Dear open source app user: feel free to improve the README file of the projects you come across by adding a few screenshots you believe are relevant.
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Although I understand the OP's perspective open-source is a community effort and people should have a more proactive attitude and contribute when they feel things aren't okay. Most open-source developers aren't focused / don't have time for how things look (or at least not on the beginning). If you're a regular user and you can spend an hour taking a bunch of screenshots and improving a readme you'll be making more for the future the project that you might think.
When the last big Twitter migration to Mastodon occurred there were a lot new users complaining about things like documentation, bugs, etc. Old users and FLOSS supporters kept pushing the "its open source, write a doc or fill out a bug ticket" and evem included documentation on how to do those tasks.
Most people just continued to complain. /facepalm
We just don't live in a world where making the changes you want are encouraged. We have been thought to just accept whatever changes happen or at most file a suggestion that almost noone will listen to. Obviously open source is different but it's still such a tiny minority compared to how the rest of the world functions
As both user and developer - user CAN contribute but the developer/maintainer SHOULD add the screenshots.
If the app sucks, few people will add the screenshots. Therefore, most apps without screenshots will suck. So new apps will need the developer to add screenshots, or people will assume it sucks.
And we're back to square one. The developer has extra responsibility to highlight the features.
While we're at it, I love that you let me customize the settings via a config, but for the love of god make the default config the best it can possibly be
This. It should be the most sane configuration and fit most use cases and lead to an experience working out of the box.
I contribute to OS projects and work on one full time. EVERYBODY thinks that their obscure use case is the most common (not saying this is what you are doing).
We get users that are completely flabbergasted that our software doesn't offer some feature that is totally specific to their industry and has never been requested even once by anyone else previously. We'll show them our feature request form on our site where you can also view and upvote other requests, and point out that the feature they want has never been requested. They will literally come up with some bs excuse why that is and then insist that we get on it and build out this custom functionality that they need or else they're going to slander us on social media.
Your app doesn't integrate with "didLr"? OMG any decent app integrates with "didLr"!
Sometimes I'd settled for a simple description of what the tool even is. Sometimes the readme is just straight into compilation steps and I feel like we're rushing into something.
Foreplay is important! Gotta get me excited for that app.
🛠️ Building
To build the app install the gamete dependencies and run the following
make child
Me, developing a headless component library:
To be that dick, a headless component library is still meant to do something, show an example of it being used!
No. ReadMe files should be concise, explicit, and text only. UI/UX screenshots can be part of the repo, wiki, or associated website but they shouldn't be in the ReadMe.
If you don't understand the software you're installing from some rando stranger's git repo then you shouldn't install it. Period. Take the opportunity to learn more or use another tool.
Git repos are not app stores. The devs don't owe you anything.
The vast majority of software in publicly accessible git repos are personal projects, hobbies, and one-off experiments.
Your relationship with the software and the devs that create and maintain it is your responsibility. Try talking to the devs, ask them questions, attempt to understand why they constructed their project in whatever specific way they have. You might make some new friends, or learn something really interesting. And if you encounter rudeness, hostility, or incompetence you're free to move on, such is the nature of our ever-evolving open-source community.
We bring a lot of preconceived notions into the open-source / foss / software development space as we embark on our own journey of personal development. I try to always remember it's the journey of discovery and the relationships we curate along the way that is the real prize.
For a lot of open source at the moment the root level readme is fundamentally the homepage too. It absolutely should include screenshots, maybe even a gif. If your software has a GUI or TUI it should follow that a concise visual will do more to explain it's usage than a text document
Also please begin the Github page or whatever with a description of what the app is actually for or what it does. I know that sounds super obvious, but the number of times I've seen links that are like "I made this app from scratch for fun, let me know what you think!" and then you click through and the app is called Scrooblarr or something and it has no indication of what it actually does is... more than it should be.
It scroobles obviously!
README is usually a text file. While some platforms can now use markdown, that is nowhere near universal. So it might be better to ask for screenshots to be put on the website / wiki.
GitHub and GitLab both support inserting images into your README.md. Here's the syntax:
