Valetudo is really nice software, but I have a bad taste in my mouth from the community.
I went to the Telegram channel to ask something about why my vacuum running Valetudo would have a specific behaviour (IIRC it moved on its own), they kind of talked to each other for a second to discuss if this question was relevant to the channel, and then, presumably deciding it wasn't, banned me for a year.
Yeah, I’ve never seen a community more off-putting than this one. I’m thankful for it, it works on my robot, but I wouldn’t help or participate in any way.
But it’s like they don’t want help or be a community like mentioned in their docs.
In contrast, for example, https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt was such a welcoming community.
> This project is the hobby of some random guy on the internet. There is no intent to commercialize it, grow it or expand the target audience of it. In fact, there is intent to explicitly not do that.
Then it begs the question of why they even publicize the Telegram chat. I guess it’s for contributors only, not a support chat.
Totally second that, I was banned today on their Telegram channel just because I mentioned that I recorded a r2con2025 presentation to free Samsung PowerBot VR7000M vacuum cleaners (no Samsung bot seems to be supported by them to date), titled "Restoring the Vacuum" in here:
I wish I didn't mention Valetudo positively on my presentation now. Hypfer has bizarre (to say the least) views about what community building means and entails.
Oh, see, I actually wish I was part of a community that would have flagged this to me. Maybe there is? Regardless, thank you for sharing, I'll be watching this :)
Why are you talking about business? What about this relates to business?
Obviously the thought was that the content was interesting to the people that would be interested in this software because it's about rooting vacuums and taking control of them.
It's nice to get your reply here so I can see what the community is like myself.
Can't speak for Hypfer but I guess he doesn't mean the monetary side of "business" as most people understand it but the "attention" (of reading/checking the talk and link, etc..), so I don't fault him for that.
Full disclosure: I'm not getting paid nor seek money from what I found on my alleged "ad", btw.
Business in this case means a clear transactional mindset.
And you do get paid, just not in cash.
You push your brand, your credibility as a security researcher and all that. You earn social credits and reputation.
And that is why you tried to hook people to watch your talk.
I bet the talk is good. Great, even.
But this (maybe even not conscious) transactionality just does not belong in that space. HN, for example, is a much better place for it.
> And that is why you tried to hook people to watch your talk.
I gotta wonder if whoever you banned really deserves this. I think there's a world of difference between an individual just sharing something they worked on and a corporation spamming your channel for profit.
Sure, but the action is still incorrect and that's why the reaction was removal.
Deserving sounds like a punishment, but it's just action => reaction.
Attendance privilege was misused so it was revoked for a while.
I get where you're coming from, but the question there always ends up "where is the line?"
The answer in this case makes it simple. The line is crossed the moment transactional self-promotion happens.
No surprises for anyone. No discussions about which groups might be allowed to do so and why.
A simple "no transactionality full stop".
Btw, most bans in my space expire after a while, because I do believe that people can and will change, but, as per the CoC, there is also another way to appeal a ban.
> The line is crossed the moment transactional self-promotion happens.
I understand where you're coming from now. I was confused at first because I make a conscious effort to differentiate this from commercial advertising.
I think it's only natural for people to want to share their work with peers. I agree that sites such as this one are the appropriate places for posting such things. I just hesitate before calling it advertising which has much darker connotations.
I see that you're back to your old self, Stefan, after for a moment it almost looked like you've dropped it and moved on.
Will you ever move on?
You do know that what you want is for me to stop being me and that is something I simply cannot do, right?
This can't be fulfilling, especially given it's a reaction to once being part of the in-group.
As a fellow adult, I would really wish for you to somehow make peace with this fundamental incompatibility.
It is probably me. I am incompatible with the world how it is now.
You're okay the way you are.
What else can I do other than putting up many, many warning signs?
__
Anyway.
Lie is a very strong word you're using there. What is true is that I'm certainly not providing a high-speed instant path to achieve that, but just because there isn't a large neon arrow pointing at a high-speed industrial conveyor belt, doesn't mean that there wouldn't be a set of stairs close by.
Finding those stairs and bothering to walk up is in itself another filter in the spirit of the CoC and the appeal process.
Essentially, selecting for caring and bothering instead of "needing to fix this one thing to get back on track".
> doesn't mean that there wouldn't be a set of stairs close by.
sure, force people to create various accounts on various other social media just to follow an inexistent appeal process.
