I find it the height of arrogance to ask someone to do more work without offering him something in return.
— Please change your free service, J. B. Rainsberger
I wonder if that rule applies to free software (Perl 6, Parrot, CPAN modules) as well.
You have an extra comma in your hyperlink. Could you please rewrite it?
Re:Comma
chromatic on 2007-10-30T22:04:34
What's in it for... oh, irony. Cool!
Re:eh
chromatic on 2007-10-31T17:16:00
That's very true. "Please" offered in all sincerity goes a long way toward meliorating my desire to help people.
Re:eh
Stevan on 2007-11-01T19:58:24
Please finish Perl 6. Pretty pretty please, with (syntactic) sugar on top?
(Note the italics for extra sincerity)
- Stevan
Re:eh
chromatic on 2007-11-01T21:59:49
I will if you check in my For Great Speed! patches to Moose.
Re:eh
Stevan on 2007-11-04T01:09:14
I got a better idea. Want a commit bit?
:) - Stevan
Re:eh
chromatic on 2007-11-04T08:51:18
I nearly broke all of CPAN with a misguided commit to Test::Builder::Tester. Of course I do!
Perhaps some context would help
jbrains on 2007-11-09T07:54:56
rjbs, I hope you don't mind my providing some context, because I don't think it's necessarily obnoxious to stand up for one's friend.
I interpreted what Reg wrote as saying he was upset by receiving these requests, although I never confirmed that with him. He did say he was thinking of giving away less free stuff, so that was a pretty big clue. His follow-up, calling my remarks "refreshingly frank" further hinted to me that he saw me standing up for him, rather than overblowing the situation.
I mention this only because it was my intention to do something positive by standing up for people, like us, who give a lot away. Yes, we do it because we like it, but every time a person takes advantage of our good nature, he chips away at that enjoyment. I thought I saw that happening and I decided to speak out.
I would like to edit something I wrote. I wish I'd written "You want a custom experience? Offer something, like money, sincere gratitude or some other quid pro quo." I judge from chromatic's response that he believes I'm hung up on money. I don't think I am. I simply found the situation wrong and I wanted to speak up about it.
Thinking back, I stand behind my sentiment: I think it's arrogant to ask for more free stuff without offering something in return. To claim there is "absolutely nothing" arrogant about it seems to be a difficult position to defend. As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I could have done a better job editing my comments, but the sentiment remains. To expect more free stuff from someone who already gives you a lot of really good free stuff is, well, not cool.
Take care.
Re:Perhaps some context would help
chromatic on 2007-11-09T08:29:16
I judge from chromatic's response that he believes I'm hung up on money.Not one bit! I'm hung up on people who complain about release dates of free software they haven't even contributed gratitude toward. I can't remember you ever being in that category, so as far as I can remember you're a decent human being who wrote something I thought I could twist toward my nefarious purposes.
Re:Perhaps some context would help
jbrains on 2007-11-09T09:08:56
Aha! I understand better. Thanks, and oops. I read irony, but you were tenting your fingers.Re:Perhaps some context would help
rjbs on 2007-11-09T12:50:20
I think it's arrogant to ask for more free stuff without offering something in return. To claim there is "absolutely nothing" arrogant about it seems to be a difficult position to defend. As usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I could have done a better job editing my comments, but the sentiment remains. To expect more free stuff from someone who already gives you a lot of really good free stuff is, well, not cool.I just think you're conflating two things that I think are distinct: asking for something and expecting something. I don't mind getting requests for free somethings, as long as they are not so frequent as to constitute a denial of service attack on my day. I just mind it when they have an implicit expectation that they will be granted. Those kinds of requests I expect only from my wife and employer.
Re: On Gratitude
jbrains on 2007-11-09T08:22:07
Exactly. I think a lack of willingness to delete or ignore the stuff you don't want to read is pretty much the same as not taking no for an answer.
How would you feel if someone asked you to remove a bunch of superfluous features from your module? (Your module is probably really good, so pretend you have superfluous features.)
Re: On Gratitude
drhyde on 2007-11-12T16:05:27
If I agree that the feature is superfluous, then I might document it as being deprecated, make it spit out a warning (which can be turned off) and eventually remove the feature a few years down the line. In fact I'm about to do that with Number::Phone. But first I need to be convinced that it's superfluous. But merely saying that the feature can be implemented by the user with such-and-such a combination of calls to my other functions isn't enough to convince me. I need to be convinced that the feature itself is Bad. In the case of Number::Phone, supporting three different calling conventions is a Bad Thing.Re: On Gratitude
jbrains on 2007-11-12T18:56:46
Thanks, but I didn't ask you what you would do; I asked you how it would make you feel. I can infer something from your response, but I'd rather not do that.Re: On Gratitude
drhyde on 2007-11-12T21:03:49
Here you are then - it wouldn't bother me in the slightest.Re: On Gratitude
jbrains on 2007-11-13T00:24:20
Thanks for your replies and for your openness.
Re:Sure, it applies to free software
chromatic on 2007-11-09T08:25:55
Mostly, though, when a free software project releases new code, I just say "Thank you" in some way.That's almost always more than sufficient. Certainly a sincere "thank you" motivates me as much as anything does.
