[swozey]

I can't even imagine the stress from public comments that comes from working on an open source operating system.

I don't use Mint but I'm hugely sympathetic to the devs who have to deal with the backlash from, of all things, a logo and website design change that they likely had little to no involvement with.

[TheCondor]

Opensource anything...

It’s not completely thankless, but the thanks seem to be mostly direct and private and then you face public ridicule for errors, bugs, missteps or just when people have different aesthetics or taste and don’t like your project. There are so many “behind the scenes” sorts of projects too, stuff that matters and isn’t quite as visible to the common end user.

I think of OpenSSL, the big security hole got more marketing and PR than the project ever did with “heart bleed.” Then some of the comments during the libressl review were very harsh. They did their thing in anonymity for decades, got used by everything and then took a public beating; clearly it depends on where the developers’ hearts are when that happened, maybe it wasn't so bad, it felt bad to watch.

With something like mint, just about everything is subjective. There are going to be a lot of haters just because of opinion.

[fjp]

Almost every python package that I've used seems to have Github "issues" opened where someone asks "Why even do this when there's [insert similar but different thing]". Who cares? Pip uninstall it if it isn't what you want? Fork it if you want something slightly different? Or contribute to a productive discussion about the direction of the project? Do SOMETHING positive.

[axaxs]

I worked for a while on a distro. The issue tracker is stressful for two main reasons. One, a lot of esoteric bugs that are hardware dependent. It's so frustrating to ask for help in testing to be ghosted or told 'no.' People don't seem to understand that as a small team, you don't have and won't buy all the hardware choices that exist to work on something for free.

The second stressor are people being adament and pushy about what they want, and not bugs at all. Go build your own distro, guys.

I found myself being a real dick to some people, so stepped away as it wasn't worth the stress, and I didn't want to tarnish the reputation of others who worked on the project.

[skocznymroczny]

> People don't seem to understand that as a small team, you don't have and won't buy all the hardware choices that exist to work on something for free.

that's why there shouldn't be as many distros. With fewer distros, it would be easier to test them on various configurations. Also it would make sure any fixes for specific hardware are used more widely, rather than ending up a patch in a single distro.

[magduf]

Yeah, but much of the reason I think there's as much volunteer involvement as there is is because distros are different, and the volunteers are happier to contribute their time to something they believe in.

If you have fewer distributions, that means they're going to make design choices more people won't like, which means volunteers aren't going to be as interested in contributing. You can't please all the people all the time, remember. A small number of distros will equate to making lots of compromises, so no one will be happy. This works for corporate products, because people are getting paid to work on something they don't care much about, but it doesn't work for a volunteer project.

Just as an example: if I were working on, say, Linux Mint, but then all the distro maintainers decided to have a giant meeting and in it they decided we really only need one Linux distro, CentOS, I'd just quit. There's no way in hell I'd want to work on CentOS of all things. I can find more enjoyable ways of spending my free time. I'm sure you'll find this with anything that people are passionate about: if you try to get them to redirect their energy to something "boring", they're not going to do it.

[axaxs]

I see your point... but realize that 99 percent of such bugs are upstream. So it's a matter of locking packages, or adding hacky things to a shell script that runs at install time. In a lot of way, it feels at times a distro maintainer is a secretary between the end user and upstream packages, since we end up opening the bugs.

[Mikeb85]

I don't think there should be fewer distros, but I personally have mostly stuck to the big ones, as they generally have the fewest issues.

[bregma]

I worked as a front line developer at a major Linux distro known for making some unpopular decisions. I came to the position knowing full well how 10% of all people out there are loudmouth asscracks . People without experience or inside knowledge who think they know better than those with, and expect to have only their own personal demands met at the expense of everyone else probably because they are getting something for free.

As long as he approaches the job knowing he is going to see some of the most wretched examples of scum and villainy, the dude can abide with grace. Just don't take it personally.

[jcastro]

Heya bregma, good to see you! We had a Code of Conduct we could enforce on at least official properties to make sure people behave, though I wasn't able to find one for Mint.

It doesn't stop if completely, but at least it's nice to be able to do your job without too much flaming. Reddit or blogs might be nuts, but at least the work mailing lists and bug trackers were relatively ok.

[bregma]

jcastro!

The flaming is the required price for not spending all your time in an echo chamber and for leaving your comfort zone.

And gosh, if you really want flaming, just mention a Code of Conduct. Even a CLA doesn't bring the worst of the dreck out like a CoC does.