"Hi, I see you're the owner of this 6000-line mess of a component, could you answer some questions for me?"
"I don't own it, I didn't write it, and I don't understand it even slightly. I just made a one-line bug fix for one function in it a year ago and nobody has touched it since, so my name is on top of the git history."
Makes you wonder if the reason why some trivial bug in a closed source project goes unfixed for years; is because all the engineers are afraid to touch the code in some obscure library and instantly become its new 'owner'.
Yeah at work I’m paid to own some components that I didn’t write and don’t entirely understand, so I figure my job is to help discover answers for the questions that arise.
I would not want to be a public maintainer though. I don’t have the patience or motivation to use my spare time for that.
Jia Tan has entered the chat. (Jia Tan was the alias used by the group that backdoored XZ utils by becoming a maintainer)
My other comment in this thread has more details, but in my experience it’s more common to encounter projects that don’t want new maintainers or forks. They’re happy with the status quo with their name at the top but also don’t want to let go of control or see competing forks created.
That's what we do in closed source corporate code.
"Hi, I see you're the owner of this 6000-line mess of a component, could you answer some questions for me?"
"I don't own it, I didn't write it, and I don't understand it even slightly. I just made a one-line bug fix for one function in it a year ago and nobody has touched it since, so my name is on top of the git history."
"Cool, so as the owner could you tell me..."
Makes you wonder if the reason why some trivial bug in a closed source project goes unfixed for years; is because all the engineers are afraid to touch the code in some obscure library and instantly become its new 'owner'.
I'd be tempted to try to trick them into merging a small change so then they're the new owner and have to figure it out themselves.
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Yeah at work I’m paid to own some components that I didn’t write and don’t entirely understand, so I figure my job is to help discover answers for the questions that arise.
I would not want to be a public maintainer though. I don’t have the patience or motivation to use my spare time for that.
I like this, turning software maintenance into a long-running game of tag.
2 replies →
Jia Tan has entered the chat. (Jia Tan was the alias used by the group that backdoored XZ utils by becoming a maintainer)
My other comment in this thread has more details, but in my experience it’s more common to encounter projects that don’t want new maintainers or forks. They’re happy with the status quo with their name at the top but also don’t want to let go of control or see competing forks created.
"Pikaboo maintainer is who last touched it. Patch is wellcome!"