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I think theres absolutely zero implicit contract that implies that open source software maintainers owe ANYone ANYthing at ANYtime. That's the reason it's open

I think theres absolutely zero implicit contract that implies that open source software maintainers owe ANYone ANYthing at ANYtime. That's the reason it's open source because everyone can fix it, all an open source maintainer owes you is a P.R. review. Therefore if an open source project maintainer is giving you their time and patience then you better be extra polite and grateful to them. If Ben and Jerrys left a bunch of ice cream on the sidewalk and a bunch of people ate it and got sick then there would be zero liability on Ben and Jerrys.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
skishore 8y ago
> If Ben and Jerrys left a bunch of ice cream on the sidewalk and a bunch of people ate it and got sick then there would be zero liability on Ben and Jerrys. Citation? That doesn't seem right, based on my anecdotal knowledge that restaurants take care to throw leftovers into a garbage bin rather than leave them out somewhere where someone could eat them and expose the business to liability. I looked up this claim myself. In 1996, President Clinton signed the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act into law to limit liability for those who donate food. [1] The majority of restaurants still discard leftover food due to concerns over liability, though. [2] Clearly, liability was a real issue at some point in the past. I don't know enough about the current law to know how easy it is to take advantage of the new protections; I can understand why people are still concerned. In summary, liability issues vary by country and are not clear-cut. As an analogy for this open-source situation, they don't clarify matters. [1] https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1602&context=sjsj https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?... [2] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/restaurants-that-dont-donate-because-of-liability-are-just-making-excuses-experts-say_us_577d6f92e4b0344d514dd20f https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/restaurants-that-dont-d...
- remind_me_again 8y ago
  I like reading comments, you never know what you'll learn. Guido is taking a break and I learn a bill about food donation.
- inetknght 8y ago
  In your analogy you're citing a business. Then if you open source something you wrote, are you claiming you are a business? No matter how un/business-like the open source claim may be: has any money changed ownership between the parties in the course of the person writing and maintaining software vs the person using that software? If no business transaction has been formalized then why should either party be liable? Indeed, if a person is not permitted to simply say "this is the software I am using" without also becoming liable for problems caused when other people use or look at that software? I don't think it is right to allow a person to be liable just for the speech of their software. Fortunately, a lot of open source software is known to be open source because of a license file. Many open source licenses declare no liability or warranty of any kind. In that case, would not any liability claimed would be forfeit? Otherwise they would have been using the software in breach of its declared intended purpose at the point of time being talked about.
  - brisance 8y ago
    IANAL but here are a few things to consider. Every person has a duty of care to minimize the possibility of harm to others. In some professions the standard is higher and may be codified into statute and/or bylaws of their professional association e.g. medical and legal professions. What this means is that, for example, in certain jurisdictions a doctor is bound by his Hippocratic oath and has to render medical assistance to a person who is in urgent need of it, as quickly as practicable. Ignoring this exposes him to liability. So in the particular case of software, a malware author could in theory be found liable by posting his proof of concept in the public domain. Secondly, in certain jurisdictions, there is an implied warranty of merchantability and also of fitness for a particular purpose. In the US this is under the Uniform Commercial Code.
    - mbreese 8y ago
      Most (all?) open source licenses have a clause disclaiming any implied warranty or fitness for a purpose. The example you cite of a doctor being required to provide emergency medical care I don’t think is quite accurate. In fact, doctors are often not covered by “Good Samaritan” laws and can be held liable if they do stop to help someone and something goes wrong. A layperson would not have that type of legal exposure. Medical treatment issues are complex and I can’t see how they are related to open source software.
- hyper2grams 8y ago
  Why did you take his food analogy literally? This post contributed nothing to the conversation in any way.
- idontpost 8y ago
  > based on my anecdotal knowledge that restaurants take care to throw leftovers into a garbage bin rather than leave them out somewhere where someone could eat them and expose the business to liability. This is an outright lie. It has NEVER happened that a business has been sued for donating food. Not once. It's just a convenient excuse for saying '%$@# the poor.'
mgkimsal 8y ago
> because everyone can fix it Nope, not everyone can. And not everyone using it can fix it. And certainly not everyone can fix something to the standards that maintainers might demand. > Therefore if an open source project maintainer is giving you their time and patience then you better be extra polite and grateful to them. If I'm bothering to try to help them with their project, they owe as much 'politeness' and 'gratitude' back to me as is expected of them. It's a (minimum) 2 way street.
- dragandj 8y ago
  They might (morally) owe you this if they used your contributions. Otherwise, they owe you a (voluntary) politeness and gratitude that any human owes to any other human, but nothing more.
lovich 8y ago
That's not true in every case. For instance you need to keep pools fenced in, in most location as they are considered an attractive nuisance and you are liable if children jump into them and drown
mtVessel 8y ago
The next time someone asks me why I'm choosing a proprietary solution, rather than one of the many fine open-source options available, I'm just going to point them to this comment.
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  Perfect! If you're choosing open source software for the customer support then you're deff on the wrong track.
anonytrary 8y ago
> all an open source maintainer owes you is a P.R. review. What? Given what you said in your first sentence, this seems a bit contradictory. When I post some code online, nothing forces me to review PRs other than an implicit social contract. The likelihood of a rational person ignoring PRs/issues seems pretty low, since one typically wants improve their software. Nonetheless, it definitely happens for one reason or another and it's not something worth complaining about unless you're given some sort of a priori quality assurance. I'm sure there are thousands of projects on Github which have a 0% response rate for PRs/issues. This isn't bad -- it just is. It's entirely someone's right to post a project and forget about it, regardless of how popular it got later on. Radio-silent projects will almost never get popular, since there's an implicit meta contract around support, feedback, etc.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

