I propose we use "Task HN:" and do these requests more frequently. We'll surely learn a lot, come to ingenious solutions, and maybe, just maybe, make our time on HN more productive. I, for one, want to at least see, if not help, what small but interesting byte-size hurdles others encounter and how others can solve it in different ways, and all the discussion around it.
Working on something together binds communities even tighter.
Sounds like that would devolve into a situation where people are trying to exploit others for free work. There are plenty of places on the Internet where you can go to find people asking others to write software for them for little or no money. Should this really be one of them?
>Sounds like that would devolve into a situation where people are trying to exploit others for free work.
And it sounds like this is one of them. The OP is "trying to come up with an idea that will make an income when I'm not doing my day job to pay the bills":
If you can't pay someone to do it, even at some of the low rates I see on elance, then learn to do it yourself. It would be a different matter if this were someone asking for input on the code he had written, but just asking someone to do it for him is unseemly.
I'm 100% in favor of a feature on HN where existing open source projects ask for help and/or contributions, but someone who's starting up a for-profit business and asking for free labor leaves a very bad taste.
I've had would-be clients like this, who ask me to do work for free or at a significant discount since "it's related to your open source work, anyway, and you could even use it in your project". Made the mistake of accepting work from a client like that once, but never again.
The majority of top open source contributors are working in some kind of paid position. The idea that "open source = cost free labor" is not beneficial to the OS community or to software engineers in general.
There's a difference between "Write my code for me plz?" and "Many people like myself would love to use x, but it's not ported over. Can anyone help?" I believe this is the latter.
No. As you say there are enough places where that shit happens.
Should hacker news be the place where interesting suggestions for stimulating open source tasks were shared? I think yes, more so than all the politics that creeps up here.
And if the requirement is that it must be open source and not directly something the asker will make money of then it stands very little chance of being abused and if it does, is it any worse than all the other spam we downvote/report?
The best form of moderation is not encouraging behavior that requires moderation. Downvotes are a form of community feedback but not really a moderation tool. For example, in cases where I am in doubt about the benefit of something to HN, my threshold for downvoting is much larger than my threshold for upvoting: I am more likely to upvote when "it might be useful" than to downvote a "might not be useful" because there is a person's karma at the other end of the arrow.
Agree, maybe doing "Help FOSS" could be more relevant just posting any task, Open source contributor might ask for help, for some of their specific fields, HN has plenty of excellent developers
Excellent developers (and even non-excellent developers) have an abundance of opportunities to contribute to open source projects. I think that "Show HN" provides a reasonable exposure mechanism for a project to reach HN's audience and one with a roadmap has the chance to highlight areas where people might lend their expertise.
why be cynical? If I were a c expert and had some time to kill (perhaps between jobs) I'd happily jump at the chance to advertise my skills and help someone out.
I had an idea a while ago to build a website where open source projects could make very specific requests. If it was something that another project needed as well, it would get a "bump" of some sort.
If it was in small bitsized chunks, i'd definitely surf it looking for easy things I could contribute that could help a few people.
Even better is if the site could certify it helped them, and I could get some kind of tax credit for it :D
> I, for one, want to at least see, if not help, what small but interesting byte-size hurdles others encounter and how others can solve it in different ways, and all the discussion around it.
I've thought about this idea and I think without proper "project managers" (I don't mean someone with a project management degree - but just someone to coordinate all the efforts) it seems like it could be a total failure.
Here is an example: I have a C++ game engine that I need help with feature X. I think any C++ developer could come up with an implementation of X, but does the style fit my game engine? Does it interconnect with the rest of the engine? (of course ignoring the fact that any discussion of C++ would generate gigabytes worth of comments - I've read some of the newsgroup discussions on style alone...). You can't just be like "create a logging interface" without having studied the rest of the code base. It would be like trying to create a feature for Apache or Linux kernel - if we didn't study their code base and style anything we submit would be laughed out the room - not because what we did won't work or wrong but it doesn't fit with the rest of the code.
This is where the project managers come in - they already know the style and inner workings and take what you submit and hack it into the right style and push it into a SCM or push it upstream (or reject it). Personally I would feel more inclined to make contributions to the Linux kernel if there was a friendly middle man I could look over my work before it gets to Linus - only because I fear if I submit something stupid I'll get chewed out by Linus.
Even if this were to happen - I would not want to read 10k comments of tail call recursion optimization, smart pointer usage, or discussion of non-portable code that will work on 99% of systems except for AIX Unix and Blue Gene/Q.
I agree with the sentiment. Leveraging the skill and goodwill of the community is a great idea and anything that reduces the friction for volunteers is a good idea.
On The other hand, I think there is little to be gained from frictionless requests for volunteers. That invites spam and low quality requests because there's nothing to lose. A linked blog post with technical details and relevant context is probably the ideal level of impedence with the HN format. The format of this request is a nice hack, but standardizing on a kludge is not the way to go.
Maybe the structure is a monthly "Can you help?" thread...and perhaps a complimentary "Can I help?" thread.
> That invites spam and low quality requests because there's nothing to lose.
I think you may be underestimating desire for geek cred. Non-throwaway account would have little incentive to just spam with trivial tasks because they won't be upvoted, might even be flagged, and are tarnishing individuals reputation.
You may have a point about format not being ideal and having too little friction. Not sure.
> Maybe the structure is a monthly "Can you help?" thread...and perhaps a complimentary "Can I help?" thread.
This most certainly wouldn't work for these types of requests, as they are rarely in opportunity to be scheduled for the next month, or at the very least, get solved by then by ugly hacks.
Again, not sure what would emerge out of it really.
I've seen plenty of behavior outside community norms from non-throwaway accounts on HN. Including my own.
If an open source project can't schedule major features a month out, then throwing more bodies at it won't solve the fundamental problem of disorganization and isn't prepared to make appropriate use of volunteer's time in ways that really value that time. Structuring policy around a continuous stream of "emergencies" invites low quality requests. A policy which parallels HN's job listing policy favors HN members rather than people for whom everything above zero euros is paying too much. The HN community benefits from a slower process with a higher barrier to posting requests.
A lot of open source projects are just a single person doing it in their spare time. Throwing more bodies at the problem is exactly what is useful there. If you're developing on your own in your spare time it can hardly be called disorganisation.
Exactly useful to whom? The tossing of warm bodies seems a rather suboptimal way to build teams, much less communities; perhaps because being tossed provides so little utility to the warm body. Building sustainable teams and communities around an open source project is always going to be hard work and a low barrier policy on HN that encourages requests for help doesn't change that.
Useful to anyone even remotely involved in the process. The random helping hand gets that warm fuzzy feeling of helping, and nerd credz. I've done this before, it really is a motivator. The sole maintainer gets assisted with their roadblock. All users/watchers of the project get to rejoice because the project has progressed.
I do not see why you focus so much on team building when that is completely unrelated to what is being discussed. Not all open source projects are big enough to warrant any kind of team. They're literally just someone's side project, which may or may not be useful to other people.
I don't really think either of us can reliably substantiate predictions of how it would pan out but, considering that in this very submission, help was asked for, received and open-sourced at that behest at no cost to anyone (how awesome is that?), the idea stands validated at 1:0. :)
A few years ago, around the US Thanksgiving holiday, there was an "Offer HN:..." thread. Over the next few weeks, there were a number of genuine offers from very capable people. It was really awesome
But eventually, it became what any cynic would expect: a mechanism for "We will build your iOS app for $2500" offers and today it's dead. This isn't a 1.0 release. It's a 0.1 alpha. Nobody has written the 400 lines of good expert code requested. The existing C code that has been offered may or may not blow up under the OP's load or not meet their exact needs. No one is claiming it is bet-your-business ready. The fundamental open-source project problems of maintenance and further development are not solved or even addressed.
More importantly, it hasn't been demonstrated that this mechanism works for getting people to substantially support the project with more than the goodwill of contributing existing code developed for another purpose. Don't misunderstand me, that's a great thing. Which is why a once a month format is a reasonable starting point.
Taking this great idea a step further, I'd love to see projects.ycombinator.com which could eventually be submitted as YC proposals. I wonder if YC need any help building such a tool... I'd be game to help if others want to?
If you don't like it then don't participate. Some of these projects might be interesting. Unlike you apparently I actually like programming and do have an interest in taking part.
I propose we use "Task HN:" and do these requests more frequently. We'll surely learn a lot, come to ingenious solutions, and maybe, just maybe, make our time on HN more productive. I, for one, want to at least see, if not help, what small but interesting byte-size hurdles others encounter and how others can solve it in different ways, and all the discussion around it.
Working on something together binds communities even tighter.