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s1mplicissimuslast Friday at 2:01 PM1 replyview on HN

> Releasing a standalone utility makes iteration much faster, partially because one is not bound to the release cycles of distributions.

which certainly is a valid way or prioritizing. similarly, distros/users may prioritize stability, which means the theoretical improvement would now be stuck in not-used-land. the value of software appears when it's run, not when it's written


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KPGv2last Friday at 2:13 PM

> the value of software appears when it's run, not when it's written

Have you ever tried to contribute to open source projects?

The question was why wouldn't someone writing software not take the route likely to end in rejection/failure. I don't know about you, but if I write software, I am not going to write it for a project whose managers will make it difficult for my PR to be accepted, and that 99% likely it never will be.

I will always contribute to the project likely to appreciate my work and incorporate it.

I'll share an anecdote: I got involved with a project, filed a couple PRs that were accepted (slowly), and then I talked about refactoring something so it could be tested better and wasn't so fragile and tightly coupled to IO. "Sounds great" was the response.

So I did the refactor. Filed a PR and asked for code review. The response was (after a long time waiting) "thanks but no, we don't want this." PR closed. No feedback, nothing.

I don't even use the software anymore. I certainly haven't tried to fix any bugs. I don't like being jerked around by management, especially when I'm doing it for free.

(For the record, I privately forked the code and run my own version that is better because by refactoring and then writing tests, I discovered a number of bugs I couldn't be arsed to file with the original project.)

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