

No one likes an unkempt public area - Open Source guidelines to Cleanliness - edwardhotchkiss
http://edwardhotchkiss.com/blog/2012/03/19/no-one-likes-an-unkempt-public-area-open-source-guidelines-to-cleanliness/

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tomjen3
> You have an obligation to release code that is tested. Automated spec is
> preferrable. You have an obligation to document your code and build process,
> most especially — your contribution and pull request policy

No I don't. Unless I signed a document saying otherwise you should consider
yourself damn lucky that you get to access my source code.

~~~
edwardhotchkiss
Correct. You don't, unless you'd like other developers to contribute to your
project.

You also owe it to yourself. But hey: if you want to post sloppy seconds
untested code on GitHub - consider yourself lucky that they let anyone in.

~~~
city41
I'm honestly not sure if I want other developers to contribute. All of my
github repos are personal projects. I have no problem with them being open
source (and they are all rather tidy and well tested btw) and no problem at
all with patches, pull requests, bug reports and such from other people. But
if one took off then suddenly my little baby project becomes a second full
time job. Popular open source projects are a lot of work for the maintainers.
I'd only want that to happen if it was a project I was particularly passionate
about.

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kstenerud
Open source developers tend to fall into two camps:

1\. I am providing a public service, so I'll do my best to make it simple,
complete, accessible, and reliable.

2\. I've invested a lot of my precious time writing this code and am
graciously providing it free of charge. Therefore, you should consider
yourself lucky that I'm allowing you to use it at all.

In my experience, it's difficult for those in one camp to find common ground
with the other. Group 2 tends to flourish in wild frontiers, whereas those in
group 1 tend to do better in more established areas.

~~~
edwardhotchkiss
I 100% agree, and per @tomjens3 I see the distinction!

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gte910h
I think this is a bit uppity.

Many people are graciously letting people share in stuff that they themselves
need to have. It's laughable to obligate the guy throwing the free picnic or
donating his used couch to anything and similarly so for given code.

