Acknowledge contributions
If you have ever released useful code into the open source wilderness, then you know that at some point, you get patches or contributions that are well-intentioned but don’t quite meet your standards. Either the quality is not what it should be or they use a different style than the one you prefer. Often people make contributions that you just don’t want to incorporate, but If the contribution is valuable, there are two ways of going about resolving this.
On large projects, or when you’re just too busy, you give the original contributor some feedback as to what you’d like to see changed and ask them to re-submit it. But other times, you just fix it yourself. When going this route, it’s tempting to discard the original contribution, simply taking the intent and redoing it.
I’m guilty of this. But by failing to acknowledge their hard work, you remove their motivation to contribute to your projects. So, honor the original author’s effort by accepting the original contribution, and make your desired changes on top of that.
Update: from Brian Ryckbost:
2 comments
Hear, hear! I’ve been on both sides of this story and I’ve not been perfect on the receiving side, though I have been frustrated on the contributing side. I think this is great advice, Brandon.
No doubt! But, don’t beat yourself up too bad. You guys at Collective have been very prompt with at least all of MY pull requests ;) Chin up.
Maybe you could post an update and list the people here you forgot to acknowledge. Speaking of which, I should probably think about doing the same thing.
Speak your mind: