GitHub Invites Contributions To 'Open Source Guides' (infoq.com) 54
An anonymous reader quotes InfoQ:
GitHub has recently launched its Open Source Guides, a collection of resources addressing the most common scenarios and best practices for both contributors and maintainers of open source projects. The guides themselves are open source and GitHub is actively inviting developers to participate and share their stories... "Open source is complicated, especially for newcomers. Experienced contributors have learned many lessons about the best way to use, contribute to, and produce open source software. Everyone shouldn't have to learn those lessons the hard way."
Making a successful first contribution is not the exclusive focus of the guides, though, which also strives to make it easier to find users for a project, starting a new project, and building healthy open source communities. Other topics the guides dwell on are best practices, getting financial support, metrics, and legal matters.
GitHub's Head of Open Source says the guides create "the equivalent of a water cooler for the community."
Making a successful first contribution is not the exclusive focus of the guides, though, which also strives to make it easier to find users for a project, starting a new project, and building healthy open source communities. Other topics the guides dwell on are best practices, getting financial support, metrics, and legal matters.
GitHub's Head of Open Source says the guides create "the equivalent of a water cooler for the community."
Re: (Score:2)
And if you don't want to be a rockstar, instead of trying to offer patches just post insulting bug reports and call the developers names.
Re: (Score:1)
"Hey guys I noticed your code was doing some strange things under the following circumstances and it was really bothering me so I spent two weeks of my spare time tracking down the bug and I finally found it and I wrote a patch to fix it and I tested the patch for another two weeks and I am completely sure the patch is correct and it works for me so I think other people would find it helpful if you could please accept my patch."
One month later, "Hello? I fixed a bug."
Two months later, "Guys? Did you try my
Re: (Score:1)
Instead of getting mad, just maintain the patch locally. You have fixed the bug for you, after all, so why get angry. The only thing that does suck is if you later find out your patch has been merged, but without attribution, in which case a passive aggressive mail to their list might be in order. Happens rarely, though.
And there are more than enough counter examples to your story, e.g. my latest fix to icinga (a nagios fork) had a turnaround time of roughly half an hour [github.com] (Though github will only show it
Not foolproof (Score:2)
So they need Open Source Guides to explain how to get involved in Open Source, and yet they want people to jump into writing those Open Source Open Source Guides without any kind of introduction to Open Source?
If they really want to get this "Open Source water cooler" going, someone should get started on Open Source Open Source Open Source Guides to writing Open Source Open Source Guides about Open Source.
Re: (Score:2)
of course, with an open bar you get unintelligible documentation and comments like "oh swet" and "you se what I di thre?"
Re: (Score:2)
One of the best programmers I know was also a drunk, and without even looking at the commit time I could tell by his code whether he wrote it before or after lunch (when he would down a few pints of beer daily).
I say "was" because he's no longer a good programmer. The booze won.
Re:Not foolproof (Score:5, Insightful)
I see they're recommending a "Code of Conduct" for open source projects. How else could we possibly get along with one another if all the rules of behavior aren't spelled out in the most minute details. Generally speaking, all of those boil down to "Be civil" anyhow, just expressed in a few thousand more words.
Is it really not adequate these days for a project or community to just tell everyone to "be civil", to enforce that civility with common sense, and leave it at that?
a Code of Conduct is a weapon (Score:2)
i think the point of a Code of Conduct is to have a baseline to kick someone out if they're being undesirable. It's similar to having an acceptable internet usage policy at work; the point is not to prevent people from checking Facebook during work hours, it's to give yourself some ammo in case you want to get rid of someone for some other reason. (ex: "On July 6, you broke rule 212.1 by visiting Reddit during work hours, so you're fired - although what we really don't like about you is that you f*cked the
Re: (Score:2)
I understand the necessity of a Code of Conduct for a business that hires employees. Because federal laws, and lawsuits, and all that other fun stuff.
I don't understand why a programming language, as a recent example, requires a Code of Conduct. If you want your official forums to be civil, than enforce civility. Why on earth would you write up a multi-page document explicitly listing every little prohibition and affirmation, unless it's just for virtue signalling?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't understand why a programming language, as a recent example, requires a Code of Conduct.
