What happened to the HN rule of "interpret everything with the most positive interpretation possible", when this is the top voted comment ?

It seems pretty obvious that the author doesn't intend to coerce anyone into doing anything.

It is overruled by the "law of the topmost comment" - the top comment is very likely a negative take on some subpart of the topic at hand, sometimes unrelated to the actual article, worded in the strongest way possible.

Everything about your comment is just wrong, so wrong.

The Law of the Topmost Comment says nothing about the relatedness to the OP's article[1]. I would suggest you research the topic further before making any more ill-informed comments on it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

your take on his take is meta-humorous.

If your argument holds, I would expect my agreeable comment of mine to be downvoted or replaced by a comment possibly critical of your viewpoint.

Well...

Although in general, you can't expect replies to other comments and comments on posts to follow the same patterns.

I thought that rule was for interpreting comments to keep civil discussion. Identifying possible interpretations of what is in an article and the biases it may either imply, be sourced from, or create in others seems a worthwhile topic to discuss about an article, though care must be taken to distinguish from 'could imply' and 'does imply'.

One such use of this is when someone posts an article they have some control over, knowing how the title biases or primes a reader can be very informative if they need to make a change because of an unintended effect, given the chance of communities entirely disconnected from hacker news viewing and possibly discussing the article.

Such office hours could have a price. Given how much consultants charge it wouldn't be unreasonable to charge $500/hour (being a maintainer comes with deep knowledge).

The article mentions that - he thinks of the 25 minute sessions as more about learning how people use the software, and increasing his ability to make something cool.

But he also points out it'd be an easy opportunity to up-sell some people on a consulting session if they want features he isn't as interested in developing :)

>What happened to the HN rule of "interpret everything with the most positive interpretation possible", when this is the top voted comment ?

What makes you think this comment is doing anything except providing positive feedback?

>It seems pretty obvious that the author doesn't intend to coerce anyone into doing anything.

Subtext is weird and dangerous. Using more accurate phrasing costs nothing and potentially averts problems.

> What makes you think this comment is doing anything except providing positive feedback?

It doesn't address any of the points mentioned in the article, and in fact, doesn't address the general theme of the article.

There is no subtext at all, the article is simple and clear, and one would be hard pressed to think that the author is trying to force anyone to do anything while reading it.

> Using more accurate phrasing costs nothing

The author did actually rename it now that it suddenly has a much wider audience! It's now "Open source projects: consider running office hours"

Given that, I think we can safely assume his original audience (blog regulars) didn't mind the title. I realize accuracy is only a small effort, but it IS an effort. Why spend more time on it than is necessary for the audience?

Sorry for that.

I have forgotten about this guidelines. I will try to follow them better in future (ling is in footer and leads to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ).

Though my comment was at least attempt to be "this title if taken alone is problematic, maybe changing it would better" not "you are awful person and your title was bad".

It is likely that I should be formulate it better and spend more time on making it (though I admit that I expected that it will be ignored rather than upvoted to the top comment...).

Well, someone changed the title and that will change responses to it...

The qualifier "consider" is very important but was removed by the OP.

Isn't that about comments only?

It seems pretty obvious to me that should means should.

Pro tip: if you don't mean should, don't write should.

Another pro tip: Never use the word "should".

Avoiding reasoning about the nature of your beliefs (and why others might be subject to those beliefs) is a weakness in thinking.

"Should" is also the easiest way to create a clickbait headline to argue about because there are so many individual interpretations and following justifications of "should".

Depending upon the context, "should" can run the gamut of "here's an idea that you might want to consider" to "you have a serious moral failing if you don't do things this way."

Pro tip: the best RFC is 2119 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119

Don't you mean "Pro tip: you SHOULD read RFC 2119"

The rules are rarely followed. So many times I get bunches of silent downvotes just because...

Unfortunately that rule only applies to comments, not voting.

I don't think this is about obligations. I feel the developer had a hugely positive experience in inviting interested strangers for 20 minute chats and wanted to spread the positivity. Seems like a nice person, with a nice project, and clearly some extra time available.

I referred specifically to the title in my comment.

It is part of things personally irritating to me, and something what is biggest threat to small open source projects that I like.

People are mistaken in thinking that having an open source project implies any obligation beyond lack of malice.

And people tired by dealing with that are one of top reason why open source projects disappear or are never created.

The title is kinda unclear for someone non-English/US, for me office hours only means the actual hours when things are worked on (rather than any kind of availability time).

So skimming the title it quickly I read it as "Open source projects should run on office hours" since my mind filled that in, kinda implied that someone in another part of the world should adjust their life hours to contribute to OSS.

