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by too_root 1908 days ago
As a maintainer for an open source repo that is "owned" by a big corporation I feel this but on both ends. I empathize with reporters and I would love to be able to help them all (when sufficiently detailed reports come in) but the reality is that simply ingesting the issue and queueing for prioritization still means it'll likely sit for many months before someone gets to it. I suppose my point is that whether you're running an open source repo for a personal project or for a corporation, the problems persist.

I wish more people saw documentation and source code as a gift rather than cause for free, on-demand support.
2 comments
HomeDeLaPot 1908 days ago
Maybe whenever you navigate to the repo of an open-source project, GitHub should have a fancy animation of a gift box opening. "Ta-da! This project is open-source and FREE for you to use AS-IS, without any guarantees!" Then they can play it three more times whenever you try to open an issue.
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too_root 1908 days ago
If only it was that simple. But obviously the corporation has an incentive in open source as most do. There is pressure to present as open but internally the priority is not on reported issues, unless they are security related or something is broken.
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bjourne 1908 days ago
> I wish more people saw documentation and source code as a gift rather than cause for free, on-demand support.

But it goes both ways. Bug reports and feature requests are gifts that you and your corporation receive from the software's users.

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too_root 1908 days ago
Of course! It's the way users can alert us to issues and provide feedback. That's why I feel stuck in the middle -- overwhelmed from the incoming issues and unable to move the needle by myself or with whatever support were allocated from corporate.

My experience is clearly different from the author's, who seems to have complaints about solo project maintenance. I just wanted to share my perspective.

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