A programming language doesn't: such a thing is nonsensical because a language is inanimate and has no agency. The people in the community who contribute, however, do. If you can't see why people need a code of conduct then I can only ask: have you ever met people?
If you want your official forums to be civil, than enforce civility.
Using your personal, unwritten code of civility, I assume, even though it differs f
Re: (Score:1)
Using your personal, unwritten code of civility, I assume, even though it differs from mine?
And this is the killer. If you read many projects codes of conduct are very specific about the classes of discrimination they disallow. Discrimination or attacks on people based on organisational membership or political beliefs, for example, will be allowed. Often this is just due to doing a copy paste of one of the standard CoCs. In some organisations and in some of the very important original CoCs everyone copies, however, it's deliberate because the authors of the CoC want to reserve the right to be
Re: (Score:3)
People will disagree about what "be civil" and "common sense" mean. Writing some rules down helps enumerate the worst stuff and set the tone, but even then there will be complaints and conspiracy theories when they are enforced.
I'll give you an example. A guy writes that the can't do the merge this weekend because he is going on a trip with his husband. Someone else complains about having same sex marriage rammed down their throat and claims that common sense requires such couples to hide their "controversi
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not asking people to agree on every contentious issue. Yes, there will be some variance on what "be civil" means, but working in a group also requires a bit of tolerance. That's part of peacefully coexisting in a diverse workforce. No, I'm not talking about tolerating blatantly racist or sexist behavior, but recognizing that, so long as there is no ill intent, we should be willing to forgive minor trespasses or foibles.
My concern with creating a list of all principles, rules, prohibitions, etc, is th
Re: (Score:2)
Note: to clarify, the Open Code of Contact has very similar positive statements as Ubuntu's. I just feel all the negative examples and definition (which Ubuntu omits) are, if you'll pardon the pun, not a positive thing.
Re:Not foolproof (Score:4, Informative)
Just note that in this context, "Code of Conduct" has a different meaning that extends beyond the legitimate rule to be civil. Its one of those SJW phrases that they took hold of and completely skewed in meaning (like "enabler" or "diversity" -- for them, everything SJW is "diverse" but everything even slightly critical of SJW is "bigoted", funny how they turn the terms around by 180 degrees). Their goal is to make you believe that an environment that is toxic towards people who think different from the (SJW) mainstream is just "enforcing good behaviour". Remember, github is the company that threatened to ban an open source project for (humorously) using the word "retard" in its advertisement (just google "github retard" to find out what I mean), and whose "VP of social impact" repeatedly made racist statements: http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com] ... probably they think that when its anti white its not racist.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't show this to the Linus/Linux Kernel Group (Score:1)
Make people feel welcome!
A welcoming community is an investment into your project’s future and reputation. If your project is just starting to see its first contributions, start by giving early contributors a positive experience, and make it easy for them to keep coming back.
or
Call your contributors Brain-damaged sh*t-for-brains' devs tell them to drop 'drug-induced crap' and use asterisks properly.
Whatever works! :)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
actually, it's about enforcing SJW safe spaces into everyone's projects. they hate meritocracy and they seriously said that pull requests from minorities & women should have higher priority over stuff from straight white males.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you have any reference for this claim? (I'm not asking to prove you wrong, I'm asking because I am afraid you are saying the truth)
Re: (Score:2)
SJW (Learning a new meme SJW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever works! :)
It works sufficiently for Linux, but the fact it works at all does not imply that something else couldn't work better. Several high profile kernel devs have left due to the flood of shite. Matthew Garrett is one and he was responsible for a huge amonut of the power saving code which makes Linux actually acceptable on laptops.
Re: (Score:1)
The trouble with forking at the first sign of trouble is too many forks end up having exactly one user. Nobody collaborates to squash bugs, fix security flaws, add features, or test anything. The resulting plethora of forks becomes unusable by anyone who doesn't want to research every branch of every fork and cherry pick commits.
Fuck GitHub (Score:3, Funny)
No. Fuck GitHub. I refuse to use or support a company that is all about censorship and shutting down "wrongthing" because someone has a different viewpoint than they do. GitHub is a festering pile of shit. Use alternatives.