Re: my latest blog post

[Catonano <catonano@gmail.com>]

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2018-06-10 8:55 GMT+02:00 Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public12@thebird.nl>:

> On Sat, Jun 09, 2018 at 08:51:59PM -0400, Mark H Weaver wrote:
> > myglc2@gmail.com writes:
> > > Thank you for taking the time to contribute your thoughts. I am sorry
> to
> > > see you getting so beat up by the responses.  Unfortunately the
> > > nit-picking of criticisms and the "we are busy, why don't you dig in
> and
> > > fix it" responses occur too often on the Guix lists.
> > >
> > > Such responses are fundamentally unhelpful: A defensive response of
> > > counter-criticism that spirals out of control buries the original input
> > > and alienates potential new contributors. I agree with you that the
> > > suggestion that you dig in and fix something you are struggling with is
> > > a fundamentally unfriendly response.
> >
> > What kind of response would you consider acceptable?
> >
> > I suppose the most helpful response would be for one of us to volunteer
> > our time to fix the bug, or to implement the feature you desire.
> >
> > Are there any other acceptable responses, in your view?
> >
> >        Mark
>
> And here we arrive at a fundamental problem that all *complex* free
> software projects that have with many users. And these discussions end
> up hurting/upsetting everyone involved!
>
> The fact is that only a few people really understand any chosen part
> of the project.
>
> And these people tend to have day jobs, families and work on the
> project in their spare time. In that spare time (maybe only a few
> hours a week) they make choices what to work on - and, yes, it tends
> to be what they think most important. Not what others think most
> important. The Clojure developers are considered haughty and give
> others the cold shoulder.  The Dlang people are very open, and get a
> lot of abuse and kranks on their forum in return. You just can't win!!
> It is easy to find examples about this. Some projects, notably Elixir,
> are exceptionally good at the balancing act. But, it is not for
> everyone. If you take Guile, what started this thread, it is really
> one core language maintainer. What talent! Nothing to stop you from
> jumping in...
>
> I think Guix is a great project. Not only does it scale (ref.
> the number of weekly contributors), the maintainers do a good job of
> being nice where it matters. Guix had a community day at FOSDEM and out
> of that came the recent work on 'guix pull' which is a great
> improvement, ultimately asked for by the user community! I think that
> is amazingly good.
>
> Mark, indeed, from a contributor perspective the natural response is
> to volunteer work on a topic users ask for. Since we write code, we
> think in terms of responding in code. But that is not what this thread
> is about. Here we have users who want *attention* for their
> concern(s).


Ok. So ... ?


> My response to such users is two-fold: (1) dig in and prove
> you understand the issue first. A lot of response goes by merit you
> acquire. People tend to spend time on people they like/respect. So,
> George, it is not a knee-jerk reaction. It is easy to talk, much less
> easy to do. And coders and project maintainers know that. And (2)
> bring up real issues on the bug tracker and try to fix them. That way
> you get attention.
>
> So, yes, dig in and try to fix it ;)
>

Ah, I see

So: nothing.

Pjotr I ALREADY offered a contribution

The manual discusses some internal APIs in a paragraph about something else

That's unrespectful of reader's time

I proposed some edits

I keep reading, all around, that also not coding contributions are valuable

Are they ?

I also argued that macros are a part of scheme but the debugging
infrastructure doesn't cover them, at all

But of course, this is "talking", maybe I'm too entitled



> As in chess or football, people who acquire merit get taken seriously.
> Not the person shouting on the side-line - unless they are respected
> in some other way (maybe by giving money or other resources).
>

I'm glad I'm flushing out, people

You are expressing all your jerkiness in all its glory :-)



> Talk is cheap. Coding is hard.


Thinking is even harder


We are always balancing this. I don't
> contribute much to Guix at this point (other than talk ;), but we face
> the exact same problems in other projects I am involved in. I get most
> upset by the sense of entitlement that people have just because they
> *use* my  work. Many an E-mail I wrote, but did not send, to users,
> just to vent steam. I have a feeling I am not the only one. I.e., it
> is not easy running a free software project. We want and like our
> users, but not at all cost.
>

All costs ?

I repeat: the manual sucks and I proposed an edit to make it suck a bit less


I think we should close this topic unless there are concrete
> suggestions on how to improve and scale Guix development. As George
> writes, we can encourage new contributors and users more,


like you're doing with me ?


> but I doubt
> the route is to take core contributors away from their work.


Their work would be, as George argued, to code a bit less and do some home
keeping a bit more



> I think
> the route is to improve our web presence by tutorials, blogs and
> internationalization. And, in fact, those already are priorities.
>

good luck

By the way, a third person wrote me in private right now telling that Mark
was an asshole to them too and they stopped contributing to guix altogether

They made a conduct report but nothing happened, eventually they had to
talk to Ludo directly

It seems to me, Potr, tat the ones who should be doing their homewor is not
me

I'm doing even too much for you

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