Open source does not imply open community

开源并不意味着开放社区

Open source software has existed long before the invention of the (D)VCS. The author likely hosted a barebones HTML webpage or a txt file describing the project. There definitely was an FTP server somewhere with tarballs. The author may have been reachable by email. If you were really lucky, there was a mailing list you could sign up for to receive announcements and maybe discuss the software with other interested parties. There might have been an unofficial IRC channel someone created under the name of the software so people could discuss it. This was and still is open source. No “community”. No politics. No Code of Conduct. No pull requests or issues. No wiki. No core team.

开源软件在 (D)VCS（分布式版本控制系统）发明之前就已经存在了。作者当时可能只是托管了一个简陋的 HTML 网页或一个描述项目的 txt 文件。肯定在某个地方有一个存放 tarball（压缩包）的 FTP 服务器。作者或许可以通过电子邮件联系到。如果你足够幸运，可能还会有一个邮件列表，你可以订阅它来接收公告，甚至与其他感兴趣的人讨论软件。可能还会有人以该软件的名义创建一个非官方的 IRC 频道供大家交流。这就是，且一直都是开源。没有“社区”，没有政治，没有行为准则，没有 Pull Request 或 Issue，没有 Wiki，也没有核心团队。

Later, we had sites like Sourceforge. You got your CVS/SVN and mailing lists operated for essentially “free”, and it was easier to build in the open. Then came the DVCS wars which git decidedly won, and the world eventually converged on Github. “In the late 00’s, Github was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams if he were alive today.

后来，我们有了像 Sourceforge 这样的网站。你可以在上面“免费”使用 CVS/SVN 和邮件列表，在公开环境下构建项目变得更容易了。随后爆发了 DVCS 之战，Git 最终胜出，世界也随之汇聚到了 Github 上。“在 00 年代末，Github 被创建了。这让很多人感到非常愤怒，并被广泛认为是一个糟糕的举动。”——如果道格拉斯·亚当斯（Douglas Adams）今天还活着，他可能会这么说。

Github turned all of open source into an unpaid job for maintainers. You go to work and find newly assigned tickets; have meetings with stakeholders; plan a roadmap; deal with office politics and distractions; hit your deadlines, metrics, and KPIs; come into work one day and learn the requirements have changed again and now you have to start over. Standups. One-on-ones. Agile. Waterfall. But you’re getting a paycheck and health insurance, so you just deal with the nonsense.

Github 将所有的开源项目变成了维护者的一份无薪工作。你去上班，发现有新分配的任务单；要与利益相关者开会；规划路线图；处理办公室政治和干扰；赶进度、达标、完成 KPI；某天上班时突然得知需求又变了，你得从头再来。站会、一对一沟通、敏捷开发、瀑布流模型。但至少你领着薪水、有医疗保险，所以你只能忍受这些废话。

Then you come home from work and it’s time to unwind on something you enjoy. Ding, you’ve got notifications. Issues are piling up. Pull requests are being flung in your direction completely rearchitecting the software to do things that were never really within scope. Complaints. Demands. There’s now a chat group. People with no patience are angry and now you have to babysit them, have your own one-on-ones. There’s a “community” now that you’re responsible for. You never signed up for this, but this baggage is just the way it is, right? Suddenly open source is a second job. You’re burned out. You don’t even have control or direction over your own project anymore without your name being dragged through the mud.

下班回到家，本想做点自己喜欢的事放松一下。叮，收到通知了。Issue 堆积如山。Pull Request 纷至沓来，试图彻底重构软件，去实现那些根本不在范围内的功能。抱怨、要求。现在还有了聊天群。那些没耐心的人在发火，你还得去安抚他们，进行你自己的“一对一”沟通。现在你还要对一个所谓的“社区”负责。你从未申请过这些，但这些包袱似乎就是现状，对吧？突然之间，开源变成了第二份工作。你精疲力竭。你甚至无法再掌控自己项目的方向，否则你的名声就会被抹黑。

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way. Some projects are so huge and complicated that it requires a team to manage them. But this the exception, not the rule. Free yourself. Go back to the old ways. Especially if you’re angry about the influx of new people and AI bots stealing your attention. Turn off the issues tracker and the pull requests or deploy a bare git server for releasing your code. Find a small group of people you really know and trust and work with them on projects, or do it completely alone. You don’t need to allow strangers to invade your space. You don’t need a performative Code of Conduct or an LLM policy.

事情不必如此。有些项目确实庞大且复杂，需要团队来管理。但这只是例外，而非规则。解放你自己吧。回到过去的方式。特别是如果你对涌入的新人和窃取你注意力的 AI 机器人感到愤怒的话。关掉 Issue 追踪器和 Pull Request，或者部署一个简单的 Git 服务器来发布你的代码。找一小群你真正了解并信任的人一起做项目，或者干脆独自完成。你不需要让陌生人侵入你的空间。你不需要表演性的行为准则或 LLM 使用政策。

Open source doesn’t need to be developed openly for it to be “open source”. Write code. Make things you like. Use any tools you want. Do code drops at 2am on Christmas day. Whatever you do, don’t get tricked into running an operation that’s half tech incubator and half daycare for people whose parents gave them a keyboard and no social skills.

开源并不需要以“开放”的方式开发才能被称为“开源”。写代码，做你喜欢的东西。使用任何你想用的工具。在圣诞节凌晨两点发布代码。无论你做什么，千万别被诱骗去经营一个既像技术孵化器，又像托儿所的组织——专门服务于那些父母只给了他们键盘却没教他们社交技巧的人。