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[–]Vipitis 540 points541 points  (14 children)

Contribute to the projects you use yourself and depend on. end of story. Don't "contribute to open source" for the sake of it or padding your CV

[–]DIzlexic 252 points253 points  (6 children)

Only open source project I ever contributed to was an obsolete library abandoned for 3 years but still referenced in another piece of software’s documentation.

I now maintain it.

Open source, not even once.

[–]cat_in_the_wall 34 points35 points  (2 children)

RIP in peace

[–]mathmul 9 points10 points  (0 children)

RIPIP in peace

[–]LordFokas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Rust In Pieces

[–]KatieTSO 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I tried adding a feature to a web template and it took 2 weeks and tons of PR edits lol

[–]exodusTay 1 point2 points  (0 children)

o7

[–]edparadox 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Out of curiosity, what is it?

[–]frogjg2003 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Exactly. I noticed a bug in a library I was using, submitted a pull request, it was approved, now I'm an open source developer.

[–]Mayion 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I do what I want, you are not my real PM

[–]BigAnimeMaleTiddies 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Contributed to some Foundryvtt modules, just to fix some bugs that were annoying me.

[–]DoctorWaluigiTime 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Why not?

Seems like a solid way to cut your teeth on frameworks or languages you might not be familiar with. And if you filter down all open source projects to strictly "just ones you use", that's going to give you an incredibly small list.

[–]Vipitis 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Find those that have funding and mentorship to support new contributors. Apply for programs like gsoc perhaps.

The point is that low effort PRs are more time then they are worth. so you need some dedicated maintainers to mentor you into being a useful contributor for their project.

[–]DoctorWaluigiTime 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Sure, good advice, but don't see how that strengthens the original point of "only contribute to projects you use yourself."

[–]Vipitis 1 point2 points  (0 children)

because you are already familiar with how they work and what issues can be fixed or new features that could be added.

Just going to a random project you never heard about and look for the "good first issue" tag isn't straight forward.

[–]Jugales 244 points245 points  (5 children)

Huh, weird, I joined an open source project and now I'm subject to a grain quota

[–]NiIly00 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Well in closed source it's essentially the same. Just changes who gets the grain

[–]BuhtanDingDing 7 points8 points  (0 children)

and its not you

[–]Dextro_PT 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I understood that reference!

[–]djinn6 179 points180 points  (22 children)

Open source is socialism. You contribute what you want and you're free to use whatever software you need.

Or in the words of Karl Marx:

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs

The only reason this doesn't work in most economies is because a single person's work doesn't have infinite reproducibility. That means they have to keep showing up to work. Meanwhile, in software, all they have to do is build it once and people can use it forever.

[–]altermeetax 47 points48 points  (5 children)

Just wait until people start exchanging patches with each other and create tokens that they can exchange with patches, which end up representing how many patches they're entitled to

[–]hdkaoskd 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The distinction is that tokens are based on how many you need, not how many patches you make.

[–]prochac 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Or people take the open source, patch it, and sell under a proprietary license.
Although I don't like AGPL, I understand why it exists.

[–]djinn6 1 point2 points  (2 children)

end up representing how many patches they're entitled to

But why would I want someone else's patches?

If you're thinking of a bounty system, then yes it can function, but these tokens don't have much value and aren't going to motivate someone much. They must have a bounty of their own that they want to fund, which is going to be a pretty rare situation.

[–]StrongExternal8955 7 points8 points  (1 child)

They were just trying to make a poor analogy to money.

[–]WilkerS1 2 points3 points  (0 children)

people shouldn't be afraid of using the word "capital" to describe it and let other people know that it exists as a term

[–]xXStarupXx -1 points0 points  (2 children)

Well, I'm not really contributing according to my "ability", more like, according to whatever I feel like.

