Reasons Why You Don't Contribute To Open-Source Software

[MostAwesomeDude]

I notice two things in this thread.

"Patches welcome" is our way of saying, "Look, none of the main developers are really interested in adding this feature. We've discussed it, and come to a general consensus that this feature would either be unused, inefficient, a legal liability, harmful to stability, or a combination of the above. So we're not going to implement it. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, has both the coding skills and the desire to make it happen, but we're not really going to help. Sorry." (And we usually re-iterate this several times, too.)

Code is code is code. If you don't like the code style, just relax and live with it. (I prefer 1TBS over GNU, but I know how to do both. Also, death to tabs.) If you don't understand the code, take it in chunks and re-document it. If nobody knows where the code came from, annotate it in source control, track down the original author, and ask him questions. A little bit of vigilance and diligence is required to work on coding projects of this size, open- or closed-source.

[Jimmy]

I used to, here is why I don't anymore

Blind hate is rampant in the FLOSS world. It is quite a put off when people take the extreme position without really understanding why they should take it and how it SHOULD effect many other decisions. Often people pick up on the notion that they should hate something and don't recognize that the arguments for such an extreme should also apply to other things that they don't hate at all.

It comes down to being in a state of ignorance, holding double standards, or (and quite probably) both. I can respect people for making a stand only in the absence of these two things. Very often the Mono hate club is a prefect example of it.

The same Mono hating flamers often don't have a problem with Wine (other than it might not work right--a statement which also implies that they don't have a problem trying it out), Samba, NTFS support, Exchange integration, win32codec packages, etc.

People like to praise AMD for taking the open road and apply hate to Nvidia for not doing so. Yet the same haters will turn around and point to AMD's closed binary as a high performance solution. From the same mouths that spread the Nvidia hate (because it's closed) you'll hear a complaint that Adobe Flash is buggy so they use Opera to keep it in check. Why is one closed product hated for being closed, but others are apparently welcome enough to try or use on a regular basis?

Bandwagon hate is definitely a barrier in the Linux world. I'm sure lots of people hate me for calling them out on it too, but people should put down the torches and pitch forks unless they are genuinely on board with the cause. If you hate Mono, you should hate a lot of other widely accepted technologies that realistically are in the same boat. You shouldn't hate Nvidia for being closed source and play closed games on your closed ATI blob at the same time.

I'm sorry if this seems like an off topic rant, but paranoia, hate, and bandwagons are often a barrier for many many things in and around the FLOSS camp. Its absolutely relevant when you ask why no one wants to help out.

[Remco]

Blind hate is rampant in the FLOSS world. It is quite a put off when people take the extreme position without really understanding why they should take it and how it SHOULD effect many other decisions. Often people pick up on the notion that they should hate something and don't recognize that the arguments for such an extreme should also apply to other things that they don't hate at all.

It comes down to being in a state of ignorance, holding double standards, or (and quite probably) both. I can respect people for making a stand only in the absence of these two things. Very often the Mono hate club is a prefect example of it.

The same Mono hating flamers often don't have a problem with Wine (other than it might not work right--a statement which also implies that they don't have a problem trying it out), Samba, NTFS support, Exchange integration, win32codec packages, etc.

I don't use Mono-based Linux applications, I don't use Samba for Linux-Linux file sharing, I don't use NTFS on my disks, I don't use Exchange, I don't use win32codecs (completely useless anyway).

I do use Mono, Wine, Samba, NTFS for Windows compatibility. So the server serves me SSH, and my dad Samba. My Wine installation is used for Windows games, and not for Linux applications. Mono is installed in Wine for the same purpose. One USB stick has NTFS to share data with friends. That's what I like about these projects. What I hate about these projects, is that some developers tend to use this MS technology in favor of "our" own stuff. As if the free software community can't design a nice language.

One may call me a hater, but I never harassed anyone. I just choose not to use software that I don't agree with. If ethics didn't matter to me, I could just as well use Windows. I didn't exactly switch because free software worked better.

People like to praise AMD for taking the open road and apply hate to Nvidia for not doing so. Yet the same haters will turn around and point to AMD's closed binary as a high performance solution. From the same mouths that spread the Nvidia hate (because it's closed) you'll hear a complaint that Adobe Flash is buggy so they use Opera to keep it in check. Why is one closed product hated for being closed, but others are apparently welcome enough to try or use on a regular basis?