(Yes after reading the article i realized that it was wrong but this is about the title)

I am a native speaker (well, Scottish, so some may disagree ;), and I didn't get the title either. Maybe it's an American thing, by "office hours" to me means 9-5, local time - you know, the kind of hours that people typically work in an office.

To me (non-native, Spain), I read "office hours" as the time when I was a teacher in university: you have a set period of time where you are marked as available in your office for student consultation. I'm pretty sure that's what "office hours" is supposed to mean, although in Spanish and Catalan the word used would literally translate as "consultation hours" (horas/hores de consulta).

The phrase is used in the same sense at universities in England.

The term "office hours" in American English can mean either of these concepts, but in the current context it clearly means the one you suggest ("horas de consulta").

This is the same in the US based on my experience

In American English it can mean that too. The meaning of "certain hours where you work" and "certain hours where you have an 'open office'" overlap enough to be confusing, yes.

When you run your own organization you can set your own office hours.

> you know, the kind of hours that people typically work in an office.

It's exactly the same thing. There is no difference. This guy "works" in a home office on his project and he does so by talking with contributors (his customers essentially) instead of just sending a message on a mailing list or by posting on an issue tracker.

Where do you see the difference between this and a lawyer being open from 9-5 for customers? They are still his office hours and "office hours" primarily matter to outsiders who have to schedule an appointment.

No, this is actually not what it means. "Office hours" has two distinct meanings: one is the hours you are in the office. That is not what is meant here. The other meaning, which is what is meant here, is specifically designated times when experts make themselves available for random questions about the thing they're an expert on.

For example, I work on a project that heavily depends on "library foo". The guy who wrote "library foo" (who is an employee of my company) holds "office hours" for one hour every Monday, where he commits to being in a Zoom call that other employees can join to discuss questions about "library foo". That does not mean he only works for one hour a week.

The difference in usage is not localized English: it's cultural student/academic vs. employed.

To a student with no professional experience, "office hours" are posted times when a professor is available to further mentor and guide a student. "office hours" are designated times outside of the scheduled class times and professors are generally required to provide them so others can benefit.

To a professional and others with white-collar jobs, "office hours" are hours are times when an employee must be seen by a manager to be considered working. Times outside of the scheduled work times are called "outside of office hours" and employees are generally expected to provides them so others can benefit.

To clarify the distinction is both academic AND language/culture. The concept of professorial office hours, and calling it "office hours" is not universal to all of academia, as people there speak different languages, and use then different words for things. Even if they might also use English, it doesn't mean they would call it that.

I think the authors explanation with the german word "Sprechstunde" is really great. There is a clear distinction between "Arbeitszeit" which is the working time and the "Sprechstunde" which is the time someone is available to talk to.

I added that paragraph about fifteen minutes ago based on feedback in the comments here.

Props on recognizing issues in your work. The article has solid advice so getting lost in the message would be a shame.

I'm not a native english speaker either, but typically, in American usage, "office hours" refers to published, allocated hours for someone, such as a professor at a university, to allow walk-ins where (s)he can answer students' questions 1-on-1 above and beyond the classroom hours. I guess this expands to other settings too.

I recognized that it refers to some regular hours when person may be contacted for discussion.

Still, I am deeply opposed to formulating in ways that suggests any form of obligation/entitlement/expectation.

Though I expect that in many cases it would be a good and useful idea!

Rule of thumb when speaking or writing: replace "should" with "could". Simple way to avoid implying obligation.

"could" is true but irrelevant and therefore implies subtext. I don't think "could" would be much better, it ought to just be re-phrased as a suggestion in the first place.

So we "should" replace "should" with "could"? XD

You could.

I would.

I understand your point, and I also think it's weird how people feel entitled to the free time of others. Still - here the choice of title has gotten in the way of what the author wanted to convey, and I feel the story deserves a read beyond the title.

Best thing you haven is not contact information out there what so ever. If you think i owe you something - fork you. Patch is welcome!

Headline changed to "Open source projects: consider running office hours"

Hey you responded to my comments elsewhere, but I just saw this - this definitely changes the tone for me, thank you!

Thanks!

Sadly I can not edit my comment, in this case it would be useful :(

The curse of snappy titles. A clearer version of my message is in the third paragraph:

"I’d like to encourage more open source project maintainers to consider doing something similar."

I just mentally prefix titles like this with [The author's opinion is that...]

I 100% agree with that version!

I saw the title and thought to myself, "No one has the right to tell open source volunteers how to spend their time! The only way an article with that title is acceptable is if it's talking about benefits to the DEVELOPER, not the user."

Then I read the article and it IS using "should" in the sense of "I found this beneficial, you may too" rather than "this is an obligation".

For me (a non-native English speaker) the title was confusing for a related, but entirely different reason: it's referring to the kind of "office hours" a professor might have, not saying that you "should" work on your open source project during office hours (i.e. from Monday through Friday from 9 AM till 5 PM).

>saying that you "should" work on your open source project during office hours (i.e. from Monday through Friday from 9 AM till 5 PM).

That was my first impression too.

Had to think that M-F 9-5 would not be enough for some projects, in total hours alone not just to accommodate different time zones.

Doesn't seem so bad to me, my "office" is staffed 24/7 and I always look forward to solving a user's million-dollar problem with a single phone call at any hour.

Even if it's not one of my regular clients. That's how some of the best ones got that way.

Should doesn't mean must, the title is ok with me.

See also :)

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119

The IETF is not the ones deciding how the English language works, especially not outside of their own specifications ;)

But, if we're using IETFs grammar:

"Should" here implies unless you have a good reason, you should do this. For anything related to open source (which is based on voluntary contributions and practices), that's a bad choice.

"May" would be a better pick here, to remove the assumed obligation to run office hours.

This was meant as humour, hence the explicit smiley face on the end.

I can't imagine a more HN thing than someone referencing a technical specification to define the word 'should'.

It was an open goal, how could I not? :)

The point of this article was to address the fact that open source project rarely get good user feedback. Developers wouldn't necessarily be the person offering time to talk with users, it would be the project owner. I know open-source projects don't have traditional roles like a product owner or scrum master, but there's still somebody prioritizing a list of features that have been requested. Offering to meet with real users provides valuable insight into what they actually need. This can help with prioritizating features, and even help with making decisions about whether to approve a random PR you get for a feature you didn't put into the backlog based on whether it might make future real needs harder to achieve.

The submission title appears to be editorialized. Original title is "Open source projects: consider running office hours"

And the article talks about the purpose being for gathering feedback (think UX sessions), not for gratuitous support. Meaning that goal is for the project maintainer to draw benefits from others donating their time.

Personally I think this a really clever idea

Actually, the submission title is referencing the original title of the article, but the author edited it and left a note at the bottom:

>Update 5th March 2021: The original headline of this piece was “Open source projects should run office hours”. This was being misinterpreted as yet another demand for free labor from open source maintainers, so I changed it to “Open source projects: consider running office hours”—less pithy, but it better reflects my actual message here.

It's a clickbait title. That being said the real idea is the freemium consulting concept. Basically open source Devs give free consulting for a short time and then upselling to full on consulting for extended periods at full price.

In theory it could be a way to fund open source dev.

It's actually not so much about free consulting where I help them, it's more the other way round: they help me figure out how to improve the software by showing me what they've built or talking about what they want to achieve.

It's more of a market research exercise than freemium consulting.

That's not to say it couldn't also turn into a profitable exercise through up-selling consultancy, but that's not the primary goal.

Oh, I get the idea that the market research has a benefit as well. However, a major issue with Open Source development is funding it so that it becomes self-sustainable, especially for situations where the code requires significant work to keep it up to date.

I feel the gem in this article is the freemium idea for consulting on open source development.

Depending on license, aren't you obligated to provide a repo if you're using the code (ie GPL)? Or do I misunderstand it?

Under GPL-like licenses you are obligated to provide source code if you provide a binary. If you don’t distribute anything, e.g. you only use something privately, then there are effectively no obligations. Of course, if you don’t provide source code for your project (whether legitimately or not), then by definition your project is not open source in the first place.

Note that the GPL specifically does not require publishing the source code, or having to distribute it along with the binaries. It allows the alternative of only providing the source code upon request by any third party, to that same third party.

> Under GPL-like licenses you are obligated to provide source code if you provide a binary

No, this requirement applies only if you are using somebody's else GPL code, and it's meant to allow other developers and users to benefit from the work done.

It does not apply to the original author because the author owns the copyright of that code.

That seems to be disputed, see https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/27768/is-there-a-loo....

If you're redistributing someone else's GPL code in binary form, you also have to redistribute it in source form. A software license doesn't impose any restrictions on the person writing the code. It provides the conditions under which others can use it.

There are a few MUSTs if using GPL, yes (btw, GPL is considered a "free" license, not a "open source" one), but providing a repository is not one of them. Although you do need to provide the source (in any means you want, as long as it's accessible, making a repository is one of the ways, bundling a zip file would be another).

Short version of your obligations if using GPL as a license: https://tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-general-public-license-v3-...

Those are obligations if you're redistributing someone else's GPL code. You'd have to sue yourself to ensure compliance with your own license if it applied to you.

