HN Explorer

Why open source developers are trying to manipulate GitHub?

6 points by craftoman ↗ HN
Have you tried looking the history of every "popular" open source framework or library? I myself have been checking this for a couple of months now and I can surely guarantee you that most maintainers are updating their outdated projects with bull$hit commits (docs/deps) just to manipulate the "Latest commit" to the users. I'm so frustrated because it's cheap, dirty and completely unethical. You can't just force the users to believe it's updated till today when your last "true" (bug or feature) commit was 2 years ago just to persuade someone to use your thing. Some developers are actually doing hilarious commits only ONCE per month for years. I have seen many examples but I won't point fingers directly and blame them publicly. I just want this to be stopped, many great projects have their last commit a year ago for example but everyone knows it's maintained, you don't have to cheat users just to gain downloads/stars for your next job application.

6 comments

[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 14.9 ms ] thread
mtmail
Updating docs or dependencies is part of maintaining a project. If no new features are needed the author doesn't need to do more. As a user it still shows me the maintainer is alive, uses a computer and does open source work. I have 5+ such projects. For some I wouldn't even update the dependencies but I get automated messages about security issues with dependencies so of course I'm interested it fixing that.

> many great projects have their last commit a year ago for example but everyone knows it's maintained

How does everyone know?

generalpass
> How does everyone know?

I think one year is not out of the actively maintained zone for a mature project, but that >18-month zone is problematic. Also the number and type of issues. I was just yesterday looking at such a Schrodinger's project and wishing I had a way to determine if it was still maintained.

craftoman
Exactly. I have never experienced problems caused by outdated stuff with code less than a year since the last update.

Edit: People ALWAYS fix things when something outdated breaks the whole project.

craftoman
No it's not part of maintaining a project if you clearly trying to manipulate things. I'm talking about the smart kids who take advantage of this and they update a bunch of words in some document that no one ever cared about.
craftoman
> How does everyone know?

I personally added some badges to all of my projects that inform the user if I abandoned the project and besides that, if a new feature from let's say Java is lunched and start breaking a project then why don't people raise an issue? It's not a PR and can be done in a few seconds. I'm sure someone will notice especially if a project is maintained by a handful of people.

generalpass
You should get some sort of special bonus Internet points for this.