>back to your old self, Stefan
there is no old self. I never stopped working in the background, collecting and publishing information, encouraging people to discuss various features they could build, giving visibility to the people who do, and taking care of the people you ban, especially the ones who were highly confused about what happened.
> You do know that what you want is for me to stop being me
Not at all, you continue doing you. I know you cannot change - ironic since this is one failing you berated me for. But don't expect me to stop highlighting the inconsistencies of your actions and words, especially when these help people come to terms with your treatment of them on your TG groups.
> Will you ever move on? ... given it's a reaction to once being part of the in-group.
I've moved on a long time ago from your in-group of sycophants. I laugh when I see them posting on other social media attacking someone they deem doing something against your philosophy, and cry remembering that I was once one of them.
But funny saying I should move on, since you clearly haven't given your last release notes, and still publishing and pointing to your slanderous post. for that reason my reply on reddit is still highlighted and pinned.
I see that you have a lot of energy to fight for what is right and that's great!
Have you considered directing that at the vendors? Any vendor.
Roborock, Dreame, Ecovacs, whoever.
These are those responsible for why you are still being forced to engage with me in some way. And you have a clear paid customer relationship with them. They must listen.
Imagine how great it would be if my whole project would become entirely irrelevant, because there is a proper vendor solution with paid commercial support and without some weird ideological Hardliner.
That to me sounds like the ultimate win. It would even side-steps me completely, stripping me of all my undeserved autocratic power.
Instead of fighting over a tiny cake, what about making that cake much, much bigger?
Just some food for thought.
I never heard about valetudo before (are you Brazilian?) but kudos for the way you handle the open source harassment. I'll use this link as an example/reference for future discussions here in this forum.
Who is harassing who exactly? All I see is people posting their experiences, both positive and negative, of the particular piece of software that was linked.
that's where you're wrong "mate", we absolutely have every right to speak out against abuse. and abuse is a regular occurrence where this software is involved. Just look at the controversy a mere posting here has brought up. This happens almost every time the software is mentioned. Just another example is here - https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1ngn3jy/comm...
Also "mate", there is no harassment here. By his own words, the dev does not want people to use his software. So the more people we warn, the less people he has to interact with, which is a net gain for him. We're doing him the biggest favour.
You are harassing him and every person you contacted thinking you are helping them. Seriously, move on. If you guys were from the same country, I'd recommend him going to the police. People like you are dangerous.
Nobody is harassing him, people are talking, and people are free to talk about a person who was abusive, it's something called communication. Something you're not used to in that Telegram group.
At this point it's the opposite of harassment, people are actually saying how he should be avoided at all costs and how it's painful to deal with him.
First off disclaimer, I'm one of the people Hypfer has banned/abused, I'm also a friend of Raptors.
I agree with you that open source developers face harassment, I've seen it happen myself. But, in this case, things are the other way around. Hypfers behavior is awful, there are threads full of of people on reddit that Hypfer has been rude / abusive to. There's an entire discord server with 85 members and counting, the majority of which have been on the receiving end of harassment and just want to talk vacuum modding. Don't believe me? search "site:reddit.com hypfer" on Google and start reading, there's piles of it. Running an open source project does not entitle you to abuse people. There's no other open source project that I can say "just chuck site:reddit.com <developers name> into Google and start reading, you'll find them harassing people."
Of course, I'm also a victim. They accused me of gaslighting them, told me I was stupid, banned me and then spent days after ridiculing me in the Telegram group with thousands of members. I saw screenshots likening educating me to taking a 4 year old to university, and another saying something akin to "I pity the spouses of the people I've banned here", while also playing the "woe is me" card claiming that I asked them to implement HTTPS support when I explicitly stated the opposite. This stuff is extremely clear harassment. To be clear, I did nothing to provoke this behavior, I was asked why I thought HTTPS support on the robot was a good idea, I explained, got banned because Hypfer didn't agree. Hypfer then wrote a FAQ on the subject. Any engineer well versed on the topic would tell you the majority of the stuff in the FAQ entry is wrong.
Since my ban, I've learned that my story is a common theme, users will join the telegram for support and ask questions, only to be abused, banned, and then publicly ridiculed for days afterwards. Even more clear cut things like "Docs say that if X happens I should ask on the Telegram group, I did and immediately got banned". I've received countless messages from users who have been on the receiving end of this harassment.
