1mo ago

Don't touch my garbage!

Edit: Thanks for your kind comments on disabling contributions. I'm aware of the possibility, this is just a meme.

Contributions in open source projects are great, needed and make the world a better place after all. Therefore they should be declined politely, optionally by giving a reason.

I hereby inform you that I will no longer accept contributions to this post /s.

54 comments

Don't worry, you also get issue reports were the user didn't read the start guide or document any of the steps to reproduce the issue.
- When submitting issues, I live in constant fear of creating duplicates.
  
  When submitting issues, I live in constant fear of creating duplicates.
- When submitting issues, I live in constant fear of creating duplicates.
  
  Possible dup? https://feddit.org/comment/9969130

You can turn issues and PRs off on GitHub though.
Unless replying rudely to PRs is exactly what you want to do. Then you do you.
- I do feel like putting an intentional, obvious, but non-issue causing bug in a code base now. Make a contrib guide. Mention needing to read the docs first and check previous issues/discussions first, and make a closed ticket explaining that that bug is nothing but an example bug and that will ban anyone that attempts to fix or report it.
  Like a green mnm test for a code base
- No you can't. The only way to turn off PRs on a public repo is to migrate away from GitHub.
- Issues, yes. It's not possible to disable PRs though.
  
  Ooops, I misremembered :(

Imagine getting PR's against ur projects 😿
- I've had someone screenshot my code, circle a buggy line in red, and blog about it instead of submitting a PR.
  
  Rip
  
  Was the blog post titled „how to be the worst OSS citizen“? That would at least be consequential

Open source doesn't mean you have to accept contributions or help anyone with anything 😃

Lucky you get attention from the community
- Lucky you don't enjoy the peace

You guys are getting PRs?

Me after submitting my 50th PR this month: "Look at me. I am the maintainer now."

I never understand people rejecting free improvements on FOSS projects.
EDIT: Y'all, It's not like I cannot comprehend why they do it. Please stop trying to explain it to me. When I said "I don't understand", I meant the psyche of the character that does that. I personally do FOSS to improve the world and collaborate with others that do so as well. I will never get people who do FOSS and then get salty about people liking it too much.
- Apart from bad quality code, the PR might not fit the vision the owner has in mind for the project. Improvements are subjective.
  
  Sure, but that's not what the meme implies.
- Every bit of code a maintainer accepts becomes their responsibility to maintain. Considering that half the time „improvements” don’t even have tests to help maintaining them, feel free to maintain your own fork.
  
  Sure, one can request those PRs to add those tests before merging.
  Don't get me wrong, I can understand why someone wants to just share without collaborating, but I don't get why they would publish in a collaborative environment, and then make memes about people trying to collaborate with them.
  Personally, as someone writing FOSS for a while now, I'm always happy to get anyone helping out and get demotivated when nobody cares. Being actively hostile to actual code contributors, is just fucking bizarre to me.
- Not everything sent in PR is an improvement from everyone pov though. It might be an improvement for the contributor of a new feature they might be the only one to ever use, while it adds maintenance burden for you, more dependencies, risks of bugs etc for the community, which you have to balance somehow. Plus you might have a view on how to do things properly on your project, which needs to be communicated to contributors, which is additional work you might not have time for, especially if this is just some small side project.
  
  This is not what the meme implies. This is rejecting all PR, regardless of quality or fit. That, I don't get.
- It's meant as a portfolio and I don't want to risk someone mistaking some contribution for my own work.
  I don't actually intend to put any time into maintaining it, but you are free to fork it if you want that responsibility.
  Your linting is lousy. It causes my eyes much pain.
  
  So disable prs then.
  
  Why don't these get read only and archived then? Seems like there's a mechanism for this already?
- Please stop trying to explain it to me.
  I never understand people rejecting free feedback on social media posts.
- I'd probably reject PRs into my FOSS projects, because the aim is to put the code out there for other people to see and do what they want with it. I'm expressing myself, and sharing what I made; I'm not setting up a tentpole project for others to pitch in and take over on, and start managing their contributions and collaborate with them.
  If they want to take the code and do something with it, great. I don't want to be involved in their endeavour.
- I never understand people rejecting free improvements on FOSS projects.
  I never understand people who don't install every free FOSS software offered to them on their PC.
  Why would someone take every contribution to their FOSS project? It makes no sense to take a contribution doesn't help the project owner's vision of the project.
- Fork it, prefix it with open, free, or libre and take the PR from the upstream and ass it to yours after messaging the contributor.

Oh, I prefer to be strung along and asked to make a bunch of changes before you reject my PR. That makes me feel truly loved. In the ass.

Just merge them into a separate branch. You can have your cake and eat it
- git branch -a
  master
  peasant_garbage
- hey there's a bug in zyz branch. fix it.

You can disable issues if you want:
https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/enabling-features-for-your-repository/disabling-issues
I had to do that on a corpo repo to proprietary BS once. It works.
PRs are similar. Just dont allow it and put the rules as such. Or make the repo private. Or even better, self host ;)

Tried to swap to GitLab and it told me I need to verify with a phone number. After I already input everything and verified email.

Fuck github

54 comments