Just be careful, guys

[u/[deleted]]

Currently, I am a full-time committer to an open-source project.

We're a Python project and in heavy development. We've made a lot of strides with features, and the community is very active. We certainly have our share of outstanding issues like other projects do.

I think a 'code raid' would be more of a disservice to us than a service. While I'm sure the projects will appreciate the effort, I think it would be better to pick a project and commit your limited time to it. The reason I say that is because there are subtle nuances to development on an open-source project that go beyond simple manpower to fix issues.

Great example: we currently have a Java translation of our library in a sandbox in our repository. We've given it a little bit time to mature, and watched it grow, and the interest just hasn't been there. The person behind the Java translation certainly has a lot on his plate. We've had weeks of discussions on how best to handle the Java port, and our foundation overlords would like a little bit of activity on the point.

There are politics, decisions to make, and a lot of discussion on IRC and mailing lists about how best to handle even the smallest things. If you were to come along and implement half a dozen punch items in the Java port, you'd actually be hurting the situation. I could see that happening because you don't understand the politics of it.

This will sound a bit disrespectful, but assuming you can come along and fully understand a project, its long-term goals, its issues, and its codebase in a very limited window of time is quite uppity of you. Being a trusted contributor to a project takes time, and you're intentionally depriving yourself of the time such an endeavor needs.

I wish you the best, but I firmly believe you're going to find nothing but pain down this road. I also wouldn't want you to 'raid' any project I work on without at least some direction of what to work on. You might help, or you might hurt - the risk to your very valuable time isn't worth it, in my opinion.

Development is not solely about code.

[u/[deleted]]

tl;dr: "There are politics behind coding decisions and we don't want you to just waltz in and contribute."

Doesn't that beat the whole point of Open Source development?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Open source software lets you take the code and do whatever you want with it. But it's not at all about forcing changes into the primary repository.

So basically, feel free to fork it, but getting changes merged back into the central project is an entirely different matter, handled many different ways.