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Community contributions to Element Web (Matrix client) are often not welcomed (github.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by shirahara@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

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It seems that community contributions to Element Web (Matrix client) are often effectively rejected. For example, see:

There are also many other PRs for Element Web/Desktop which have not gotten a review in a timely manner (see here). The request to improve the ~~terrible~~ notification sound has been there since 2017, and though several PRs have been submitted to improve it, they have been either ignored or rejected for an unknown reason (there should be an epic project going on which should make the six-year-wait legitimate).

When it comes to development of Element, there is a lot of unspoken, unwritten, internally shared rules among the internal team members. Your PR will be effectively rejected even if it works, unless it aligns with their goals, which you cannot know before submitting a PR.

It should be well noted that there is a clear and strict division between the internal paid workers and external volunteer developers who essentially provide the team free labor. The exclusive attitude of the team behind Element has discouraged the latter from contributing to the project. I myself have been one of the active localization volunteers, but I stopped contributing after I realized it has been free labor.

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[–] meiti@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If i learned anything from my early contributions, it's checking the health of a project and attitude of its maintainers before spending anytime on that project.

[–] shirahara@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, I should have done that actually.

[–] HarkMahlberg@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately I don't think your experience is unique. I've seen several open source projects suffer from cliquey, protectionist behavior. I've been on a project where I was told by the primary developer to rebase my PR branch onto origin/main or it won't get looked at. By the time I've done that, that same developer's already pushed a commit directly to origin/main, and I'm no longer up-to-date.

[–] thecam@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

Not sure if Syphon rejects community contributions but I wish Syphon client got more love and attention. Syphon is more privacy focused and is written in Dart, allowing it to be compiled for desktop and mobile.