Okay confession time: I'm afraid of contributing to open source projects. Like most developers, I use open source all the time. And, like most developers I'm sure, I find issues in and think of improvements for those projects pretty regularly. I try to do my best to write up a thoughtful Github issue, sometimes I even write some code as an example. However, time and time again my suggestions are shot down by maintainers for reasons that range from "I don't feel like it" to "I don't want my project to behave that way". Both of those are valid, but the dismissive attitude that usually comes along with always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. To top it off, when I have offered to put together a pull request with the changes myself (since I'd have to write the code anyway to get the functionality I want) I'm usually told to leave it to the people who know the project better.
Here's the good news as promised: I made a simple request of an open source project that I wanted to use but couldn't because of some limitations. The maintainer responded (rather quickly) with "yes"🎉! It's a tiny victory, I know, but I can't help but feel hopeful for my Open Source future.
Alright that's my good news this Friday, what's yours?
Top comments (2)
WooHoo!
That's unfortunate that you've had some negative experiences in the past. But it's awesome that you didn't let that stop you, and kept making issues and contributing and got your win!
A quick update, now my first pull request has been approved and merged!!! I added Python 3 support to that same library I mentioned above .