What is it like to be a free software maintainer
year 2013. I’ll find out about the alpha of a new project called the gnome Calendar. Interesting.
I love calendars.
"Cool, I will follow him," I said in my youth. In the branch of ui-rework was a stormy development. Every day a few new commits. Download, build, test. And suddenly there were no commits for the whole day. And the next day, too. A week, a month, a year ... I am disappointed. I do not want such a wonderful project to perish. You understand ...
')
I love calendars.
“No, we will not allow that,” my younger copy said again. We clone, collect, correct errors, send patches. The maintainer returned an interest in the project. The application has a new icon, and this is a serious matter. We get a new IRC channel (!) And make the first public release of the GNOME Calendar.
A year passes, 2015 comes. After working together for over a year, Erik appointed me as the actual maintainer of the GNOME Calendar (code, not package). A whole storm of emotions: pride in achievement; an exciting opportunity to realize your ideas; fear of cargo of responsibility.
But damn it, I am now the main maintainer of free software.
That was four years ago. Time passes, various events occur, experience accumulates. An experience that is different from what I expected.
Maintainer is a fun activity. A lot of good things happen. And bad too. And terrible. And strange.
Naturally, this feeling of success: you became, well, a maintainer ... To achieve this, you need to invest a lot in a long time. So they trust you. So you are worthy of trust. So you are quite experienced.
And communication. Familiarity with great people who know a lot and are willing to share, teach and help is life experience. There is a huge human value in communicating with great people.
If you like programming, bingo! Absolute happiness. Release planning, code review: sheer fun. You will fix bugs, find solutions, think and develop your code. There are many problems to solve, and you can solve some of them yourself.
And people. There are good people on this planet. You can send a letter with gratitude. Maybe someone will treat coffee. One way or another, people will find you.
People will really find you.
You see, sometimes your program, well, it falls. May lose someone's data. Somewhere a unique condition in the code that you never come across may work. People can be angry, upset, sad ... (Fairly: no one wants to lose information or disrupt the work process).
And they will find you.
You will be required to fix the software. You will scream. Sometimes someone will cross the line and insult you. “How can you not ( spend your free time ) correct this error with ultra-high priority that affected me?” Or “This is the most important function! Why is it not yet implemented (by you in your free time ) ?! ”or even“ You made me switch to program Y and now we must try to get me back. ” Here is what you come across.
You will become emotionally concerned with your code. You may be ashamed of what you have done and are doing. After all, there are bugs in the code, and a lot of tickets in the tracker, people constantly complain. (Yes, and someone will constantly remind you of this).
At some point, you look at the general list of problems and understand with despair that you can never fix all the errors.
If you view other people's commits, you are more likely to see comrades who disguise themselves as helpers, but are tagged for your position. And your code review will be regarded as an intellectual battle between good and evil. You will have to again and again explain and clarify, fight with circular reasoning and almost any means that people can use to win the argument instead of improving the code. And it is incredibly tiring.
You will be told that you need to take everything calmly . Do not pay attention, think positively and ignore all the crap that you throw. They will say: why are you so angry, you are, after all, a maintainer.
From work no more joy. You may want to leave, but you cannot because of the sense of responsibility for your code, the community, and the people who use your software.
Unfortunately, working as a free software maintainer may not affect your mental and emotional health.
Four years ago, I did not know for sure.
I love calendars.
"Cool, I will follow him," I said in my youth. In the branch of ui-rework was a stormy development. Every day a few new commits. Download, build, test. And suddenly there were no commits for the whole day. And the next day, too. A week, a month, a year ... I am disappointed. I do not want such a wonderful project to perish. You understand ...
')
I love calendars.
“No, we will not allow that,” my younger copy said again. We clone, collect, correct errors, send patches. The maintainer returned an interest in the project. The application has a new icon, and this is a serious matter. We get a new IRC channel (!) And make the first public release of the GNOME Calendar.
A year passes, 2015 comes. After working together for over a year, Erik appointed me as the actual maintainer of the GNOME Calendar (code, not package). A whole storm of emotions: pride in achievement; an exciting opportunity to realize your ideas; fear of cargo of responsibility.
But damn it, I am now the main maintainer of free software.
That was four years ago. Time passes, various events occur, experience accumulates. An experience that is different from what I expected.
Maintainer is a fun activity. A lot of good things happen. And bad too. And terrible. And strange.
Naturally, this feeling of success: you became, well, a maintainer ... To achieve this, you need to invest a lot in a long time. So they trust you. So you are worthy of trust. So you are quite experienced.
And communication. Familiarity with great people who know a lot and are willing to share, teach and help is life experience. There is a huge human value in communicating with great people.
If you like programming, bingo! Absolute happiness. Release planning, code review: sheer fun. You will fix bugs, find solutions, think and develop your code. There are many problems to solve, and you can solve some of them yourself.
And people. There are good people on this planet. You can send a letter with gratitude. Maybe someone will treat coffee. One way or another, people will find you.
People will really find you.
You see, sometimes your program, well, it falls. May lose someone's data. Somewhere a unique condition in the code that you never come across may work. People can be angry, upset, sad ... (Fairly: no one wants to lose information or disrupt the work process).
And they will find you.
You will be required to fix the software. You will scream. Sometimes someone will cross the line and insult you. “How can you not ( spend your free time ) correct this error with ultra-high priority that affected me?” Or “This is the most important function! Why is it not yet implemented (by you in your free time ) ?! ”or even“ You made me switch to program Y and now we must try to get me back. ” Here is what you come across.
You will become emotionally concerned with your code. You may be ashamed of what you have done and are doing. After all, there are bugs in the code, and a lot of tickets in the tracker, people constantly complain. (Yes, and someone will constantly remind you of this).
At some point, you look at the general list of problems and understand with despair that you can never fix all the errors.
If you view other people's commits, you are more likely to see comrades who disguise themselves as helpers, but are tagged for your position. And your code review will be regarded as an intellectual battle between good and evil. You will have to again and again explain and clarify, fight with circular reasoning and almost any means that people can use to win the argument instead of improving the code. And it is incredibly tiring.
You will be told that you need to take everything calmly . Do not pay attention, think positively and ignore all the crap that you throw. They will say: why are you so angry, you are, after all, a maintainer.
From work no more joy. You may want to leave, but you cannot because of the sense of responsibility for your code, the community, and the people who use your software.
Unfortunately, working as a free software maintainer may not affect your mental and emotional health.
Four years ago, I did not know for sure.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/449170/
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