> btw, GPL is considered a "free" license

Yes.

> not a "open source" one

It is also an open source license.

So don't do it? If it doesn't work for you, remove yourself from the target audience of this post lmao

Classic SHOULD vs MUST.

This comment thread is being upvoted because.. wait we're not supposed to suggest someone didn't read the article here are we :)

I agree with you, but the article is not about that.

I referred specifically to the title in my comment.

Yes, we're aware. The criticism is that you didn't engage with the substance of the actual idea, and instead spawned a ten-page thread about something the article doesn't say.

> In general, fact that someone created or maintains or supports open source projects should not be considered to create any obligations beyond lack of malice and abuse.

I think we need to separate open source products and open source projects. A product being the main product of a for-profit company or a marketing tool by a for-profit company and a project being something that someone released just to be nice, to show off, etc.

I literally tried to use a dev tooling SaaS service their offical integration broke my build in 3 different ways. What makes this all the worse is that the integration shouldn't even be enabled in test mode. It was configured not to, but still it broke my build in 3 different ways. I literally decided to use a competitor straight away. But wanted to at least let them know of the issues. The tickets to their offical integration were responded to by volunteers. After a few days I noticed no employees of this company that raised 65 Million had shown up to look into build breaking bugs in their dev tooling product. I tweeted that they were relying on volunteers to do support. The CTO said that was absolutely not true then said with open source people will volunteer and that is a benefit. So in the one tweet is contradicted himself, weirdly this tweet was well liked. They went on to use the fact I am free to use a self hosted OSS version of the product, support is a bit much to ask. My issue wasn't that they had volunteers helping out, it was that it was literally only volunteers. The volunteers rightly pointed out they're volunteers and said the company provides paid support. Then went on to say that the company won't be able to help since they write and maintain the product and they're the domain experts for this area. Again, relying... Both the issues ended up being closed because "We don't think it's our code and we can't reproduct". Considering these are build breaking bugs that you will encounter while onboarding to the paid product that response is not acceptable. It is acceptable in this is free and unoffical.

Open Source is not an excuse to be unprofessional. Saying "Well you don't have to use our paid product you can use OSS" when someone points out the support provided for the paid product is unprofessional and is not a valid excuse for providing crappy support. Saying this is GitHub and not a valid place to expect a company to support their techincal products is not professional. As an industry, we need to step away from the unprofessionalism that open source has brought to the table. People literally have talks saying do open source it's good for your professional career and in the day tweet complaining and asking if an open source project they use to boost their professional career is dead.

Honestly, I think free open source for companies should be a thing of the past and we should move towards paid license with paid support. The number of companies that will be completely screwed if one over worked guy in Milan decides to stop working on a hobby project is unacceptable.

We should be creating obligiations on things that are clearly for professional gain and putting a price tag on those obligations.

/rant

You're completely right. However, I notice a change in behavior in developers during the last decade. They view open source as an extension of their duties as software developers, i.e., something that they have to do. Following this point of view, they consider that working on a project brings commitments as if they were in a paid job, and started projecting this belief on others. I think this is very disturbing.

You may have gotten this in reverse direction: it's rather that users of open-source software often desire support, and sometimes speak about it, and developers then tend to have hard time managing psychological boundaries with regards to answering that desire/expectation. Which is generally a nontrivial thing between people in any relation.

Yes, the idea behind the office hours is that you can point people at your calendar. If the calendar is full then that's how it is. Maybe the team has to grow to accommodate the increased demand but the maintainer certainly won't spend an extra hour working on the project beyond the time he allocated.

Compare that to the usual issue grind. You feel compelled to respond as fast as quickly and maybe even spend your whole day because you know that the backlog will grow worse tomorrow.

I have no expectations of other open-source maintainers that I don’t have of myself.

Interesting historical note, this is how Chef was born.

Adam Jacobs of Chef was running a Puppet consulting company (hjksolutions). He ran into a bug (#1010) that he couldn’t solve and used up a ton of Luke’s time. Luke worked hard on it but couldn’t reproduce it and after devoting a week or two on it told Adam that he was the only one with this problem and would need to pay him as a consultant for any further effort.

Adam was (is) an incredibly pushy jerk and demanded that Luke, who wasn’t making a penny off of Puppet, put his life on hold to fix this for Adam’s customers.

Luke basically said “fuck you, pay me” so Adam started Chef (a billion dollar company).

User’s sense of entitlement is powerful.

User’s sense of entitlement is probably driven by many companies astroturfing FOSS.

People are getting used to the freemium model popular in software, apps, games, and the "free" model of gmail/youtube/facebook (where you pay with your privacy).