12 ms·

WiringPi – deprecated

238 points by kbumsik 7y ago

groundlogic 7y ago
Step 1. Person A makes some piece of software under an open source license. (GPL) Step 2. This piece of software becomes widely used, primarily since it's open source licensed Step 3. (Modern variation) Person A feels cheated for not getting rich and creates some kind of drama. This doesn't make any sense at all, to me.
- corndoge 7y ago
  That isn't what the article said at all
  - groundlogic 7y ago
    "The article", written by a person offended by someone else getting richer from their code; whilst seemingly not breaking any licenses.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      So, it's just an uncharitable pot shot when the article is perfectly relatable when taken at face value. I'd probably even add your mentality, ubiquitous on HN, to his list. People come out of the woodwork to shit on others. It seems even moreso when it's just a hobby project. You're basically taking one last snipe at him while he exits the theater. For what? Is this what you thought the world needed more of?
      - groundlogic 7y ago
        I'm a bit annoyed about people running popular open source projects suddenly creating drama like this. The reason these projects got popular in the first place were often that the author didn't care for fame, glory or money; they just wanted to solve a problem. And well, to be clear: most of us prefer to use an open source library, over a commercial library. What I'm a bit upset over here is the bait and switch here. Using the open source aspect of your library to get widely spread, but also somehow expecting to make money off this, somehow - this doesn't make sense.
        Zenst 7y ago
        If you find that annoying then maybe, just maybe you have a small idea how annoyed the author is from people literally abusing his work beyond the scope it was offered and causing all sorts of grief and abuse from people demanding support for a product that he never sold and never even scoped as supported. Whilst many are great users, who use as intended, just reading his post in full outlines just some of the instances and issues that have caused what was a passion and a hobby project to become a source of abuse and mental anguish. Nobody should have to endure that, more so when they did nothing wrong.
        groundlogic 7y ago
        If the code was used in an illegal way in terms of licenses; I feel for the author. Otherwise not really. Example: If you license something under e.g. the MIT license, a company ends up using it correctly, and you feel bad about the transaction - sorry, that's on you. I really don't get why this is controversial. You license your code under a license for a reason.
        ziddoap 7y ago
        Produce something of value, for free. Then, when you start getting 10,000+ e-mails shitting on you for not also doing XYZ for free, because how dare you not, I'll take your opinion with a more open mind. The author made it fairly clear that this was not just a money situation.
        groundlogic 7y ago
        ..so, in a hyphothetical case, let's say "you" published some code under the MIT license. You then got 10k emails. What's your point? What do you want to say?
        ziddoap 7y ago
        It's not hypothetical. >I never intended for wiringPi to be statically linked either – and thanks to the incompetence of many people who have done just this, I’ve had over 10,000 emails from people who upgraded their Pi and found that code stopped working because they were reliant on a system (typically some java/javascript/node or home automation or UPS thing) which had statically linked an older version My point is, the author intended the project to be used for X. It was used for Y. Author doesn't want to support Y. Author gets bombarded with e-mails complaining they don't support Y. This isn't "suddenly creating drama like this" or "also somehow expecting to make money off this" as you asserted. Another pertinent part of the article you seem to be skipping is: >Add to that the people who have “bludgeoned” wiringPi to work on other fruit Pi platforms, but left my name as the contact email … You claiming the author is just creating drama solely because of money is a gross misreading of the situation.
      - banana_giraffe 7y ago
        Ages ago, I wrote and maintained some Windows open source stuff. It wasn't GPL, but it was "here's the source code, and a binary version, have fun!". I had a little niche of a certain type of tool in the Windows world, if you searched for how to do a specific thing, my tools would show up. Most of it included my real name and email address in the executable and DLLs details tab, as well as the source code. I was the top of the little niche, and more than happy to help other developers out there. I'd help users as best as I could, but my tools were mostly geared at developers (though, users never stopped amazing me at clever unintended ways to use things) The emails I got from this could be broken down into two categories: Actual questions about the tools, including bug reports or problems integrating it into some other project. That was about 5% of the emails I saw. The other 95% was "Program <x> stopped working! I can't find any contact anywhere expect in this one DLL, I demand you help me fix it!" It was super disheartening, since my attempt to explain my role as someone that provided a tool or library to whoever wrote their application was responded with either "Your name is in this application, I don't care what your role is, you need to help me fix it!", or "If you didn't want to provide support, why is your email here?" And that's, basically, how I ended up using random combinations of words on sites like this one. Maybe people with a thicker skin can deal with this crap, but I can't anymore.
        groundlogic 7y ago
        It's super weird for a "developer" to demand assistance from another developer, just because they wrote and published the code, regardless of license.
        banana_giraffe 7y ago
        Sorry if I came of suggesting that. At least in my case the only people demanding support were end-users of applications I didn't write but did use my code. Developers that contacted me were always understanding, with a rare exception, that free stuff got free support.
        x0x0 7y ago
        This was so so my experience. The people that contacted me were, in the majority, some of the most entitled assholes. I quit reading the email address associated w/ my open source project, and one user tracked down my (then) work email to demand support!
    - stjohnswarts 7y ago
      Are you DanielK?
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  Open sourcing something is deciding to share it. It isn't committing to support it or update it or help you make money with it. It's not shocking people get burnt out by constant harassment by entitled people who demand the developer "support them" for free.
  - groundlogic 7y ago
    > Open sourcing something is deciding to share it. It isn't committing to support it or update it or help you make money with it. Exactly. This and nothing else. I really don't understand why this is so hard to understand.
- guggle 7y ago
  > This doesn't make any sense at all, to me. Of course it doesn't, because that's not what is explained. Read again maybe. If anything, the author asks for respect.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  That's not at all what this is about. He didn't want money, he just didn't want to be treated like crap.
