The recent kerfuffle around the NPM #unpublishgate and the Greenkeeper bot impersonation has got me thinking about the open source community and its culture.
Sometimes the open source community feels like a wonderful, cooperative, welcoming place. There have been times when maintaining an open source project has given me an enormous sense of satisfaction and well-being. On the best days, complete strangers offer valuable feedback and even actively contribute to my projects.
On the worst days I feel drained, unappreciated, and even abused. Stephan describes this more concisely than I could right at the bottom of Your “just” considered harmful:
The reactions to the npm #unpublishgate showed me once more just how far spread entitled and toxic behaviour is in our community. This has to change and being silent or accepting won’t help.
This is the part of the open source culture that we need to fix. Entitled and toxic are not words that I associate with welcoming and inclusive communities. Yet they are completely apt descriptions of behaviour which is common within the open source community.
I don’t have any solutions to offer. I’m merely venting some frustrations which have been building up for quite some time. But we need to fix this. I don’t want to see this toxic behaviour cause another friend, colleague, or community member to suffer.
How can we fix open source culture?