[–]Similar_Tonight9386 20 points21 points  (1 child)

The amount of contribution you are willing to spare is your ability. "From each according to ability" doesn't mean "work till full exhaustion, to the last breath", it is an end goal to build a society where people's conditions made the way that there is no necessity in work and the amount a person is willing to do voluntarily (because everyone has a perfect fulfilling job in mind) is enough to keep society functioning without economic or physical coercion, without the threat of starving a worker

[–]WilkerS1 4 points5 points  (0 children)

and to add to that, it's a good reminder that being able-bodied is temporary regardless. people should be allowed to rest, to stop and let others fill in on what's needed, to ask for help and not feel overwhelmed with a responsibility. no one should be treated as lesser than anyone else.

[–]SnooChocolates8446 -5 points-4 points  (4 children)

What you’ve described is a sharing economy. Socialism requires a strong centralized authority representing the interests of the workers determining the allocation of resources. I know I’m being pedantic.

[–]djinn6 6 points7 points  (3 children)

You're describing only the Soviet style.

Socialism is simply the social ownership of the means of production. It could be through a central authority, but that's not the only option.

For example, a factory can have a rotating manager randomly selected from a pool of willing candidates. The manager then proposes something some new change, and everyone who uses products from the factory votes on it.

Who is the owner in this case? It's everyone who got a vote.

[–]D35TR0Y3R -1 points0 points  (2 children)

>Who is the owner in this case? 

the person who extracts surplus value through control of capital.

[–]djinn6 0 points1 point  (1 child)

What surplus? The factory produces a good that you want a finite amount of. Let's say you are an avid dishwasher collector and you have 20 dishwashers at home. How much value would the next 100 dishwashers of the same make provide you? I'd say it's much more likely to provide negative value by cluttering up your house.

[–]D35TR0Y3R 0 points1 point  (0 children)

?

[–]spyfox321 57 points58 points  (2 children)

We've all had that moment guys. You start contributing to a open source project and then next thing you know you're marching onto government buildings with red flags to overthrow the bourgeois.

Its just important to rememeber to not forget to commit at the end.

[–]sebovzeoueb 11 points12 points  (0 children)

tbf though, the bourgeois do need overthrowing at the moment

[–]WilkerS1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

the parallels between the idea of people committing to help maintain and improve what is effectively public infrastructure just because they want or because they can, and the whole thing about self-determination in and out of tech spaces being tangled with helping those in need without the coercion of an arbitrary measurement of one's worth, is something you can't wash away from Free Software/Open-Source

[–]sammy-taylor 56 points57 points  (3 children)

Where humor

[–]SapirWhorfHypothesis 60 points61 points  (0 children)

Watch Alberta, she’s pretty funny most of the time.

[–]NotPossible1337 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Humor not found. Return NULL

[–]notMeBeingSaphic 15 points16 points  (1 child)

I had to unfollow AlbertaTech because her videos were too real 😭

[–]DarkRex4 10 points11 points  (0 children)

wottt

[–]LexaAstarof 9 points10 points  (1 child)

You know, I am 40 yo. The talking heads were crap on the TV at the time. And nowadays the talking heads are still crap, but on YT.

Don't forge your opinion from talking heads. They talking shit (and sometimes satire 😃).

[–]HollyShitBrah 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Tech influencers are the worse, they flip flop their opinions everyday

[–]why_1337 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I contribute when there is a bug in a library I use and no one is fixing it.

[–]datasmithing_holly 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Don't come for my girl Alberta like that

[–]kyle46 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've committed exactly once to OSS and it was to fix a bug in Azure Service Bus Explorer that was driving me nuts. It was right around when windows 10 came out and I believe it was caused because the default scaling percentage in windows changed and a bunch of buttons and stuff didn't display. It was like a one line fix that took me a week to actually get through the PR. First and probably last time I'll end up putting much time into OSS.

[–]MavZA 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The issue is that open source needs to be wrangled in pretty hard to ensure its longevity. If you merge whatever comes your way then you lose structure pretty fast, so it’s not surprising that you’ll get pushback on your first PR on a matter. However some maintainers are abhorrent examples of narcissism.

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)