Don't be that guy.

hperrin@lemmy.world to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 1786 points –

When you're talking to an open source dev, just remember that they are literally giving you their time for free, and they are people who don't like to be treated poorly.

Edit: Just to be clear, I don’t mean any ill will toward the guy. He’s frustrated and he’s just taking it out in the wrong venue at the wrong people, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.

Edit 2: The reinstalling he’s talking about is NPM. So just running npm install. It’s because he tried removing the node_modules directory, which is a reasonable thing to do, but it means you need to reinstall the modules with that command.

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And yet, this is the issue that gets a response instead of a silent closed offtopic wontfix.

Even if that was true effectiveness is never acceptable justification for cruelty

Never is a strong word when a collection of people all came together and agreed that Windows 10 should force updates.

You’ve clearly never worked with any psychopaths or narcissists. Often, pointed (though importantly, carefully offline and undocumented) cruelty is one of the only ways to effectively punch back and make people like that stop trying to fuck with you, because many people like that only really respond to threat dynamics. It’s not terribly common, and it’s not fun to do, but it definitely is warranted once in a blue moon.

Or even worse:

Thanks. Send a complete log of every software on your system, two videos of the bugs in action, and a detailed analysis of what you've had for breakfast.

It is, until it isn’t. I’ve seen devs delete or abandon their projects because of too mush abuse. Nobody likes being yelled at. (Unless that’s your kink. I won’t judge.)