Maybe they aren't the same people?

[RealNC]

But Gnu Fortran takes "-openmp" as a directive to generate an output file penmp. Ignoring the lack of whitespace. I'm told "that's the way the GNU toolkit works, and that's the way it should be."

That whitespace should be significant has been recognized in the general compiler community for at least forty years; the GNU tookit kind of idiotic arrogance has even avoidable in Fortran for twenty years.

I'm an unhappy camper.

And GNU compilers will be second-class citizens for the packages I maintain until this kind of idiocy is fixed.

You're being idiotic yourself here. All you have to do is use another option for GCC instead of crying like a baby. I may sound harsh, but you should just listen to yourself. You're not even telling the whole story and their arguments and perfectly valid reasons of why it's not a good idea to change this. You're just pointing at them and saying "no you!"

Seriously, lighten up. The GNU standards are made for the GNU OS. And Gnu's NOT Unix.

[fungos]

I doesn't contribute (anymore for a while) to open source because my last try was as receptive as a shark waiting it food. FOSS developers tend to be harsh and the best, masters and almighty. They do not understand that newbies trying to help doesn't need to know everything and are still learning. Sorry, but the total lack of politeness for me is the major factor to be away from helping FOSS projects from others. Beside that, I have my own FOSS project (http://www.seedframework.org), and I try to do my best with my (few) collaborators as I'm still learning from it.

[ethana2]

Launchpad doesn't have bounties and the ubuntu software center doesn't have a 'donate' button.

I don't mind contributing, I just refuse to have to figure anything out in order to do it.

[hubick]

I do contribute to a variety of Java based projects (and run my own), but can't bring myself to go back to C at this point. This sadly keeps me out of a lot of GNU/Linux based things. I really think to have any chance, the Linux desktop should enable application development using "Web" technologies within a browser based engine/architecture.

From reading blogs, I also have an impression of GCC as being rather legacy encumbered, and that Clang/LLVM is likely the future. I would be curious to know what most GCC dev's think of their own long term prospects in this regard, and if they think the LLVM architecture should eventually supplant GCC (or why not, and what the LLVM devs think of those reasons).

[wrtcedar]

I've contributed in the past, in various ways, and had very mixed experiences. Too many of them have involved arrogant developers and/or abusive users. There are some sterling exceptions, but enough of various communities are unfriendly that it ends up being another barrier to entry for me. It's a particular barrier to first time entry to a project. Will it be one of those or not? Perhaps I'll pick up on contributing again, but it's easy and attractive to find other things to do as an alternative to confronting some of the personalities (on both sides of the code). I know there are lots of great people out there, but it doesn't take many to poison an experience.

The rate of change that people mention is problem as well. I do this as a hobby now, not a job, and I'm pretty casual about it. That doesn't seem be a good match to many projects - particularly with the 6 month cycles that are so popular these days.

[Craig73]

"Patches welcome" is our way of saying, "Look, none of the main developers are really interested in adding this feature. We've discussed it, and come to a general consensus that this feature would either be unused, inefficient, a legal liability, harmful to stability, or a combination of the above. So we're not going to implement it. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, has both the coding skills and the desire to make it happen, but we're not really going to help. Sorry." (And we usually re-iterate this several times, too.)

Interesting... so really it sounds in part like a power struggle for those who might have excellent user interaction design skills, or interesting new ideas for the product with the core developers?

You might have valid concerns, or perhaps a completely different perspective than the contributing non-developer. A more useful response is a summary of why you (or the group of developers) have come to this conclusion so that an intelligent dialog could ensue, if necessarily. Is open source, at least to some level, not a collaborative community?

[BlackStar]

I don't contribute to open source, because it destroys my ability to feed my family. In fact, OSS (and especially GNU) are unethical. Their only goal is to put honest, hard working, god-fearing developers out of their jobs. Permanently.

Just kidding.

Is this topic about GCC or OSS in general? GCC is one of the most important projects in the OSS world. It's also one of the least rewarding to contribute to (very steep cost for entry, old gargantuan codebase, high inertia for new features/modifications).

Other projects tend to be much nicer to work with, either indirectly (bug reports, testing, documentation) or directly (code!) In my experience, projects written in higher-level languages (Python, C#, ...) tend to have more robust codebases, better documentation and be more receptive to change, so new developers might be inclined to check those out first.