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Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why not?

by egze on 12/13/19, 9:34 AM with 61 comments

• by tmoravec on 12/13/19, 10:16 AM

  At my company, engineers dedicate 10% of their work time to open source contributions outside of our core products. They are quite free to pick any project they want, as long as it benefits our particular community.

  Why do we do this?

  * It's a great perk for engineers. They contribute under their "personal" profiles, improving their own karma.

  * Growth of the community we come from lifts everyone, including the company as a whole.

  * We are grateful for what we get for free, and want to contribute back.

  * It's a nice argument when hiring.

  * It's a great way to skill up in the underlying technology.

  * It teaches about collaboration and the softer skills needed to get PRs merged.

  * It gives people to touch technologies they wouldn't learn on the job itself.

• by guessmyname on 12/13/19, 9:41 AM

  > Do you contribute to open source? Why? Why...

  Yes, I do.

  I have been contributing to the open-source community for ±10 years.

  Many of my personal projects pass years unnoticed, but once in a while I receive an email from a stranger on the Internet saying “Thank you” for building a tool they found useful one way or another. Some times students, some times people without programming skills, some times IT professionals.

  To answer your second question: “Why?” I make contributions to the open-source community as a way to pay back the solutions they have provided in the past. Nowadays I spend much less time building my own tools and more time searching online for open-source solutions, and fortunately I often find good ones, then I say “thank you” by reporting issues, giving feedback, implementing features, fixing bugs, etc.

• by hvasilev on 12/13/19, 9:59 AM

  I'm not contributing to any free / open source projects.

  I think that that FOSS is fueling the technology monopolies, despite originally aiming at the exact opposite. I think it has driven many software markets in the ground like for example tooling. I cannot believe that we use absolutely horrible software like GDB in 2020.

  I think there is a lot of left learning ideology behind hte FOSS development and also these types of products have a limited way in which they can be monetized.

  P.S. I know I'm gonna get a lot of hate, but I think that as a developer you can spend your time better elsewhere :)

• by blowski on 12/13/19, 10:20 AM

  Define "contribute".

  If you mean "write code for", then honestly I make very few code contributions. In the 00s, my employer was suspicious of developers contributing to open source, to the point of banning it contractually. I've since changed employer, but I have a legacy of that early experience.

  On the other hand, I contribute to open source projects in many ways - I give money to many projects I use, attend meetups, give presentations at conferences, coach people, write answers on StackOverflow.

• by gherkinnn on 12/13/19, 9:50 AM

  I don't. Have donated though.

  I rarely program outside of work. And if I do, I just want toy with some ideas, not to actually build something. Most of my learning is done on work time.

  It certainly feels nice to take regular breaks from screens, bugs, things not working because the stars aren't aligned just the right way and solving abstract problems. Enjoying the simple tings.

• by progval on 12/13/19, 9:57 AM

  I do, as much as I can.

  The main reason is that it's important for me to contribute to the common good regardless of monetary reasons, if I can afford to do so. This is true both at a moral/political level, and at a personal level (feeling useful).

  It's also a way to give back to projects I use, as I can't donate money to all of them as much as they are worth.

  I also like to program just for fun (ie. not useful stuff), and today it's as easy to make my useless stuff open source rather than keeping it private; so I might as well make it open source, because sometimes other people actually find it useful.

• by r_singh on 12/13/19, 9:41 AM

  Do I contribute to open source?

  Seldom (<10 PRs merged)

  Why?

  - When I discover issues in an otherwise active library or starter, I fix them and submit a PR

  - When I need a minor feature in a library and the codebase is readable

  - When I study online courses, I submit PRs with notes and solutions to help others (and myself with motivation)

  Why not?

  - Because it's a thankless job (not getting paid for contributions)

  - Because of lack of expertise

• by saagarjha on 12/13/19, 9:57 AM

  Yes. I use a lot of open source software. Often it doesn’t do something I’d like it to, or it misbehaves, and I’m fortunate enough to be able to spare time to contribute. Plus it’s a great way to learn new things or get a better understanding of how things you use work, and you often get to meet people doing interesting work!

• by 255kb on 12/13/19, 10:04 AM

  I would like to contribute more. But the first reason I don't do it is the amount of time it requires. Investigating the issue, opening a ticket, digging in someone else's code, coding the fix, testing it, opening a PR, updating following review's comments, etc, can take hours.

  I created an open source developer tool (https://mockoon.com). And I can see the amount of time it takes for other people to contribute. On my side, reviewing or correcting other people contribution is already a lot of work. I think open source is fantastic but can really become a full time job. :) I really believe companies using open source libraries and software should start contributing financially or by dedicating employee's time to contribute. We are in 2019 and this must be seen as an investment.

