"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'.
Mostly it is that you don’t go around fixing random stuff.
You might actually get in trouble picking up stuff that is not a priority.
Company I work for is less strict so we do “fix anything Friday”.
But for some other companies you might get a slap on the wrist for not following the plan and product owners pick what gets fixed and what not based on business plan. If there are big customers nagging - bug will be fixed asap.
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.
"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..."
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.
The Passing of the Curse
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'.
Mostly it is that you don’t go around fixing random stuff.
You might actually get in trouble picking up stuff that is not a priority.
Company I work for is less strict so we do “fix anything Friday”.
But for some other companies you might get a slap on the wrist for not following the plan and product owners pick what gets fixed and what not based on business plan. If there are big customers nagging - bug will be fixed asap.
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.
I like to refer to it as the cooties ownership model. I.e. once you touch it you have cooties.
1 reply →