Dear anonymous internet user asking for help.. - Bert Hubert's writings
berthub.eu
Dear anonymous internet user, dear corporate employee hiding behind a gmail.com address, dear “GitHub account with a single issue”, Thank you for your interest in my free software, my project or the documentation I wrote for you. I am happy to hear you want to ask a question, have a problem, or perhaps even inform me of a new requirement you have. But with some small exceptions (do read on), I’m afraid I will not be able to help you.

Just wanted to share here this blog publication about open source project’s maintaining and toxic or boring behaviours of people looking for support.

  • jetAEnglish
    131·
    11 months ago

    Fair enough. Nobody is obligated to do anything.

    Having anonymous ways of reporting issues is helpful, so we don’t have to go through the throwaway account to report a bug phase of this issue.

    By requiring users to have an identity to contact you, you create an incentive for people to make disposable identities. Especially in the private / security ecosystem.

    • jetAEnglish
      4·
      11 months ago

      https://blog.powerdns.com/2014/05/05/how-to-talk-to-an-open-source-software-project-as-a-large-scale-or-otherwise-interesting-user

      I think cloudflare did the right thing here, and not identifying themselves as cloudflare. They had the capability of writing their own DNS, and they did so.

      Saying, if we’d known they were cloudflare, we would have been able to market their name, and given them more attention in exchange for the marketing is fair, but also exactly the reason they didn’t tell you they were cloudflare when they came with technical issues.

      It also sounds like cloudflare had no expectations of getting support, they just provided the information they could, and they dealt with things in a very sophisticated and mature fashion. They weren’t demanding in their requests.

      Is it frustrating that a bug on the backlog is a pain point for a major user? Sure. But just as the open source developer does not owe anything to the users of their software, the users of their software are not required to indicate how much of a pain point each bug is.

      It’s fair to say, if you want better support, and response from an open source project identify yourself and your use case. But it’s also fair to say it’s not a requirement. As long as the communication is happening that there’s an issue, and the details of the issue, people are genuinely trying to keep the ecosystem healthy and doing their part.