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Ask HN: Why most people who use open source are so consumerist?

17 pointsantonreshetov24 comments

I wonder why most people who use opensource are so consumerist? No thanks or stars or contributions. Only reports of things not working or not working the way they want them to.

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People value a thing, personally, in relation to what it cost them.

When it came free with no effort, it has no value and therefore it takes a real effort to understand that the maintainer and others may not see it the same way.

open source software gives you, the user, the responsibility for you use of it; where most people want that to be someone else's job. They want to jump on the gokart and ride, not check the tire pressures, tune the engine, etc.

In many ways I agree. But one thing I can not understand because if we talk in the context of GitHub, the project users are users of GitHub and they are probably the developers themselves and know the value of labor, well, I think they do.

As far as I even seen, starring things or explicit random thanks to strangers were never a thing among developers in any environment. People say thank you in person, but under jira tickets, on Github etc, it is just seems odd.

Maybe developers should adopt the experience of bloggers from YouTube. Like: let's get n number of stars - then you'll get a new release? :)

Sure. That's a straightforward variant on the Street Performer Protocol:

https://www.firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/67...

Kickstarter's "project is funded when enough people commit" is another, though Kickstarters don't usually produce public or open source works.

In general these are considered "threshold pledge systems":

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_pledge_system

Whether the thing being funded is a rivalrous good or a public one, this pattern solves the problem of latent demand by derisking the transaction to overcome the reluctance to commit unless the expenditure will make a difference.

Applying the pattern episodically, and you get Patreon's ongoing pledge per work produced. Apply the pattern recursively and you get Kickstarter's stretch goals. Combine the price discrimination pattern one way and you get pledge/reward levels. Use price discrimination another way (particularly for public goods) and you get "early access".

There are probably other interesting and useful variations that are still yet to be discovered.

Most people don't have a github account.

Also, a nice bug report with clear reproduction steps is very helpful.

Also, to make contributions I need to build the project. Sometimes it's straightforward, sometimes it's necessary to install the compiler and a mess of undocumented libraries and then run the correct makefile with the correct options.

I've once built a vscode extension. I didn't expect much, but was still suprised at the complete lack of feedback, reviews, etc. despite many downloads. One day I've added a popup asking for reviews. Virtually all my reviews come from the period I've left it up. My takeaway was, letting people know what to do goes a long way.

Thanks for the sharing, indeed, sometime they just don’t by default do what’s expected, tho whey mostly would do after it’s hinted to.

The world is too big, indirect stuff never works.

If you want people's praises, then you have to manouver and set your affairs and behavior in a way that is optimized to get people's praises. You can't hope to receive them organically as a byproduct of your opensource software work.

They'll take the product/service and not acknowledge anything about your work.

This works even at the very extremes, say a dictator or a king. If he doesn't make it clear that he wants a parade and set the organization in motion, nobody will throw a surprise military parade for him

It is way harder to contribute to open source then people seem to think. Not because open source is something special technology wise, but because it is as complex and as time consuming to learn its code base as any commercial project. Otherwise said, people who work 40 hours a week coding, rarely have time and inclination to squeze 4 more man days of coding to the same month.

And also, the usual very frequent response is the project ignoring pull request.

In fact is just the opposite. Consumerist is not about stars, is somebody that consume, buy things that don't need necessarily, pay for things like software licenses.

Open source people share freely and built things, fork orphaned software to improve it, or recycle old computers instead to trow it to the dumpster. They are a fiercely anti-consumerist movement by nature.

Probably there will be a word for what you say, but is not this.

You can't eat stars. What's the value?

Stars on GitHub are a kind of rating. So why not give a star to the project you're using, since the cost is just your click.

A star is also a good way of bookmarking a repo which you see yourself using in the future.. or just to watch its progress.

I think the type of person who gravitates towards open source software is the type to not spend too much time on socials online. If you value net privacy, your time, your attention, you’re less likely to spend time commenting and starring. I see it as sort of the direct opposite of being ‘consumerist,’ tbh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule

It's simple maths. Even if everyone creates 1 piece of OSS software, that makes millions of pieces of software.

So everyone creates their 1 thing, then you have millions using things they didn't create. Makes it seem like no one's contributing even if they did contribute to the ecosystem.

The same happens with apps, they will download it and need to try it first to decide whether it deserves a star, most will forget. That's why apps are constantly bugging users to leave a rating. Remind them that you need it for motivation.

It doesn't help much, in my experience.

well the only way some people learn something is to ask questions which in turn makes it easier for others to use something which increases the community. but i guess if someone is expecting someone to answer their question right away then they may be too entitled. but realistically speaking helping others increases community. you may get a few "slackers" who don't contribute but not everyone who ask questions is a 1 time charly... some actually end up contributing once they understand the code, i've been this person.

Because it's a consumerist dream to have a team you don't pay work on a thing you use for free. OSS users are biased towards consumerism. But what is the alternative?

GitHub seems to be going in the direction of solving the problem. Access to the repo only if you're a sponsor. But I think for people to start donating to you, you or your repo has to be known. It's a closed circle...

Thats so against the spirit of OSS while still being technically OSS

I think bug reports are way better than stars. But I always star repos that I'm fond of (I never used any of them).

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