Replies: 8 comments 3 replies
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Good article. I am somewhat guilty of this, so here are my thoughts. The great thing about OSS is drive-by improvements. If you have a problem, and you have the time and knowledge to fix it, then submit your fix, and everyone is better off for it. But you can't expect everyone that does that to stick around and become an "owner", myself included. It is a volunteer contribution after all, not a commitment to provide free labor in the future. I've fixed most of the problems that were affecting me, then other things took priority and I haven't been as active. Sometimes things get lost in the noise. I read the email notifications but the conversations are difficult to follow. Pictures don't show up. Bug reports and the PRs to fix them are in different threads. Tickets get renamed and then the notifications show up in a new email thread. Closing a PR and opening a second one to make a second attempt also shows up as a different thread, and I'm left wondering what's been merged and what is still left to do. Discussions veer off topic. Or discussions are split across several different tickets with a bunch of cross-references to previous comments, and I only see a number with no context and need to individually click and read each one. So it's easy to tune it all out as spam. Then the important question of "Does this ticket require my input?" gets lost in that spam. It requires re-reading and research, or a regular time commitment to staying up-to-date on all the latest issues, and I am far behind. It's the attention economy. |
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@turboencabulator Thanks for commenting. Before I answer, I'd appreciate other comments too. @espotek-org/maintainers anybody? |
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I also share the idea of @turboencabulator. I started getting involved a lot because there were things I wanted the tool to support. Over time, you see multiple people getting involved, and their interests don’t necessarily have to align with yours. Eventually, you find yourself contributing less and less compared to your peak times, and I believe that is normal. Once in a while, you also see other people’s work aligning with your interests, and you try to contribute as much as possible. To be more specific, my interest came into existence because I wanted to provide students with a cheaper instrumentation tool, and Labrador happens to be the perfect tool. Again, this depends on personal interest, but if there had been more traction in this direction, I could have devoted myself more to the project. I guess it’s the same for everyone, but we need a clear direction for the project to ensure consistent and persistent developers. |
@mmehari thanks for your comments. In #358 I've tried to summarize topics to stabilize Labrador further. I just updated it with a contribution from @turboencabulator. Maybe you wanted to add or pick a topic that is of interest to you? |
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Updated! Many thanks for your contributions and valuable feedback! I start to understand now where you are coming from. Having the role "Maintainer" is a privilige and a burden at the same time. Maybe we didn't have a common understanding of the role (i.e. could be addressed by creating a Codes of conduct (CoCs).md) ? Personally I gave up trying to follow issues just via emails a long time ago and use emails only as triggers for a later reading in GH when time allows. I guess this is aligned with/result of the attention economy. I change titles of issues intentionally after long times of silence/lack of progress in order to attract someone new to get involved. Sometimes this works (as in #333) sometimes not. Priorities are conveyed by:
Maybe I should have been clearer in communicating that (i.e could be addressed by creating Contributing.md)? The main priorities in last year from my view have been:
Every maintainer has the same permissions and right to set priorities. With all of the above in mind are you still comfortable owning the role? |
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That is a very good question. Asking myself if I can play the role of a maintainer (following the guidelines defined above), I don't see myself as such. I jumped to this role with the sole purpose of facilitating stagnant pull requests so that they got merged faster to the master code base. Now I see myself able to solve a small piece of the puzzle and for the majority of the issues and PRs presented, I just became a mere observer. Even though the project is not a big one, I see myself as a sub-system maintainer, specific to my field of expertise. And I guess if we are able to attract more maintainers with differentiated expertise, we can have a better maintainer-ship experience. |
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Hi guys. First thing's first, sorry for taking so long to reply to this thread. From my perspective as the founder/owner, I don't see being a Labrador maintainer as some grand responsibility or burden, but simply an acknowledgement that you're trusted to make good decisions and contributions to the project. Seriously, watching the project come back from a semi-stale legacy repo to an actual project that's attracting new people too has been amazing. I really do appreciate everyone's efforts in bringing this to life and growing it, especially given competing priorities with work/family/uni. I think one thing I should be doing myself is just checking into the project regularly, weekly at a minimum. Even if that's just posting 5 word comments or a party popper emoji, I think hearing nothing at all or watching a PR fizzle out can be extremely demotivating when you're making a contribution in good faith. To answer @mi-hol directly, I don't think we need a specific definition of expectations from maintainers. We all have different strengths and contribute in different ways, and I think a lot of potential new contributors might be discouraged from sharing if they're expected to do things a certain way. Or maybe that's just me, haha. I will also add, I think it's best to avoid a Code of Conduct since they tend to be associated with a certain type of political activism. Obviously if someone says or does something inappropriate we can address it as it comes up, but a formal CoC seems to just act as a lightning rod for trolls and bad actors. |
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To let everybody know, I'm buried under paid work for the next months, so have to put this project aside for the moment :( |
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That sounds more like a :) than a :( Congrats on getting some work man! |
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Hi everyone I got real busy for the last few months and have been away from my windows machine. I got a new terminator 40th anniversary mechanical keyboard thats super loud so I'm back in action and ready to get back to work on this. I work on robotic automated cotton candy machines and it's mainly in the early morning so I think I'll have more of my day to get back to this project. I need to pull the current version, probably in a new fork branch so I can be up to date, but I hope to contribute more. |
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If you're interested, there are things to be done to catch the Android app up to the desktop app, such as:
The calibration routine would require some java/jni for saving cal' results, but the rest I think will be pure c++/Dear ImGui |
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Today this article describing a subject affecting all OSS projects was published and I highly recommend to read it.
One year after we tried to change back to a more active development as mentioned here I'd believe we'd benefit from assessing the "state" of Labrador.
From my view a lot of progress was made by adding new features and solving several challenges to build the app for several OS environments!
These are achievements to be proud of.
May I kindly ask for your views please?
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