Brian Anderson shares a few thoughts on how to appear as a minimally-nice Open Source Software maintainer. Maintaining Open Source Software projects is a demanding job. And the more popular the project is, the more demanding it is. Brian shares the following practices that minimize the effort while you still maintaining a positive atmosphere for the project’s contributors:
In summary, do these things if you want to appear to be nice, and also if you want to actually be an effective open source software maintainer:
- Respond quickly
- Give thanks
- Pay a compliment
- Say “yes”
- Be clear about what you expect
- Admit your mistakes
- Be effusive
By consistently exhibiting a few simple behaviors, one can at least look like a kind and decent person. Maybe someday we all actually will be.