
Apathy of the Commons - bbgm
https://stuartsierra.com/2016/07/18/apathy-of-the-commons
======
rubber_duck
>But sometimes that’s the work that needs to be done.

So pay me. Like you said - it's work - I expect to be paid for work and if you
need it done or it's in your interest it gets done - pay someone to do it (or
do it yourself).

~~~
bartread
Absolutely. Otherwise it has to compete with all the other things I could be
doing with my discretionary time (otherwise known as the rest of my life) and
I suspect therefore isn't going to come out on top.

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jimmytidey
A bug that looks easy but is in fact hard is the worst case: low reputational
payoff, but very high effort.

The first thought is that there ought to be an objective measure of the work
done that can incentive contribution by accurately reflecting what someone has
added to the community. On the other hand, measure lines of code added might
have some unintended consequences...

It seems to me though that OP did appreciate the amount of effort involved,
and presumably even more so because it was unglamorous work.

If all the community members understand that, then it seems to me the system
is working to some extent. If peers are able to value the most useful
contributions - that's what you are looking for, right?

~~~
eevilspock
How about reputational points gained tied to the number of votes on the bug?
This would both encourage coders to fix bugs that impact more people and
encourage users to voice their opinion (vote on bugs) more often and more
intelligently.

Alternatively, the maintainer assigns a point value to each bug, and whoever
fixes it gets those points, which is then used to rank contributors within
that project (but not across projects because of bug valuation inconsistencies
and differing values of the projects themselves).

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clifanatic
> Everyone wants to be the master architect of the groundbreaking new
> framework in the hip new language.

Especially considering that more and more companies are (trying to) use this
as a prerequisite for finding any paid work. I can't find the link, but I
remember reading a writeup from a startup whose hiring manager required a
couple of pull requests from well-known open source software as part of the
interview process. This wasn't Facebook or Google, either, just another no-
name startup.

~~~
bartread
I've seen this, and it's a ridiculous pre-requisite. If I'm going to work on
side projects they need to be things I find interesting, and that I'm willing
(and able) to work on when I'm tired/hungry/cranky/otherwise worn out at the
end of a day of paid work... which pretty much means they need to be _my_ side
projects, rather than dull PRs on some OSS uber-project where I maybe have to
deal with a load of politics, jump through a load of hoops, or perhaps the
barrier to entry for useful contribution is too high (e.g., due to project
complexity).

------
jackbravo
Drupal has this problem, and has tried to counter this fact with:

\- novice tags for bugs [1] \- mentions on your project bio page detailing how
many contributions you have on drupal projects in the past three monts (even
if it was only rolling a patch or commenting, if your name is just mentioned
in the commit, you don't need to be the author) [2] \- and a lot of
documentation on getting started [3]

And Dries (the creator of drupal) touch this same topic (comparing open source
with the commons) in a 2014 DrupalCon keynote):
[https://youtu.be/4NN5EM4CYVE?t=10m45s](https://youtu.be/4NN5EM4CYVE?t=10m45s)

[1]
[https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/search?status[0]=1&sta...](https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/search?status\[0\]=1&status\[1\]=8&status\[2\]=13&issue_tags_op=%3D&issue_tags=Novice)
[2] [https://www.drupal.org/u/catch](https://www.drupal.org/u/catch) [3]
[https://www.drupal.org/contributor-tasks](https://www.drupal.org/contributor-
tasks) [https://www.drupal.org/getting-
involved](https://www.drupal.org/getting-involved)

------
MattyRad
I enjoyed this article, because it's just a concise, interesting observation
of open-source incentives. There's no grandiose point or sweeping call to
action, it just states an interesting observation.

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ThatGeoGuy
An old LKML message that perhaps conveys why / how this is important:
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2004/12/20/255](https://lkml.org/lkml/2004/12/20/255)

I think we often forget that sometimes, even just reporting bugs can be
incredibly valuable, much less fixing them. Sure a lot of this is thankless
work, but many OSS projects don't even get bug reports when they need them
most.

------
huherto
I liked it very much. Applies not only to open source projects but also to
regular software that you get payed for. May be you should not try get
satisfaction from recognition, but get it from knowing that you are doing a
good job; every day. Let the job be the reward. And yes, programming is a hard
job.

------
rymohr
I'm not sure I'd consider this apathy. My guess is that everyone who
considered fixing this over those 8 years instinctively knew it was going to
be a leaky fix. And that "fixing" it would likely lead to more bugs.

------
pif
After reading the article, I don't understand why the author didn't fix the
bug himself.

~~~
mnemonicsloth
Are you sure you aren't being passive aggressive? This is a problem with open
source software. If you point out a problem one person at least will tell you
that you should be the one to fix it.

~~~
Analemma_
Maybe, but it's hard to be moved and stirred by the author's ethical call to
action in the last sentence when he himself clearly can't overcome the
behavior he's complaining about.

~~~
mordocai
So you are only allowed to point out problems that you yourself don't suffer
from?

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lurkinggrue
Perhaps we can use deep learning to find bugs in the code?