This situation makes for a terrible example of harassment open source developers face, because in this specific case, there's more harassment towards the users than from them. If you want a nicer example, I'd suggest going and looking at the Jellyfin devs or something, they definitely receive their fair share of unwarranted shots from users.
I guess you all were talking all weekend about this post in your own little group of harassers, right? Maybe even some theories about me, for standing against this mob attack?
Seriously, you guys need to move on. This is next level harassment. It's insane that you guys think it's ok to astroturf here. This forum wasn't created yesterday.
I posted the exact model name & number and there's indeed quite a lot of hardware specs detailed on the talk itself (Allwinner A20 SoC, btw) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"There was no relation to Valetudo"... well, with your current behavior and tone as a community "admin", you're certainly making sure I'll not work on that direction in the near future (I do have it mentioned as future aim on my last slides).
Yeah, they seem pretty clueless. Right now they're doing the classic 302 back to Hacker News when you visit with an HN referrer. So they appear to have this extremely unnuanced approach to wielding power where they just block people with minimal reasoning.
I used to focus always on the tech. Now I focus on the people. No time for this kind of behavior.
Yeah its sorta hilarious that someone has taken a "make my life simple and easy" technology to the extreme of "if you don't solder your own breakout board you should get off my lawn".
I'm hoping to sidestep the drama and just enjoy the software.
I thoroughly disagree. On the surface, his behavior may seem very similar to the behavior exhibited by toxic people, but once you understand his reasoning, I find it makea perfect sense.
To summarize and paraphrase: the project is his personal garden. It's by him, for him. But he has also decided to open that garden to any random stranger on the internet, free of charge. In a lot of similar projects, that means an invitation is extended to plant stuff in the garden or to suggest that certain plants are moved. He wants to make it clear that that's not the case in his garden. If you wanna plant, you're free to freely and instantly duplicate his garden and get cracking. But he will not be planting your plants in his.
Since people struggle to accept this, he's taken on a harsher-than-normal tone. That's understandable to me.
> If this was the case, why have a public telegram group then?
I recently set up my first Valetudo robot, and therefore thoroughly read the documentation multiple times. In it, he comes across as genuinely wanting to help people succeed running Valetudo. I assume that's the reason for the group chat. At the same time, he also very very much does not want to give people the illusion that they can demand anything from him. The fear that people will is not unfounded. Think of what happens in any moderately popular FOSS project. He's just opting out of all that, in no uncertain terms.
> Sounds more like a fetish basement than a garden to me.
Fine. So he's made a fetish basement, and he's letting others use it for free. He wants to make sure that nobody demands, or even suggests, he change his basement to accommodate their fetishes.
There's a way to do all that without being an arsehole.
Also putting an open source project out there doesn't absolve you of all social obligations simply because it's free. You can't say "well you are free to not use it, then it doesn't affect you at all" because that isn't true. By making and publicising this project he is actively discouraging other similar projects from happening - ones that might have less toxic leaders.
I should write a blog post about that because it seems to be an extremely common misconception.
> Also putting an open source project out there doesn't absolve you of all social obligations simply because it's free.
If I understand the guy correctly, he doesn't think that sharing software that he wrote comes with any obligations once he's sufficiently informed the recipients about damage it may cause. I agree with him.
I don't. Not morally anyway. By sharing it he's ensuring that no other less toxic projects can flourish (at least not as easily). That comes with some moral obligation not to be a complete dick.
putting an open source project out there doesn’t entail _any_ social obligations actually.
I can imagine the author took abuse from some extremely entitled people for some time and then just snapped.
If you ever ran any moderately successful oss project you get dozens of these people all the time; they demand your time, work, and attention and screech, complain, and blackmail you if you don’t instantly succumb to their demands.
It’s the one thing that always turned me off from doing oss more seriously;
users are just the worst.
Of course only a small fraction of users but if you have many users it’s a never ending flood
> putting an open source project out there doesn’t entail _any_ social obligations actually.
I disagree with that though. See my other comments.
> If you ever ran any moderately successful oss project
I do (if 600 stars counts, which I'm sure you'll tell me it doesn't). We don't get people like that, and from the sounds of it none of the people who have been instantly banned have been like that either.
