• pulsewidth@lemmy.world
    16·
    10 days ago

    I’ve seen this on a few repos and it never came across too harsh, the posts tagged with it were deserving. Wish I’d noted the repo names…

    I’m fine with it tbh. FOSS devs need to squeeze every bit of enjoyment out of working on the project to keep motivated. If they (or mods) can drop a helpful reply and close an issue as ‘skill issue’ and get a little chuckle while they give their time for free answering poorly-written queries or bad bug reports then that’s a reasonable trade to keep them from burning out.

    • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      3·
      10 days ago

      Yeah, users might get a bit upset about “abrasive devs” but like, as you said, it’s devs that give their free time and energy into developing the project. Users honestly ought to respect that a lot more

    • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
      06·
      10 days ago

      Whats with the whole obessesion on “giving their time for free”? What does money have to do with this? It always comes across as a copout, implying you cant disagree with FOSS devs because they work for free. Just because they aren’t earning money off off of it (aside from donations) doesnt mean they aren’t earning some sort of reward for their work, whether its personal or social.

      Besides that, its pretty common to include that type of work on a resume, which is sort of turning that work into future earnings if it helps you get a high paying job.

      I appreciate what FOSS devs do, I just hear this victim narrative come up a lot in posts about them. I’m not even sure its FOSS devs posting that type of stuff on here, it might be other people defending them.

      • Routhinator@startrek.websiteEnglish
        6·
        10 days ago

        Anyone contributing to open source either does it:

        • on their companies dime, which means they work for a rare company building open source solutions
        • at the end of their day, on their weekend, or during their vacation

        Most FOSS devs are in position two. By a large margin. They could be relaxing, or earning more money doing freelancing to make ends meet, but instead they are trying to build something they want to see happen. That requires focusing on the important tasks and that often means not having time to spend on poorly reported bugs that are actually users just not RTFM and opening issues. It wastes the devs time, and projects with too much of this have development stagnate and are frequently shuttered.

        And devs that just do this to get a better job stop contributions once their new job takes over their life, and then the project suffers.

        Users need to appreciate FOSS devs more because some of the most important projects we need in 2025 are developed only because they want to see them happen.

      • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
        31·
        10 days ago

        Who said they were victims? I said I don’t see any harm in devs being mildly abrasive as long as it helps keep their passion for the project alive.

        How many projects do you pursue in your free time for no compensation that benefit strangers all over the world, whom can file complaints about your project, asking you to remedy or change it?

        FOSS dev work is not a victim-generating machine, it’s just entirely misunderstood and underappreciated. They make a project for them, then they m0ake it free to all… and the code, and the support. But, you ask them what they dislike the most - it’s the support. The endless poorly-filled tickets, the duplicate tickets the submitter didn’t search for, the user errors that are explained clearly in the documentation. That part is thankless work. That burns people out. But if they use a joke tag on a support ticket when they close it, it’s suddenly “omg, devs are so rude”.

        […] include that type of work on a resume, which is sort of turning that work into future earnings if it helps you get a high paying job.

        Ah yes, FOSS work should be its own reward because they can say they did it. Sort of like how interns should work for free at big companies ‘for experience’, and young artists/techs/small businesses should help influencers for free because they’re ‘working for exposure’. Now that attitude is a cop-out.

        • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
          05·
          10 days ago

          I think the way you frame it is absurd. They aren’t making things for themselves. If they were they wouldnt share it, or if they did they at least wouldnt maintain it or claim ownership over it. If devs open the door to allow outside help in, they really can’t act like they are victims when they have to socialize with other people.

          The fact that you focus on compensation really shows what’s important to you anyways, and betrays the whole spirit of FOSS in my opinion.

          • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
            2·
            9 days ago

            ^ See this is a great example of completely misunderstand FOSS. The vast majority are personal projects.

            The whole point of making them open source is to share the software they’ve created for others to enjoy/use, and share the code for others to learn from or utilize in their own projects. Its not to “open the door to let outside help in” as though they’re the ones gaining from the arrangement, lol… the vast majority of FOSS code on npm for example has a single maintainer. Open Source Security Foundation discussing npm stats of almost 60% of all projects having a single maintainer, here: https://github.com/ossf/tac/issues/101

            That you read my comments and focus on compensation, as though I haven’t spent 90% of the commentary on other aspects is weird. I’m done responding, but feel free to shout into the void.

  • 𝕲𝖑𝖎𝖙𝖈𝖍🔻𝕯𝖃 (he/him)@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    10 days ago

    RTFM is not a valid response if the manual contain no information on what the software is or even how to run it (or where to even find the manual, if the manual even exists). Is this a standalone program? A plugin for another program I’m already using? No links to any useful information whatsoever.

    Then the guy that sent me the original link tells me “oh yeah, all that info is on youtube”. Nope, I’m done. I’ll use something else.

    • freddydunningkruger@lemmy.world
      11·
      9 days ago

      Questions for you and your upvoters: when you were growing up, did you climb a lot of trees that were way too high for you or did they have fences to keep you away from them? Were you required to wear a helmet while riding a bike? Were you even allowed to bicycle anywhere on your own? Did you ever have to figure out how something works on your own, or has it always been your default response to give up when someone isn’t there spoon-feeding you the answers?

  • Axolotl@feddit.it
    9·
    11 days ago

    I swear, i have read some issues…

    So, i sometimes help people who have problems with an android CLI launcher

    There is a fucking command called, “help” and when you open the launcher one of the first thing you see is “write help to get a command list”, you write help and you get a list of all commands and there is even a wiki (not complete though) that explain some commands and they STILL ASK “can you add [command that already exist]?”.
    So i kinda feel why some people want a skill issue tag

    • SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world
      21·
      11 days ago

      I’d say “sure!” Then amaze them with how good and quick I am by telling them an hour or two later to "try it now "

      What you describe sounds more like a “competence” issue than a skill issue - can’t have the latter without first having the former.

      • ClassifiedPancake@discuss.tchncs.de
        3·
        10 days ago

        That way you teach them that

        • you are somehow a magician
        • they can ask for any stupid thing and you will do it right away for them because what else should you be doing
        • it doesn’t matter if this feature even fits into your plans because all you want to do is grant every wish
        • a new feature is written and will appear instantly at the users computer. Who cares about testing or of this breaks other features as long as this guy is happy

        They are beginner devs, so they should learn to understand how things work.

    • MotoAsh@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      I mean, not that I’m ever going to contest the existence of idiots, I myself sometimes cosplay as one, but if ‘help’ isn’t quoted in the original instructions, I’m not going to blame people for not parsing the sentence correctly.

  • TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca
    7·
    9 days ago

    It’s a valid label, I don’t even see it as particularly rude. The reason people go to school is literally a skill issue.

  • downvote_hunter@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    11 days ago

    Here’s what I’ll say, management taught a generation of devs to ask instead of researching, aka rtfm. If I had a quarter for the number of times I was told to ask for help sooner by a non tech manager I could have retired by now and had a farm.

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      11 days ago

      It’s because for every dev who asks too soon there’s another dev somewhere that doesn’t ask at all, bills 300 hours their first month without being asked to, delivers nothing because they refused to ask for help and couldn’t figure it out either. That dev is why people hate off-shoring to India. They did not work a second month.