• by petetnt on 12/13/19, 10:12 AM

  I contribute to open source at work and on my free time. At work I contribute because I want to improve something I spent my time on figuring out (eg. documentation, bug fixes, features) so I don't have to do it again later and hopefully someone else can enjoy it too. On my free time I contribute for the same reason I play music, skateboard or play video games: it's fun.

  I have gained tons of things from contributing (experience and knowledge, connections) even if I don't expect to get anything from it. I have also faced the darker side of OSS: the angry users who haven't spent a dime, the "go kill yourself" messages, the dislikes, the time spent wasting time on things that wouldn't happen. At times like that I just remind myself: I am doing this for fun and I can stop when it's not fun anymore.

• by FlorianRappl on 12/13/19, 9:45 AM

  I do.

  Reasons for me:

  * I like building things

  * I feel like we are relying on OSS a lot, this only works if we contribute back, too

  * It's a great way to improve (workflow, coding, communication)

  * So far it was mostly a nice experience - I've got the pleasure to get to know some awesome folks

• by bluehatbrit on 12/13/19, 10:54 AM

  I contribute as much as I can, but I don't usually have much time that I can use at work so 99% of it is done in my own time. Right now I'm maintaining a small project for converting markdown into pdf's[0], and I've picked up maintaining the StatsD project[1].

  I do it for two reasons, first the enjoyment. I really like working on problems of a smaller scope, without a full business around it. I love being able to think of something and knock out some code for it and share it, rather than the code coming last.

  The second reason I try and contribute is because I generally believe it contributes positively to the world. I'm sure those who've read my code might disagree, but on the whole I think offering free tools to tackle common problems helps everyone. Even if it's not "exactly" how you want it to work, it's at least prior art to inspire new solutions.

  [0] https://github.com/bluehatbrit/mdpdf

  [1] https://github.com/statsd/statsd

• by rvz on 12/13/19, 9:58 AM

  Personally I don't, but I know people who do and whilst meeting and chatting with them, they are very encouraging to newcomers who want to attract new contributors. Without them, most of all the software used by everyone would be non-existent.

  Why?

  Some of them tell me that this helps them improve their skills and allows transparency in the project which helps their project in being trustworthy than the alternatives. Promoting more FLOSS-based software.

  Why not?

  While for many years, it has been a voluntary endeavour for devs and they take donations or sponsorship to fund their development. On Github, unless you are lucky enough to be a celebrity programmer of a famous project, this is difficult for many to build such a reputation and release a useful project for free to get paid for it. Thus, GitHub has accelerated this entitlement and only the famous programmers with a solid fanbase will reap its benefits.

  I think it would be better to donate to an OSS org for more devs to get paid rather than to a specific individual/developer, unless they are the sole owner of the project.

• by Pinegulf on 12/13/19, 10:26 AM

  Does Wikipedia count? Not too much. Mostly due to amount of work required and twice the amount to defend against the politicking about it.

• by moviuro on 12/13/19, 10:30 AM

  I use my own time to work on tooling I miss on my workstations/own servers [0]. I also have a knack for finding weird bugs in otherwise widely popular and stable software [1,2]. I spend some time on select subreddits (WireGuard for instance) and on IRC to help out when I can.

  I do it mostly because it's fun, and I learn some new stuff. Not much is applicable on my day-to-day job though.

  [0] https://git.sr.ht/~moviuro

  [1] https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/ticket/580

  [2] https://marc.info/?l=postfix-users&m=157324715117972&w=2

• by badrabbit on 12/13/19, 10:05 AM

  I try sometimes but not that interested tbh. It boils down to my experience with PRs. they ignore it forever without a comment sometimes, other times it takes a lot of back and forth discussion which takes up valuable time. I wanted to contribute in other ways too but I alwayd run into roadblocks such as how bigger projects want you to have or build reputation first and they "frown upon" not using your real name and email. I am not saying any if that is bad or unreasonable, just incompatible with my requirements. Ymmv, I greatly appreciate all contributors. I wish more foss projects that are full blown apps offered commercial support though, it makes it easier to find people that can commit more time and resources.

• by anonymou2 on 12/13/19, 10:02 AM

  I donate to the fsf. At one point I realized how much free software my company was using. Thanks to it I was getting paid. I thought it was only fair to give back. Of course it should have been my company that should have done that, but they were greedy morons at the time.

• by nils-m-holm on 12/13/19, 10:45 AM

  I rarely (pretty much never) contribute, but I write a lot of software and put it in the public domain. Why? What I write has no commercial value (I think), but in case it is useful to someone, I do not want to put any legal stuff in their way.

• by alphadevx on 12/13/19, 10:06 AM

  I maintain my own open source project. I do this because I am a manager now, therefore I no longer writing code during my day job. However I still love to code, so an open source project is a perfect hobby for me.

• by zabil on 12/13/19, 11:10 AM

  Yes I do. Because I genuinely want others to benefit from problems I've solved so that they can focus on other things.

  As a developer I struggled writing functional tests. So my company sponsors a team to build and maintain two OSS projects https://gauge.org and https://taiko.dev that makes testing reliable and simple.

  We are trying our best to listen to users and help them out. It's been the most rewarding part of my career.

• by krageon on 12/13/19, 10:27 AM

  I contribute to open source packages when I am allowed to do it during work time. I do not do it from home, and this is mainly because getting pull requests approved (especially in the larger packages) is a huge pain in the ass (weird contributor license agreements, people bikeshedding for absolutely no reason, questions about my contribution that make no sense, etc).

  There is already more than enough social posturing and chest-thumping involved in getting through a work day and I'm not interested in having that be a part of my private life.

• by CM30 on 12/13/19, 10:30 AM

  For the most part, no I don't. Not entirely sure why, I guess it's just a lack of interest in the projects I've seen so far. Or perhaps the feeling there are people with skills better suited to it, or enough of a community there that my efforts wouldn't be necessary.

  Still, I guess there is one project (a video game level editor/modding tool) which I indirectly contribute to, in the sense of coding the website and working to get the web APIs working. Just haven't found many others in that situation.

• by anotheryou on 12/13/19, 2:44 PM

  I'm not a dev and product management work might be valuable to OSS, but I'd feel like I'd be imposing things on devs and in a way it's hard to get a foot in the door (because everyone always knows better what should be done and why).

  I have the feeling it's similar for UX people.

  This way I stick to good bug reports and some small suggestions.

• by jmstfv on 12/13/19, 10:14 AM

  I run a small software company, and I occasionally contribute to open source, mostly when a library is missing something that I want.

  To be sure that my work won't go unnoticed, I file the issue first and ask maintainers if they'd be open for the pull request. If they respond within a reasonable time frame, I start working on it.

• by Darkstack on 12/13/19, 10:39 AM

  I do not, mostly because I work with proprietary software at work. On my free time I submit bugs on GitHub for the projects I use (mostly small projects), with the technical solution inside, but not with PR (as i feel like the owner may have a broader view, and fix it in a better way).

• by jamil7 on 12/13/19, 9:50 AM

  The most successful open source contributions I've made have always been when my employer required some bug fix or feature in a third party library and I was able to spend time submitting upstream patches.

• by oefrha on 12/13/19, 10:24 AM

  I do. It’s like torrenting, at least some people in the swarm have to seed to a certain ratio to keep the swarm going. It’s my way of paying back the benefits I’ve received from other people’s work on FOSS.

• by onion2k on 12/13/19, 10:39 AM

  I don't because almost all the projects I'd like to contribute to feel like they're far beyond my abilities as a developer. I hope that's just imposter syndrome but it might not be.

• by purplezooey on 12/13/19, 7:42 PM

  The main thing is that you have to deal with people who have a strong personality but don't know what the fuck they are talking about. It's all that stuff that wears you down.

• by bechampion on 12/13/19, 9:48 AM

  I've contributed to a number of things during my time working with computers , unfortunately it has always been commits that fix things that stop me moving forward. nothing major.

• by RickJWagner on 12/14/19, 3:18 AM

  I do, as part of my work.

  But even if it wasn't part of my job, I'd want to be part of it. It's the best model for software development. (Lots of brains contributing.)

• by quickthrower2 on 12/13/19, 10:26 AM

  I do a minute amount of greenfield open source, but I can’t see myself doing PRs etc. seems too much like the 9-5 work! I might do if my main job wasn’t as a dev.

• by 11235813213455 on 12/13/19, 10:02 AM

  I do, at any possible occasion, for fixing/reporting bugs, proposing/discussing features, documenting, or simply curiosity and learning

• by jhatemyjob on 12/13/19, 10:14 AM

  I used to but now I don't, for the same reasons I restrain posting on internet forums like these

• by ablx000 on 12/13/19, 9:57 AM

  No - not enough free time.

• by aaronwp on 12/13/19, 9:50 AM

  if anything my terrible merges usually detract from it

• by maruko on 12/13/19, 10:01 AM

  Yup, I did contribute to some small OSS projects