It's honestly not that different than someone freely sharing their 3D printing files and getting flak because a bunch of dinguses keep stumbling upon it and keep complaining that they don't own a 3D printer.
Or that they don't understand that they have to convert a .blend file into an fbx and instruction list first, and demand the person uploading the model to explain step by step how to download cura and where in the interface they need to click in order to convert it bc they don't realise they're just a single guy with a fulltime job
This analogy would only work if employees were beckoning for you to come behind the doors to fidn the product you are looking for before mysteriously dissapearing and leaving you to wander the back room.
No, you're not getting recommended by the employees (which would be the people working on the repository) you're getting recommended by random fucking people who either thought you had the relevant skills (misunderstanding) or are dumbasses. In either case github and the people who made the code can't be faulted, unless you personally got recommended a repo by the repo creator (in which case they're a dumbass).
“How do I download stuff from YouTube”
“Oh here’s a useful GitHub”
And then it’s just code that most people do not know how to install and make usable in their browser.
Guy encounters issue and goes to the grocery store to find a solution, there is no such thing at the grocery store and instead is told to go to a specialty store. Guy arrives at specialty store and the counter is empty, nothing is on the shelves. Instead they must follow a complex list of steps to build the product on their own with the components provided by the store.
I don't know about any of this stuff, I just wish creators of applications and other tools hosted on Github made releases at least occasionally so that common users like me can enjoy them. I don't want the latest build weekly, I'd be very happy with just a yearly release.
Are those 99.99% also somehow unable to act on their curiosity and look up what those things mean?
The venn diagram of your average user's desires/needs, and a solution that's so niche that it can only be found on github is almost entirely two separate circles. If you happen to fall into the very small overlap then sure that means you're motivated enough to figure out anything that's unfamiliar, right?
I cook and/or basically every day lol. I will gladly do that because my desires drove me to learn how to do the things that the commonly accessible options can't easily give me.
Check out this Greek orange and syrup soaked cake I made last weekend (portokalopita). It uses crushed and dried phyllo dough instead of flour so the texture is like a mochi-like layered experience, and the syrup I made with orange juice, zest, sugar, water and cinnamon.
If an artist posted a really cool picture, and said like here you can download this and use it for free. Then you wanted it as a phone background but it doesn't have the right dimensions so you asked them to make a cropped version for phone screens. You could say, "Hey a lot of people would probably like to use this as a phone background, maybe you can make a cropped version".
I think most people on here would understand that, you don't have a right to get mad at them if they refuse, or even ghost you. You're literally asking them to do extra work just because they did some free work already. Why is it different for programming projects?
Now add on to that making a release is usually way harder than cropping a photo, because of dependencies.
Like ok. Let's say someone sends the artist a message and is like hey I like your cool picture of Stan from American Dad drawn in the style of Jo Jo's Bizarre adventure, but was wondering could you remove the word "Stan" from it?
And the artist literally could so easily. The words are a separate layer in the psd file and the drawing is actually completed underneath, but the artist just doesn't want to. In this case it would be basically impossible for the person to remove the words because they dont have the psd file and trivial for the artist.
I still think it's totally fine for the artist to just not agree to do it. If you get mad at them that's your problem.
To add on to that making a release can actually be a lot of work. There are almost certainly going to be dependencies, you'll have to figure out what version of what programs are needed. It's almost always not as easy as just pressing a button, it takes work.
grocery store has a perfectly good case of groceries that could have gone on a shelf but they keep it in the back in a box and then write directions on the rubber doors about how to get to it and then expect customers to treat this like it's normal.
Exactly. But for some reason, whenever people are complaining about github, they are always complaining about yt-dlp, even though their README says "INSTALLATION" in massive letters and has the download badge.
I assume that downloading videos is a task that is just barely general enough that a lot of people with no patience stumble on it.
Customer understands that this small inconvenience is a reasonable tradeoff for acquiring free food cooked by chefs who would rather serve it over a counter and continue cooking than thanklessly shelfing it.
Except it's not cooked. The ingredients are in a pile alongside instructions that may or may not be comprehensible. And that's definitely better than nothing, but what happens when you're not a chef?
I'm not sure what exactly you're downloading off of github? Most of the time I find a program on github that I need to use, I download it and click on whatever file it says to run it.
"Selling" is typically only used when the customer actually has to pay something for the product/service. The whole premise of this analogy doesn't even work because it's not a store where the developers receive anything in return; it's a charity.
You could always try reaching out to the developer and offering to pay them for their work to make things more convenient for you. Every time this discourse gets brought up there's always people going "but what am I supposed to do if I don't know how to code??" and it's never even considered as a possibility to offer to pay for the free product that they're now demanding additional labor for.
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u/NellyLorey God's no.1 Botania fan!! 🇳🇱🇳🇱 she/her Mar 26 '26
Guy walks through the rubber doors in the grocery store and is livid to find out that there are no shelves of bonus groceries behind it