxic) discussion on the question why I commit to a project the other one has much more commits and my had almost none. And the amount of commits just say nothing. And I like the other roadmap points, keep it flowing. π
I think the approach really could improve to benchmark attractiveness to projects. I think it could be a tool to give insights where to take measurements.
Thanks for the article, and I will keep an eye on your work. Maybe I find the time to play around with your idea. At least I like it.
Thanks for the thoughtful commentπ. On high activity, you're right. 400 discussions with 2 day closes might actually feel overwhelming rather than healthy. I didn't think about that pressure side.That is the thing I need to consider again. On complexity, I don't have a good way to measure it yet. File count and folder depth don't capture history or domain knowledge. A difficulty rating makes sense though, something like beginner friendly or requires domain expertise.
On contributors leaving, I was assuming it's bad but it is normal that it is not clear to you, sometimes it's just the nature of the project. People can contribute once and go. But overall, it gives an idea whether people keep contributing or leave after their first PR. On multi repo and mentoring structures, I haven't tackled these yet. Some projects have mentorship programs, others expect you to figure things out. it might be hard to detect but worth surfacing. This is a gap I need to fill. On significant commits, I am glad that you likedπ. I had similar discussions before. Commit count means nothing. Quality is more important than quantity.
These are exactly the gaps I need help seeing. My idea started messy and feedback like this helps me a lot make it full-formed.
I'm gonna test your tool with your tool
πππ
ππ»ππ»ππ»
Thanks,π.
I am going to pΔ±ttΔ±k UI contribution for that project π
We loved your post so we shared it on social.
Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much for sharing! Means a lot to have the DEV Community's support. The feedback and discussions from the community have been incredibly valuable in shaping the direction of this project.π
If your idea of contributing to a project is
I'd say the problem are not the maintainers that don't "help you", you are the problem.
Leaving this up for transparency, but I need to address this.
Andrea, you've completely misinterpreted my post. Check my GitHub contributions and see how I actually engage with open source projects before making assumptions. The issue isn't about collecting commits for show - it's about new contributors wasting time on unresponsive or hostile projects. That's a real problem many developers face. Constructive criticism? Always welcome. Nitpicking and twisting my words? That's not helpful and goes against what open source is about. Feel free to read the actual blog post or check out the project if you want to understand what I built and why.
I thought the exact same thing as Andrea when I read what you wrote. They're not making assumptions, and no one is nitpicking or "twisting your words". If English isn't your first language, perhaps it just isn't obvious how it comes across.
Glancing at your other posts, I see you're just a student, which is great. I'm glad you're enthusiastic about open source. But maybe don't go around referring to other projects as "Toxic" when you're just getting started yourself, or lecturing others about "what open source is about".
It does seem like the whole point of your current project is to maximize the chances of getting your PR accepted in a project. That is most definitely not what open source is about. You should contribute because you genuinely find the software interesting and useful yourself, and plan to stick around and maintain your contributions. Eventually, you might even get to assist with the boring chores like triaging bug reports and updating dependencies! Good luck, and keep contributing to open source!
This one does not even require transparency when the pattern is this obvious. Accounts created Dec 29 and Dec 30, both commenting? Pattern recognized. Good luck to you guys π«‘
I didn't expect to see Toxic and Open Source in the same sentence. Is this a ragebait? Didn't read the article. Title seems ragebait.
Thanks for asking, I get why the title might seem strong, but the article is actually pretty balanced. I cover both contributor and maintainer perspectives - especially in the "Pivot" section where I talk about maintainer burnout and challenges. Give it a read if you're interested, I think you'll see it's not ragebait but addressing a real problem many people face. Hope you enjoy it