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672 points LexSiga | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.318s | source
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imiric ◴[] No.45666757[source]
Shame. Textbook OSS rug pull. These people love to rely on OSS, and claim how committed they are to contribute to the ecosystem and to their community, but as soon as people are drawn to the project, start relying on it and using it in the same spirit of OSS that they enjoy themselves (which their chosen license allows, mind you), then it becomes a financial burden, priorities shift to their commercial offering, there's no "bandwidth" to maintain and support the "community" edition, and so on.

STOP ABUSING OSS AS A MARKETING GIMMICK.

Or perhaps an advice to people who might actually listen: stop being attracted to open source projects because of the word "open", and because you can use it gratis. There are plenty of good proprietary and commercial software whose authors treat their users with more respect than these leeches of good will and abusers of trust.

I'm not against OSS being commercialized. In fact, I think that it's crucial for maintaining a healthy project in the long-term[1][2]. But this lingers on the developer having respect and equal regard for all their users, regardless of how much they're paying them. Yes, nobody working on software should be expected to work for free. But there is a philosophy behind this movement that goes beyond a financial transaction. It only works if everyone in the ecosystem is honest, and first and foremost has the intention of making the world a better place for everyone, by not only depending on others who have this mindset, but by adopting it themselves. Claiming to be part of the OSS community, but being hostile to your OSS users is dishonest at best, and worthy of all criticism.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45540307

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45537750

replies(2): >>45666980 #>>45666992 #
1. muragekibicho ◴[] No.45666980[source]
Isn't your diatribe contradictory. Your last paragraph appears to contradict your 'beliefs'.