An update on the input stack

Posted Oct 10, 2019 11:45 UTC (Thu) by patrakov (subscriber, #97174)
Parent article: An update on the input stack

Regarding the input stack, I think this is a global HR failure. I tried to contribute to libinput in the past: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2014... (and the equivalent stuff got merged after several attempts to fix the issue at the kernel level), and I am generally interested in contributing code to the user-space infrastructure libraries if hired. The thing is - I am never hired, and lack enough motivation to work on this on my free time. The usual excuses are "you do not contribute enough to open-source projects", "your profile does not match the requirements for this position" (completely disregarding the fact that I am a generalist), "if you remove everything irrelevant from your CV, then it will become empty". I think I am not alone in this.

I have also asked a professional psychologist to improve my CV. Result: "Your CV is OK, the problem is that you apply to open-source companies, and they won't hire you unless you work for them full-time for free already, in which case they will obviously have no motivation to hire you either. Just stop wanting to be an open-source developer."

P.S. CV for those interested: http://pc.cd/PLz7

An update on the input stack

Posted Oct 17, 2019 13:43 UTC (Thu) by pas (guest, #126462) [Link]

This seems like the classic case of you really want X but you start volunteering at Y, so X will "poach" you.

And it's sort of a reasonable decision on part of OSS orgs that they want someone that is really "passionate" about open source (meaning if the funding runs out they can still reach the developer and get a few goodwill/bonus hours for free per week, maybe to review the work of the new guy, or whatever).

That said, it's really hard to contribute to the classic Linux desktop software stack. It's absolutely arcane and byzantine at the same time. It's old, yet some strange pathways work very reliably, but any small change can perturb the music of the spheres, and new pathways have to be divined and sacrifices have to be made. (So, I'm currently trying to figure out Xfce4's screensaver. It's set to disabled yet it very dutifully activates after 5 minutes of inactivity. But there's also the bug that the password dialog is invisibe, but only after lid-close without sleep. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )