Ask HN: Why are people so mean in the open source community? (about xz again)

[fazgha]

Browsing the xz repo in GitHub and checking the recent entries in the Issues tab, I just found this entry:

https://github.com/tukaani-project/xz/issues/121

The person wasn't able to compile the project and he starts by being mean when he asks for help:

- "it shouldn't be this hard" - "the INSTALL file being a TLDR nightmare" - complaining about the compilation steps.

I know Larhzu went through a lot in the past but facing again those comments are too much. I appreciate his polite comment to the issue but I would appreciate if he can put people like that in their place like thesamesam did.

[dugite-code]

I don't think it's necessarily meaness. It's frustration, a type of frustration that feels like it's private, and hence can sound more vitriolic, even though it's not because we are all removed from each other via the computer.

I find it best to "kill them with kindness" ignoring such anger and just assume they are having a bad day and didn't truly consider what they said.

[thih9]

Risking stating the obvious, the linked issue[1] seems appropriate for stack overflow, but not a good fit for github.

It would have been a good github issue if there were no instructions in the project. If the instructions are too difficult, then write how you would improve them. If steps are missing or incorrect, report that. Otherwise post to stack overflow.

Both: closing the github issue or treating it as an incomplete bug report seems fine to me. The maintainers are doing the latter, I’d say this is a good response.

[1]: https://github.com/tukaani-project/xz/issues/121

[entuno]

Is there any reason to believe that this is specific to the open source community, or that people are any less "mean" elsewhere?

Some people are thoughtful and considerate in their interactions, and some people are not. Just look at most social media sites - they're far worse than what you see on GitHub.

[JSDevOps]

One of the issues I find is how tiring it is for people to use the GitHub issues as a support forum. They want everything for free and when it doesn’t work for them it’s an instant complaint.

[jurassic]

I don't think this specifically is a great example of "being mean", but in the broader ecosystem it's definitely a problem that can wear down maintainers over time. I think it boils down to a widespread sense of entitlement from users of free software. It's amazing the demanding and disrespectful things people will say when the project you've shared with them, for free, doesn't meet their exact needs or preferences.

If something is provided free of charge and it's not working for you, there are constructive ways to engage and help nudge a project in a beneficial direction. But if you're not up to doing that, just move on.

[zarzavat]

The internet is a world wide network. People all around the world have very different ideas about how to communicate. In some cultures being blunt and rude is seen as a positive trait, in others it’s a negative. This frequently leads to misunderstandings.

Customers tend to be nicer the more money they spend, because they’re more invested in the outcome. You’d think that people getting something for free would be grateful but that is not how the human mind works at all.

[atoav]

I think the people with the mean comments are rarely active open source developers/contributers themselves — that is consumer-mentality on display.

If you are a good open source contributer and you know better you either write a pull request or you write a suggestion how a better installation process would look like, what your pain points were etc.

[rsynnott]

I would say that it’s not so much that people are mean; most people are not. The median person in the open source community is perfectly fine. It’s just that the open source community writ large seems particularly bad at dealing with and excluding arseholes, and attempts to do so often don’t go over well.

[drivingmenuts]

They're mean because there aren't the same kinds of consequences as there are for being mean to someone you know IRL. If you and I actually knew each other, consequences could range from a "Yo, dude, not cool" to some rather illegal escalations because you would know enough about me to actually find me.

On the internet, you have my username and that's about it. You might be able to piece together enough info to come after me, but you'd have to be really motivated.

Being mean is cheap, effective retribution isn't.

[jmclnx]

A long time ago (many decades), when I started out, someone who started in computers in the 1950s said to me "You can easily tell if your program is liked and popular. When something goes wrong, people will loose their temper and complain to you and sometimes insult you".

I have found this to be true over the years. So I always took the complaints as something good :)

[xtanx]

You know... they could be just another malicious actor. I mean they appeal to emotions, github is not showing them as active in the community, pseudonym without any details in the profile. And by malicious actor I do not mean that they are trying to gain access, they could be just trolling Larhzu.

[wiseowise]

Those two innocuous comments are being mean? Seriously?

I pity your ears if you would hear me building piece of sh@t projects without clear instructions how to build. This is the prerequisite for contributions to your project.

If you don’t have robust building process then I have a lot of mean words for you.

[marvel_boy]

Are you serious? Complaining about needing a zillion steps to compile equals "to be mean"?

[xtanx]

They are talking about the tone of the message. "it shouldn't be this hard" is not the proper way to report a bug at least not in a neutral way. It has the intention to make the maintainer feel bad and increase the likelihood of a change. And that was just in the title.

[readthenotes1]

And yet, "it shouldn't be this hard" is an incredibly pertinent observation perhaps with the intention to make the maintainer understand that offloading tons of work on many other people has an impact.

[WesolyKubeczek]

Yes.