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@David263
Created February 24, 2020 12:27
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How Open Software Fails
Just my personal opinion, but I see many issues on GitHub that have been discussed and a change is ready to be released, but it just doesn't happen, in this case for a year, but frequently for many years. In some cases it is because the single original developer has abandoned the project. I'm not sure of the entire range of reasons.
As a retired software engineer, I would like to participate in Open Software development, but am completely turned off to the idea because, with the exception of currently popular and very active projects, changes proposed for projects don't actually get made.
In addition, I've taken several courses in git and GitHub and tried to make changes using pull requests (both locally on cloned repositories and on GitHub), but these have failed with error messages I cannot understand. I find the git process to be arcane, meaning too difficult to use.
Open Software is a great idea: letting skilled people contribute their time for free to improve shared products. But the main tool supporting Open Software seems impossible for an experienced retired software engineer to learn. There is a disconnect here somewhere. There isn't even an appropriate forum (that is, meta-concerned about Open Software and its tools) to post this complaint on.
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