Comment on It's time to let go, Apache Software Foundation
lysdexic@programming.dev 1 year ago
I get it that the project isn’t getting work done on features, but it bothers me how the author tried to criticize basic code quality improvements such as fixing typos. I don’t know if the author is an active contributor to the project, but I think he shouldn’t really be criticizing the ones that actually contribute, wether their contributions are big or small.
thesmokingman@programming.dev 1 year ago
The commit history I looked through has multiple commits for something that should realistically be a single “linted the project” commit. It’s valid criticism in this case.
lysdexic@programming.dev 1 year ago
I don’t agree. The trunk features multiple typo fixes and whatnot, but they are days apart and spread over weeks on end.
If anything, this shows that no one is contributing to the project, and people like the blogger wasted more effort writing posts on how no one is doing anything while they themselves do nothing at all, and to make matters worse they criticise the ones actually contributing something.
If the blogger really feels strongly about this, he should put their money where their mouth is and lead by example.
thesmokingman@programming.dev 1 year ago
I’m sorry, which of those recent commits aren’t things a single linter run would catch? You had me second-guessing myself until I went through, again, a ton of diffs that just fix spacing, remove trailing whitespace, and basic typos things like CSpell can catch.
For example, the most recent commit as of writing has this: github.com/…/0c72d66f1a33589bfa5729d3fc3bdd5e8078…
A commit from months ago has this: github.com/…/5b179f6267cea1575fe6248ab8507bf71446…
These are the same fix on different files in different commits. That’s a linting problem that should be handled in a single commit (possibly a massive squashed PR), not something that should be drip-fed for months.
lysdexic@programming.dev 1 year ago
Ask yourself why the code still had those typos.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 year ago
But why care? Open source work is volunteer work. I’m not saying it is above criticism, but if truly the only people willing and wanting to work on the project want to make the commits like that as opposed to a single one, who cares? If you strongly believe in topics like this and want to work on the project then go help them out. But like I said, if the only people who actually want to work on the project want to work on it like that, then who cares?
Does Apache have incentive for the project to seem alive when it isn’t? Maybe? I don’t know. Do I think they’re trying to make it look alive? I feel pretty strongly they aren’t.
thesmokingman@programming.dev 1 year ago
It’s one thing to have a bunch of repos up that a couple of people are pushing around here and there. It’s a totally different thing for a major open source presence to prop up a project instead of retiring it. This isn’t some random project; it’s run by a major org, doesn’t have good contribution flows, and has been struggling since 2013.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 year ago
There was a security fix in February of 2023. I don’t think no releases for six months warrants going there.