Although if the project is so toxic and horrible to interact with - wouldn’t people look for a more wholesome project?
I don’t agree that the toxic project would stifle growth for other less toxic projects solely by existing.
If it’s that bad then it shouldn’t be that much more popular?
Besides what is stopping people from forking and building a less toxic community?
What irks me mostly about these complaints is exactly that: a whole lot of complaining and handwringing going on and very little action to improve the situation or even trying to understand how it came to be.
Actually there is a big understanding of how this all came to be. You are all just too new to currently grasp it.
Also most of the people with big interest to fork are banned from the GitHub, which blocks direct forks, and this makes it much more difficult to rebase the source after change to the main
You're just making excuses and ignoring the problem.
The problem is being verbally abusive towards people with no ill intent of any kind is unacceptable in ALL circumstances. No exceptions. You can refuse requests and ban whoever from your chatroom, that is his right.
You don't get the right to abuse and mock and harass people. Ever. Assuming that you do makes you a toxic asshole.
It's all very cut and dry. There's not really a gray area here. You either treat people with dignity or you're an asshole. Insisting that this kind of behavior is ever acceptable or excusable just means that you're also an asshole and looking for ways to rationalize and justify your own behavior.
The toxicity is not about accepting contributions. I have zero issues with this, the project is, as you said, his personal garden. But the behavior in chats is absolutely toxic.
If you put out a sign "come listen to my music" and then throw out every second person, everyone wearing blue and every blonde with no warning, that is toxic. It is your play, but you are not treating people coming in with respect. My 2c.
See, this is what I don't understand about this type of developer.
When you publish an OSS project, it is an implicit invitation for collaboration, and for being part of a community around shared interests where everyone benefits. That is the entire point of F/LOSS.
Yet I've heard many people, on here, in fact, arguing against that idea. That publishing free software but not accepting feedback, contributions, or providing support, still counts as OSS. And, technically, that may be the case if you consider OSS to only be about the license itself. If you take license terms like "THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND" as the only literal definition of what OSS is. When, in fact, it is, and can be, so much more than that.
People who think like this are doing themselves and their software a disservice. Software is better when it is worked on as a community effort, much like a garden. An individual might have good ideas, and be able to execute them well, but they're not omniscient nor omnipotent.
If Linus Torvalds had published Linux as his "personal garden", it would have never been even remotely as good and popular as it is today. It would have probably been another niche project in the footnotes of history.
> When you publish an OSS project, it is an implicit invitation for collaboration, and for being part of a community around shared interests where everyone benefits. That is the entire point of F/LOSS.
There is no one single "entire point of F/LOSS". Even in the struggle to name it (free software vs open source software), the desire and intent is obviously different.
Sometimes people build something and publish it because they are OK if someone else makes something else out of it, extends it or whatever... But they don't want to be bothered about it anymore.
Running a community around a free software project indicates desire to collaborate on something, but even that does not indicate a desire to collaborate on everything this project could become (imagine someone coming in with a desire to port it to robot mowers — sure, it sounds related, but the author might not have any interest in it if they are living in an apartment, and they don't want to spread their limited time and energy on maintaining something they will never be able to test/support themselves).
> Sometimes people build something and publish it because they are OK if someone else makes something else out of it, extends it or whatever... But they don't want to be bothered about it anymore.
I understand that. My argument is that that mentality is doing the project a disservice. For every person the author might find difficult to collaborate with, there will be many others who will contribute positive input and changes to the project. By not being open to collaboration, someone else will step in and build that community instead, given that the software is actually good. And that's fine, it's their prerogative, but chances are that their closed-but-technically-open project will languish in comparison to the project that's actually open and invites collaboration.
So, really, I don't see what they gain from releasing it as open source in the first place. Personal satisfaction from thinking they're helping others by providing code only? Building their personal portfolio or brand? For demonstration purposes? I honestly find it puzzling.
> Running a community around a free software project indicates desire to collaborate on something, but even that does not indicate a desire to collaborate on everything this project could become
And that's fine as well. No project will satisfy the use cases of everyone. The line has to be drawn at some point, and this should be made clear. Upstream code contributions often add additional maintenance burden to core developers, since the contributor will likely disappear once their code is merged. Forking is always an option when visions don't align. I get all that.