skishore 8y ago

> If Ben and Jerrys left a bunch of ice cream on the sidewalk and a bunch of people ate it and got sick then there would be zero liability on Ben and Jerrys. Citation? That doesn't seem right, based on my anecdotal knowledge that restaurants take care to throw leftovers into a garbage bin rather than leave them out somewhere where someone could eat them and expose the business to liability. I looked up this claim myself. In 1996, President Clinton signed the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act into law to limit liability for those who donate food. [1] The majority of restaurants still discard leftover food due to concerns over liability, though. [2] Clearly, liability was a real issue at some point in the past. I don't know enough about the current law to know how easy it is to take advantage of the new protections; I can understand why people are still concerned. In summary, liability issues vary by country and are not clear-cut. As an analogy for this open-source situation, they don't clarify matters. [1] https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1602&context=sjsj https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?... [2] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/restaurants-that-dont-donate-because-of-liability-are-just-making-excuses-experts-say_us_577d6f92e4b0344d514dd20f https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/restaurants-that-dont-d...

remind_me_again 8y ago
I like reading comments, you never know what you'll learn. Guido is taking a break and I learn a bill about food donation.
inetknght 8y ago
In your analogy you're citing a business. Then if you open source something you wrote, are you claiming you are a business? No matter how un/business-like the open source claim may be: has any money changed ownership between the parties in the course of the person writing and maintaining software vs the person using that software? If no business transaction has been formalized then why should either party be liable? Indeed, if a person is not permitted to simply say "this is the software I am using" without also becoming liable for problems caused when other people use or look at that software? I don't think it is right to allow a person to be liable just for the speech of their software. Fortunately, a lot of open source software is known to be open source because of a license file. Many open source licenses declare no liability or warranty of any kind. In that case, would not any liability claimed would be forfeit? Otherwise they would have been using the software in breach of its declared intended purpose at the point of time being talked about.
- brisance 8y ago
  IANAL but here are a few things to consider. Every person has a duty of care to minimize the possibility of harm to others. In some professions the standard is higher and may be codified into statute and/or bylaws of their professional association e.g. medical and legal professions. What this means is that, for example, in certain jurisdictions a doctor is bound by his Hippocratic oath and has to render medical assistance to a person who is in urgent need of it, as quickly as practicable. Ignoring this exposes him to liability. So in the particular case of software, a malware author could in theory be found liable by posting his proof of concept in the public domain. Secondly, in certain jurisdictions, there is an implied warranty of merchantability and also of fitness for a particular purpose. In the US this is under the Uniform Commercial Code.
  - mbreese 8y ago
    Most (all?) open source licenses have a clause disclaiming any implied warranty or fitness for a purpose. The example you cite of a doctor being required to provide emergency medical care I don’t think is quite accurate. In fact, doctors are often not covered by “Good Samaritan” laws and can be held liable if they do stop to help someone and something goes wrong. A layperson would not have that type of legal exposure. Medical treatment issues are complex and I can’t see how they are related to open source software.
hyper2grams 8y ago
Why did you take his food analogy literally? This post contributed nothing to the conversation in any way.
idontpost 8y ago
> based on my anecdotal knowledge that restaurants take care to throw leftovers into a garbage bin rather than leave them out somewhere where someone could eat them and expose the business to liability. This is an outright lie. It has NEVER happened that a business has been sued for donating food. Not once. It's just a convenient excuse for saying '%$@# the poor.'

mgkimsal 8y ago

> because everyone can fix it Nope, not everyone can. And not everyone using it can fix it. And certainly not everyone can fix something to the standards that maintainers might demand. > Therefore if an open source project maintainer is giving you their time and patience then you better be extra polite and grateful to them. If I'm bothering to try to help them with their project, they owe as much 'politeness' and 'gratitude' back to me as is expected of them. It's a (minimum) 2 way street.

dragandj 8y ago
They might (morally) owe you this if they used your contributions. Otherwise, they owe you a (voluntary) politeness and gratitude that any human owes to any other human, but nothing more.

lovich 8y ago

That's not true in every case. For instance you need to keep pools fenced in, in most location as they are considered an attractive nuisance and you are liable if children jump into them and drown

mtVessel 8y ago

The next time someone asks me why I'm choosing a proprietary solution, rather than one of the many fine open-source options available, I'm just going to point them to this comment.

nickthemagicman 8y ago
Perfect! If you're choosing open source software for the customer support then you're deff on the wrong track.

anonytrary 8y ago

> all an open source maintainer owes you is a P.R. review. What? Given what you said in your first sentence, this seems a bit contradictory. When I post some code online, nothing forces me to review PRs other than an implicit social contract. The likelihood of a rational person ignoring PRs/issues seems pretty low, since one typically wants improve their software. Nonetheless, it definitely happens for one reason or another and it's not something worth complaining about unless you're given some sort of a priori quality assurance. I'm sure there are thousands of projects on Github which have a 0% response rate for PRs/issues. This isn't bad -- it just is. It's entirely someone's right to post a project and forget about it, regardless of how popular it got later on. Radio-silent projects will almost never get popular, since there's an implicit meta contract around support, feedback, etc.