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“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

(mail.python.org)
2024 points randlet | 3 comments | 12 Jul 18 15:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.642s | source
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TheMagicHorsey ◴[12 Jul 18 20:54 UTC] No.17518505[source]▶
I don't know if it's just me, but if you read the forums and bug reports related to open source projects, it feels like programmers today are a really entitled lot.

The tone that people take when filing bug reports for what is basically free software is reprehensible. People are doing work for FREE to benefit you, and you take a tone with them like you are a prince and they are your royal goblet holders? Who taught these human beings their manners?

I totally understand the frustration when you write a large system in Python and then the Python committee makes a breaking change that makes your life very difficult. However, you didn't pay for Python! These sorts of changes should be expected, and if you didn't expect it, you are the fool. And in any case, you aren't paying these people a cent, so speak politely to them. You are basically a charity case from their perspective.

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dcosson ◴[12 Jul 18 21:54 UTC] No.17518942[source]▶
I think what you're saying is true in the case of someone just throwing up some code they wrote online without any plan of supporting or developing it further.

But once you call it an open-source project, and you have docs and a roadmap and an issues page and stuff, you're making an implicit contract with people who use it that it will do a reasonable job of solving the problem it claims to solve. The user is choosing to use it over other alternatives and investing time learning and integrating it, so it doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me for them to be frustrated when they realize that due to some bug or limitation it doesn't actually solve the problem for them that it claims to.

As an analogy, if you give someone free food and it makes them sick, are they justified in getting mad at you? I think most people would say yes. IANAL but I'd imagine that if you got food poisoning from Ben & Jerry's free cone day due to negligent sanitation practices or something, you could probably sue the company just like if you had paid for it.

Or, if a member of some sort of volunteer community board is doing a bad job, people will complain about it. An open source maintainer is basically in the same position.

Of course, that's no excuse for being rude to them, but you also shouldn't be rude if you paid for something and it doesn't work. I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything to reduce hostility towards maintainers when it happens. But it's not true, in open source software or anywhere else, that just because something is free there are automatically no expectations around it.

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1. nostrademons ◴[13 Jul 18 02:01 UTC] No.17520014[source]▶
Most open-source licenses explicitly say that the software is provided as-is, and there is no warranty, express or implied, nor any obligation to continue to provide support or for it even to work.

https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html

The user is indeed choosing to use it over other alternatives; they are choosing to use it, and should make that choice on the basis of their own evaluation of the functionality and stability of the library.

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2. webmaven ◴[13 Jul 18 02:38 UTC] No.17520131[source]▶
> Most open-source licenses explicitly say that the software is provided as-is, and there is no warranty, express or implied, nor any obligation to continue to provide support or for it even to work.

Certainly, but notwithstanding those disclaimers, if the project's README or homepage describes it as intended and fit for a particular purpose, the user invests some time into learning to use the code in question based on the description, and it turns out that the description was... shall we say, overly optimistic, isn't the user entitled to be pissed off at the maintainer?

There may not be any legal liability, but the maintainer can incur social obligations by fostering expectations.

As an analogy, what do you think will happen if you tell someone you will help them move their stuff to a new apartment and that you'll bring a dolly, but you bail on them, or even just don't show up[0]? They chose to rely on you to provide the dolly rather than find some other alternative, after all.

So of course social obligations aren't something you can be sued over, but they are indeed real, and ignoring or violating them does have a cost: People get pissed off at you, which they may choose to express uncouthly in your general direction or vicinity, and your reputation suffers.

It is worth noting that this is far from a blank check for them to hurl invective at you. Their reputation may suffer as well, depending on just how uncouth they are.

Such is life.

[0] I am NOT saying that GvR has done the equivalent. In point of fact, he has left no outstanding commitments behind, and has fostered the growth of a robust group of core committers that are well up to the task of continuing to steer the project in his stead, though perhaps without his particular aesthetic sense.

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3. leoc ◴[13 Jul 18 03:58 UTC] No.17520426[source]▶
Yes. The honestly somewhat dodgy no-warranty clauses in open-source licenses have always been justified on the basis that unpaid volunteers can't afford to be exposed to (potentially very serious) legal liability for their work. It's a bit astonishing that now they're being presented as a supposed reason why OS devs never have any ethical responsiblity to their users (beyond refraining from active malice, presumably?) (And in case it needs saying, no-one is suggesting that devs have an unlimited responsiblity to serve or take shit from users, or that users don't have reciprocal obligations.) By that logic the many sleazy Kickstarters, scam PACs, do-nothing gravy-train charities and the like that manage to stay just this side of the law are also all fine and wonderful.