But it's one thing to have a clear focus for the project, and another to make it completely closed to contributions. Or to have this confusing in-between state where you have a website to promote the project, provide user documentation and places for community discussion, but then alienate your users by being hostile, not open to feedback, etc. It sends mixed signals to anyone interested in the project and willing to give their time and energy to improve it.
This is why I strongly believe that OSS only works when there is an environment of mutual good will, respect, and collaboration that allows a community to thrive. This is not encoded in any legal frameworks or licenses because it doesn't need to be. It should be common sense that the alternatives lead to everything OSS is opposed to: less freedoms for users, and proprietary software that benefits only a select few.
> I understand that. My argument is that that mentality is doing the project a disservice.
In the world where we accept unfinished software all around us, from government and banking services, to our daily general computing devices like computers and phones, to appliances like TVs, washing machines or elevators, the project seems to be doing great for many a user: we've heard accounts here from people putting the software on their device once years ago and forgetting about it — it just works.
Their focus seems to be exactly that: ensure this project works for them, and allow a select few trusted partners to make it work for their own equipment too. But work it must.
I might have a different perspective on making software and evolving it, but that does not make this perspective any less valuable — it's actually great to have it out there in the world.
> For every person the author might find difficult to collaborate with, there will be many others who will contribute positive input and changes to the project. By not being open to collaboration, someone else will step in and build that community instead, given that the software is actually good. And that's fine, it's their prerogative, but chances are that their closed-but-technically-open project will languish in comparison to the project that's actually open and invites collaboration.
The project has been there for years now, and this hasn't happened. Either there aren't "many" who'd "contribute positive input and changes", or the issues with the project management aren't as big as some are making it seem here.
> So, really, I don't see what they gain from releasing it as open source in the first place.
They don't have to gain anything: they publish it because they don't mind it, not looking for any gain.
> This is not encoded in any legal frameworks or licenses...
Many companies have nothing to lose if they released their IoT device firmware as open source, but they have nothing to gain either, so they don't do it. I'd much prefer it if they released it, even if for the most part, I wouldn't touch it.
But I'd feel the sense of trust that this device is never dying on me, even if a company does.
So I disagree: a free software license is enough to "encode" all that you seek! Just by having access to the source code, and rights to modify and distribute it, anyone can decide to build a different community, evolve a product in a different direction, or change it to have a new technical foundation.
When this need becomes strong enough, it will simply happen: for better or for worse. See eg. LibreOffice vs OpenOffice case. Or the cdrtools maintainer frustration with Debian/Ubuntu forks (https://cdrtools.sourceforge.net/private/linux-dist.html).
> See, this is what I don't understand about this type of developer.
That's ok. It's ok to be different. I'm probably more like you for my own projects, but that doesn't invalidate this guy's stance.
> When you publish an OSS project, it is an implicit invitation for collaboration,
and for being part of a community around shared interests where everyone benefits.
It is not.
> That is the entire point of F/LOSS.
If it were, don't you think that part would be written into at least one popular FLOSS license?
> People who think like this are doing themselves and their software a disservice. Software is better when it is worked on as a community effort, much like a garden. An individual might have good ideas, and be able to execute them well, but they're not omniscient nor omnipotent.
Who are you to decide for another person? Can I decide such things about your actual garden?
> If Linus Torvalds had published Linux as his "personal garden", it would have never been even remotely as good and popular as it is today. It would have probably been another niche project in the footnotes of history.
I'm glad he didn't. But if he had, do you really think that shaming or pressuring him into doing it differently would have in any way made him feel like continuing? Linux would have died.
No. There is 0 reason to be toxic or an asshat in general. It should not be accepted. He might have reasons to be protective, but one can do that in a respectful manner. But going around, making something up, banning people for asking or criticizing is not the way to go.
Once you make something public it's not a private garden anymore.
> No. There is 0 reason to be toxic or an asshat in general. It should not be accepted.
So, you wanna shame or force him into accepting contributions? That's ridiculous!
> Once you make something public it's not a private garden anymore.
Wait, are you saying if I have an actual garden that I myself own and maintain, and I let random people from the street come see it between noon and five every Sunday, it's no longer my private garsden? Then you and I are on different planets in this debate.
You forgot to quote the part where I said he can refuse in a normal and respectable way.
If you make a garden and then declare it a public garden then yes. If you want people to not step on your flowers you can tell them in a normal way. No need to shout around, belittle them, and ban them from your garden for a year....
He could have just kept his Project private if he doesn't want people to interact. Simple as that.
> If you make a garden and then declare it a public garden then yes.
He didn't. He made a garden, declared it private, and set specific terms under which you and I and others can come enjoy it. Take it or leave it.
> No need to shout around, belittle them, and ban them from your garden for a year....
Then follow his rules, or don't go to his garden! He's offering you a free favor. Take it or leave it.
> He could have just kept his Project private if he doesn't want people to interact. Simple as that.
Of course he could have. However, I'm adamant that those of us who find Valetudo useful – i.e. find his garden beautiful – would be worse off for it. Why would you want the overall usefulness given to the world to decrease? What's the benefit? Not feeling annoyed that he won't let you help?
Because the gp comment is not about grapheneos, but its creator and could be taken as insulting (considering none of them is likely to be actually schizophrene).
There's a few things to unpack here from my point-of-view.
First, I didn't see him calling any person schizophrenic. I don't follow the Android scene so to me GrapheneOS seems like an organisation rather than a person.
> Contrary to common expectations when it comes to software released under a FOSS-like license, Valetudo is not a community-driven project; nor does it even have a community in that sense.
And I witnessed similar, very unfriendly interactions.
Heaven forbid you go there simply to praise the project. The last guy to do that got a 2 year ban and many, many paragraphs of irrelevant pseudo intellectial nonsense from the maintainer.
Not going to paste the message directly - but it happened five days ago and was along the lines of "thank you for breathing new life into my robot which was otherwise destined for landfill".
A few years back I wanted multifloor on my Valetudo (I had a weird single room which had a step into it) so I did my research and found a whole bunch of toxicity around this feature, mixed in with a bunch of information which mostly answered my questions (it wasn't supported, which of course I was fine with, because it's not my project and I was just grateful for being able to use it). I figured "oh, this would be useful to document", popped onto the Telegram and asked a few clarifying questions, saying I intended to contribute to the docs.
First I was accused of not reading the docs (I had, they were confusing and incomplete), then I was accused of trying to sneak multi-floor into the product (..what), then I was accused of being a "well-off boomer who wanted him to do extra work because I wouldn't spring for a third vacuum" (I WASN'T ADVOCATING FOR MULTI-FLOOR). So I backed off and watched for a bit, then landed up leaving.
I have no desire to force change on the man (it's his garden after all); ultimately, GitHub was the wrong destination for his work. It's sort-of like he's opened a workshop in the middle of a bustling market and now he's barking at everyone for interupting him.
Recently an error popped up in Home Assistant, so I hazarded a look at the issue tracker to find he'd closed an issue and banned a well-regarded Home Assistant community member for opening it: https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo/issues/2310
Wow, that issue is illuminating. A simple heads up leading to a multi-page meltdown against an individual he banned. It was even pinned in the repo at one point.
I feel a bit honoured that I got a response within 3 minutes …
But I also feel a bit weird because I was trying to support your way of running your community. So yeah, I was trying to do a balanced take on why Valetudo is good despite some people having a bad experience with the telegram channel.
Dude if you have a whole thread of people you have all these problems with, maybe it's you?
> I have no desire to force change on the man (it's his garden after all); ultimately, GitHub was the wrong destination for his work. It's sort-of like he's opened a workshop in the middle of a bustling market and now he's barking at everyone for interupting him.
I actually have no idea who Hajo is. If they’ve been annoying in the past, and you banned them for it, it’s not really my place to figure out whether they deserved it. I only replied because yelling about it here is a sure fire way to get your comment flagged. Maybe you don’t mind but I felt that, spending far too much time here and watching a bunch of people do this repeatedly even though it’s against the rules, I might as well send people a reminder that there’s another option.
As for your Telegram chat: I actually genuinely do not care, and I mean this without trying to be smug or anything. I joined to ask about S8 stuff and eventually just met Dennis directly. Ironically both of us seem to have gotten too busy with work to actually get to a good solution for those and I never actually ended up installing Valetudo anyway. My friends occasionally tell me how great it is and I feel a little but of regret for not following up to get the exploit stable but I just put up with letting my vacuum do its thing without any of the smart features :( But yeah, I really don’t think I would have gotten any value from rejoining the chat so I didn’t. I’m actually kind of sorry I participated in the conversation I did, not really because I wouldn’t stand behind what I said but more that it was kind of a waste of time and low value to even respond. And clearly it made you upset, so considering I valued it at effectively zero and you definitely felt it was negative, I think the conclusion is pretty obvious.
