zlacker

>>jashke+(OP)
> You are responsible for your own needs. If you want things, make them.

>I am grateful for the contributions of the community. Every Clojure release incorporates many contributions. [...] Open source is a no-strings-attached gift, and all participants should recognize it as such.

>The time to re-examine preconceptions about open source is right now. Morale erosion amongst creators is a real thing.

Sad that it has to be said. I think as a creator you need to brace yourself for the reality of what it means to offer something to the world. There is a sort of normal distribution of consumers and some can be surprisingly toxic.

>>Isamu+L3
You know, I wrote a number of successful open source packages. By and large, feedback is positive, or at least utilitarian: bug reports, feature requests, questions. But there is also the occasional angry user, or, rarely, a simple thank you.

Recently, I published my first-ever commercial video game plugin. And was dumbfounded by the sheer positivity of the response. People thanked me! I got dozens of purely positive emails. I had never experienced such a thing in my Open Source work.

If we had more of that in Open Source, maybe maintainership wouldn't be such a burden.

>>Derbas+Px
I wouldn't dare writing just to say "thank you", it would feel like a no-op wasting people time. Instead, I would rather star the project on github. Did you consider those as thanks?

>>_pctq+fy
Having published some apps a few years ago, the occasional thank you mail can be a real moral boost. Dehumanized interaction such as staring a project is not of the same category.

>>titani+Pz
I totally get it, it's all a question of balance, I guess. An _occasional_ thanks you mail is great. On the other hand, getting pass the 100 stars on a project on github is a big moral boost too, and probably wouldn't feel so great if each one was a mail :)

But actually, I realize both can easily be reconciled : we could send a "thank you" message to projects with low amount of github stars, and just star those which have a high amount. This would both cheer solo dev starting their project and avoid annoying bigger teams on well established projects.

>>oelmek+cC
Has anyone ever been annoyed with a thank you email? Compared to the crap/spam/adverts that turns up in our inboxes every single day, a genuine thank you from an actual human being should be fine. And if not, just stick it in the spam folder with everything else. Github stars are utterly meaningless to many.