I am a huge fan of DHH’s The open source gift exchange idea where I bring gifts in the form of my open-source projects, and you bring your gifts to the table in the form of super-polished PRs, but if you only bring demands then you’ll get the finger.

Quoting DHH

This idea is further developed in the following videos:

• DHH with Lex Fridman on Open Source; see the transcript of the DHH with Lex Fridman on Open Source

I am sharing code that I wrote on my own time, on my own volition. And you don’t have to say thank you. I mean, it’d be nice if you did. You can take the code and do whatever you want with it, you can contribute back if you want, but you can’t tell me what to do or where to go or how to act.

I’m not a vendor. I love when other people find use in my open source. It’s not my primary motivation. I’m not primarily doing it for other people. I’m primarily doing it for me and my own objectives.

In open source, the customer as it is, is a receiver of gifts. We are having a gift exchange. I show up and give you my code. If you like it, you can use it. And if you have some code that fits in with where I’m going with this, I would love to get those gifts back. And we can keep trading like that. I give you more gifts. You give me some of your gifts. Together, we pool all the gifts such that someone showing up brand new just get a mountain of gifts.

• DHH with Primeagen on Open Source isn’t a community or a democracy, it’s a gift exchange

It’s not that polite where we go like you know what my opinion is worth more than your opinion and it’s worth more because I’ve done the work and I know the work and you just fucking showed in a GitHub issues trying to tell me how to do my fucking job. No. No. Go fuck yourself that’s not how it’s going to work.

You just showed here from a fucking Twitter link, and you demand that I support Oracle or something else? I’m not your fucking vendor. I’m not your employee. I am the bearer and bringer of gifts and you will either take those gifts and be at least slightly grateful, or if not grateful at least shut the fuck up and if you don’t want to do those things if you don’t want to be either grateful or shut the fuck up you’re gonna get the finger.

Ppen source is more fun when we are courteous and kind and not giving fingers all the time, but occasionally you gotta have the hammer. You walk softly but carry a big stick. I like to walk softly most of the time and occasionally someone needs a fucking whack on the head where they’re just reminded about the core dynamics.

Lessons Learned with Aedict

So with Aedict 2, I was asked to open-source the thing so that the community can develop it further. I did, and then the following happened:

• A long discussion on forums about how the community should be organized;
• No code nor commits delivered whatsoever.

So, basically, the idea was that the community would spark ideas and I would be the fucking Joe to implement all those crazy shit. No. Fuck that. I value my own time and my own energy and I do what makes me happy - I do not slave to a bunch of Kumbaya circlejerk of fucktards spitting random brainfarts. If I did, I’d go burnout in the process. You think if you burn out, the community cares? Think again.

This is why you only want the gift exchange. The circlejerk alternative leads to burnout of people that work on the project, ultimately leading to the death of that project.

You, as a developer, have many constraints: on your time, on your energy. You’re doing this for fun, and for yourself. I worked on Karibu-DSL to learn the Kotlin DSL, and it’s fun adding support for all the Vaadin components. But you should not be afraid to fire some of your users - especially the ones with just demands and no gifts. You really think I should work on your issues instead of being with my family? Think fucking again.

Ideas are easy, work is hard. I bring gifts, and you either bring gifts in the form of code, or you fuck the hell off.