One thing I do want to say, though: I feel like you frequently run into your project just causing you misery. I work on FOSS too, and arguably I work in a similar hacking-ish space too where random people show up and beg you for support, who don’t really bother to read the rules, etc. I get that this is frustrating. I ban plenty of people who drag down the place too. But I think that your garden that you’re trying to make might actually be causing you more trouble than it might be worth. I don’t wake up feeling drained that I have to interact with the community, in fact I actually appreciate talking to many of the members even if they can be annoying sometimes. I’ve had people occasionally claim they were unfairly treated (usually I disagree, of course) but I think the sentiment is largely positive. So, like, I just want to point out that it’s possible to enjoy what you do; it can be nice even if sometimes frustrated people show up. I just don’t want you to hate working on the things you’re doing.
I have yet to see anyone attack you, here or in any of the links people have provided. I don't know all the history of your interactions with these people, but it feels like you are playing the victim without cause.
>Contrary to common expectations when it comes to software released under a FOSS-like license, Valetudo is not a community-driven project; nor does it even have a community in that sense.
How can someone ban someone from a community if it doesn't have one.
Saying it doesn't have a community doesn't magically make it true. There are people in that Telegram channel who talk to each other about the software, which is what a community is.
You were not worthy of consorting with the council of wizards.
In all seriousness though, I didn't need to search too hard to find numerous other testimonies of the project author acting neurotically. I'm not sure you missed out on much. Someone on Reddit mentioned being banned after joining the Telegram group for a similar question only a week ago.
> The docs say "search before asking"...did you do that?
This was a typical response that makes people hate communities.
I cannot stress this enough
Just because the user didn't find it doesn't mean they didn't search
It especially pisses off the noobs, because, frankly, they are noobs! They didn't even know what to search for yet! They're learning. Search is still a hard problem. Get a few words wrong and you'll get nothing of value. Worse, it'll lead you to lots of irrelevant information you don't yet know is irrelevant.
The worst part is when it's claimed it's been discussed and no link is provided. If you know it's been discussed, prove it with a reply with the link, then move on. At worst you have made the issue easier to find. At best the issue isn't actually related and you've gained clarifying context.
But banning is just a silly response that's clearly going to enrage people. Are you building a community to work together or a community to circle jerk?
At least when Linus yells at people he explains to them what the issue is.
If they spend time handholding 1000s of lazy people not willing to do basic search provide logs etc before helping they would spend all their time handholding instead of working on the software they are coding in their spare time as a hobby.
As much as I personally do not like the abrasiveness from many open source devs I empathize with their behaviour as most people are not willing to do the slightest work to help themselves and just expect to be hand fed. And this abrasiveness usually comes after years of trying to be helpful.
Btw if you asked a question then got an answer and figured it out hopefully you would have added it to the help notes of the open source software you are using so others would find it
It seems you did not read my comment. Here, let me reiterate in case you are too lazy to look back. I even indented it to change formatting the first time
>> I cannot stress this enough
>> Just because the user didn't find it doesn't mean they didn't search
Handholding isn't hard. You can be firm and critical while doing it too. See my example.
> provide logs etc
They probably could, but that depends on the community.
> I empathize with their behaviour
I do not. It is better to just leave the message on read than to respond with hostility. Growing up around my house we stressed "Thumper's Rule"
If you don’t have somethin’ nice to say, don’t say nuthin’ at all.
It applies here too. You can just ignore it instead of investing your time getting upset. You'll feel better too! Maybe just give them more time to keep searching. If you must respond, suggest a query. Either way you're responding, but a nothing response is a lot less effort than an angry response.
> Btw if you asked a question then got an answer and figured it out hopefully you would have added it to the help notes of the open source software you are using so others would find it
I do!
But not in communities I get banned from for not finding the (supposedly) previously discussed issue. They won't let me.
I went to the Telegram channel to ask something about why my vacuum running Valetudo would have a specific behaviour (IIRC it moved on its own), they kind of talked to each other for a second to discuss if this question was relevant to the channel, and then, presumably deciding it wasn't, banned me for a year.