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.

  • mastefetri@infosec.pub
    756·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • hperrin@lemmy.worldOP
      74·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee
        34·
        9 months ago

        oh man…

        People can be such dicks, you have my sympathy.

        I’ve been thinking about open sourcing a Node project of mine recently… concerning that this is the kind of thing to expect

        • hperrin@lemmy.worldOP
          31·
          9 months ago

          Well, this isn’t usual. This is actually really rare. Almost all of the interactions I have with users of my libraries are great. People are generally appreciative and kind, or at least not rude. This is an outlier, and I try not to let these things sour my experience.

          He’s frustrated and he’s being abrasive because of that, but that doesn’t make him a bad person. I try to respond without being rude back, but just stern. Usually when you do that, people will either not respond again or apologize. I’ve never had a user keep being rude, and if I did, I would just ban them.

          Sometimes people just kinda forget that on the internet they’re still talking to other real people, you know?

          • boeman@lemmy.world
            7·
            9 months ago

            You’re lucky. I left FOSS dev because I got tired of my free time being abused by people like the one in your post

            • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
              9·
              9 months ago

              I’ve had to adopt a two strikes policy towards these aggressive trolls, who treat you like your their personal servant, especially since they make up like <1% of ppl on issue trackers. After a warning, if they don’t play nice, then they’re out.

              It’s the only way to keep the coding experience enjoyable, and not suffer from burnout.

      • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.mlEnglish
        9·
        9 months ago

        Wait till they realize that’s literally the solution to a lot of Node related issues. It’s in its own folder for a reason.

    • appel@lemmy.ml
      429·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • RovingFox@infosec.pub
        187·
        9 months ago

        You are entitled to the truth. If the dev knows their software could have very damaging effects then that should be front and center on the software page.

        • appel@lemmy.ml
          105·
          9 months ago

          Usually it is? But ultimately it’s still your own responsibility. You did not pay the dev, the dev does not ask you to pay them, ergo the dev owes you diddly squad.

          • RovingFox@infosec.pub
            91·
            9 months ago

            Let’s be decent with each other, I don’t think my expectations are outrageous. I consider decent to make sure that the person that will use your software is aware of the dangers. And the best person to know those dangers is usually the dev.

    • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
      83·
      9 months ago

      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.

      CC BY-NC-SA 4.0