> It used to be that way, at least it was this way when I grew up in open
> source (in the 90s, before Eric Raymond invented the term). And it makes
> sense, for successful projects that have at least a moderate number of
> users.  Just dumping your code on github helps very few people.


You realize this isn't Apache, right?  It seems a small project,
mostly maintained by folks as they get time.  There's no SCRUM
meetings or hallway meetings, no foundation, no checklist.  Surely you
can't generalize two interactions first as reflective as the "culture
of open source".  It seems to have been a small piece of code shared
so others wouldn't have to do it over again and it's grown with time.
The primary thrust seems to be for library developers, not catalogers
or folks learning python code.

The typo you bought up was patched by one of the "team-members" within
a hour or two from what I can tell.  (Assuming you meant issue #22
https://github.com/edsu/pymarc/issues/22).  From what I can tell
someone patched it in less than an hour.

In general though github is the sourceforge of years past, but even
better.  It seems entirely reasonable to ask for a patch to me.
Perhaps it could have been handled more delicately by both sides.
Perhaps you weren't treated as nicely as you'd like.  There's probably
some truth to that.  But at the same time, Ed did include a wink at
the end after requesting the patch.  Had you perhaps cut him some
slack instead of immediately responding incredulously  you'd find it
was fixed when he got time. Or not.  He has his own priorities as do
other folks who contributed to the code.

If you're unhappy with the dump on github approach, then don't use the
software.  No one ran around forcing folks to do it.  It's one of
those lightweight github approaches, just another approach to open
source software.  In all the years I've also been involved with open
source every project has had it's own unique culture.  There's
responsibility on the user before using software to figure out what it
is.  If it doesn't meet their expectation, I see little reason that
the developer should feel compelled to change unless they're getting
paid for the work.  Obviously some people have found the "dump on
github" approach useful if they've contributed patches.

Can't we all just shake hands virtually or something?

Jon Gorman