When you're talking to an open source dev, just remember that they are literally giving you their time for free, and they are people who don't like to be treated poorly.
Edit: Just to be clear, I don’t mean any ill will toward the guy. He’s frustrated and he’s just taking it out in the wrong venue at the wrong people, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.
Edit 2: The reinstalling he’s talking about is NPM. So just running npm install. It’s because he tried removing the node_modules directory, which is a reasonable thing to do, but it means you need to reinstall the modules with that command.
Me approaching Foss developer with bug: Pardon me, if you could grace this lowly worm with but a moment of your attention; I with me a bug report, and I believe I have found the section of code responsible. This inadequate being lacks the technical expertise to fix it and would be eternally indebted if you would turn your monumental skills upon its trifling problems. It would please me immensely if my paltry efforts were of some assistance.
Thanks. Send a complete log of every software on your system, two videos of the bugs in action, and a detailed analysis of what you've had for breakfast.
It is, until it isn’t. I’ve seen devs delete or abandon their projects because of too mush abuse. Nobody likes being yelled at. (Unless that’s your kink. I won’t judge.)
It depends on if the first guy is complaining about having to reinstall this specific software, or if the software borked his entire system to the point that he has to reinstall his entire OS. Because that happened to me once. But in the first scenario he is being a dick, and in the second one not so much.
In this case, in trying to resolve the issue, he deleted his node_modules directory. So he’s talking about having to reinstall everything by typing npm install and waiting for it to finish.
No. It's provided without warranty nor guarantee that it'll work or even leave your system intact. That's the core of most opensource licenses. Dev owes nobody nothing.
I disagree, in neither scenario the open source dev owes him anything. You get to use and modify the software for free, but the flip side is you are entitled to nothing.
I don’t mean any ill will toward the guy. He’s frustrated and he’s just taking it out in the wrong venue at the wrong people, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.
But he is a bad person. He's being a fucking idiot and being insulting to the person who made the software for him in the first place.
People like that don't deserve patience and understanding. Perhaps a good response would be "this software is free for you to use, if you don't like it then fuck off and make your own".
People like that don't deserve patience and understanding.
These black and white statements won't do you or anyone else any good. We understand that an inconsiderate or rude act doesn't define a person when we can believe that about ourselves and love ourselves despite our many mistakes and cringe-worthy incidents.
When we love ourselves we begin to offer others the same grace and understanding we allow ourselves. We see the myriad reasons we don't think or act how we'd like to and realize that everyone else's life is just as difficult and confusing, and often for reasons we'll never see or understand.
I've only had beef with a single dev ever. The maintainer of Prometheus, Brian Brazil, or whatever his name is. His attitude is so shitty towards people proposing actually good ideas that would push his product forward.