- varjag 7y ago
  I see some people can't just wrap their mind around doing something not for profiting off others.
- imtringued 7y ago
  Not to be a complete ass or anything, but technically posting a comment on HN REQUIRES you to read the article before spreading complete misinformation. Your comment completely contradicts everything written in the article. It doesn't make sense to you because you don't want it to make sense to you. Step 1. The author doesn't use GPL. Step 2. The author clearly intended wiringPi to have a limited audience. He doesn't want it to become widely used. He intentionally limited support to a handful of hardware devices. It was meant to be used by experienced C programmers. Step 3 isn't about the author being cheated. Fame or money were never mentioned. The author is overwhelmed with work, whether it is caused by the open source project, a new job or caring for his family doesn't matter. However there is a special situation happening here that generally only applies to open software projects. The vast majority of the bug reports involve problems that have already been solved in newer versions. This means that even if the author had an infinite amount of time, all of it would be wasted on already solved problems. There is no reason to work on the project anymore since the rate of progress has stalled. The project has entered a zombie stage and then one day the maintainer announces that the project will be shutdown.
- itsbruce 7y ago
  That is not what the article said. You are being just the kind of asshole the author complains about.
guardiangod 7y ago
First of all, sorry to hear that WiringPi is deprecated, and I would like to thank the author for all the effort he put into this project. When I read his blog post on his reasoning, I can't help but be reminded of the feud between xscreensaver's author and Debian maintainers. Debian maintainers refused to upgrade the app's version and refused to remove the 'For support contact the author's email' notice. The author's fed up with all the support emails he gets from Debian (outdated) installations' users and put in a message prompt blasting Debian. It was very ugly for both sides. I think that there can be an extension on GPL that says, if you bundle this library and is not using the latest official version from the author, you are not allowed to include the author's contact information. If you insist on bundling the author's email with your outdated software, then you are in violation of GPL. As for people stealing his code. Sorry to hear this. I got nothing except to try to contact EFF.
- dogecoinbase 7y ago
  I can't help but be reminded of the feud between xscreensaver's author and Debian maintainers. For the curious, the post: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop-shipping-xscreensaver/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop... And the instigatory thread: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=819703 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=819703
  - CDSlice 7y ago
    Careful, that first link redirects you to a NSFW image coming from HN
    - coleifer 7y ago
      Party-pooper.
    - Gibbon1 7y ago
      If it's not safe for your work, you need a different job.
alanbernstein 7y ago
I can empathize with most of this, but I can't say I understand the "last straw" bit. How is there anything wrong with DanielK's request?
- kogir 7y ago
  Assuming the project stands alone (I can't check right now), the author can release it however they want. The license governs how other people use it, not the author and copyright owner.
- gwillz 7y ago
  It's a subtle thing for sure. Just because he prefaces it with "not to be an ass" doesn't justify being an ass. Overall, it's still phrased in a demanding way.
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    He wasn't being an ass, DanielK was. It's HIS original software, he can distribute as he pleases.
    - gwillz 7y ago
      That's right. I was quoting DanielK.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  IANAL, but fundamentally I view licenses as grants of rights to non-copyright holders. As the (I think) sole copyright holder on the WiringPi code, the author is morally, if not legally (again, IANAL) entitled to do whatever the hell they want, irrespective of any licenses the code has been released under.
  - alanbernstein 7y ago
    Ah, that makes sense. I assumed Danielk knew what he was talking about, but I suppose not.
edoceo 7y ago
I also make free software. It's a battle dealing with folks who want both free code AND free work! Making code GPL is both a blessing a curse. Tales lakie this make me stop and double-check my choices
- flyinglizard 7y ago
  What’s forcing you to even respond, let alone provide support?
- LeonM 7y ago
  It's not just free/libre/open source software that has this issue. I run an email security SaaS business. It's closed source, but the suite is free of charge to use for personal, non-commercial domains. We get numerous support requests each day of users on the free tier (who are obviously commercial users btw) that DEMAND us to fix all sorts of email problems for them. They regularly threaten that they will write a bad review on $_SOCIAL_NETWORK if we don't fix their email delivery issues for free. It's frustrating and also exhausting to try to stay professional towards these 'customers'. Interesting observation: This behavior seems to be culture dependent. I'd say about 90% of our over-demanding free-tier users are from the same region on the planet.
  - dillonmckay 7y ago
    So, the people that pay nothing, consider your time worth nothing? Can you eliminate the free tier, or is that part of funneling to paid users?
    - LeonM 7y ago
      Partly it's funneling, but mostly the idea is that we want to offer a 'safe' environment for evaluating the tech. We see customers who use our software for a personal domain for a while, and then introduce it at work, or tell a colleague/friend about it. Word-of-mouth marketing goes a long way. But, due to the group of over-demanding free tier users we are considering to switch to a limited time free trial.
  - 7y ago
flyinglizard 7y ago
I read this and still don’t understand what is the issue behind the drama. If you don’t want to support it, then don’t; if someone stole your public domain work, contact the EFF or more realistically just understand it’s cost of doing business. We all get tired at some point and move on, you don’t owe anyone anything. And thanks for the library!
- cryptonector 7y ago
  It's not "public domain work". The "drama" is that the community abused the author, so the author quit providing free labor to the community.
  - flyinglizard 7y ago
    Would he still be “abused” if he refrained from opening his inbox? Or were there protesters outside his door?
    - Gibbon1 7y ago
      Personalty think if Debian won't change the support email then he should just put in an auto response listing the Debian's maintainers email addresses.
      - exocos 7y ago
        As far as I know, Debian does not ship WiringPI. Debian does not even have an official RPi image. What has any Debian maintainer to do with this?
    - daveFNbuck 7y ago
      So he should stop using email in order to keep doing unpaid work?
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  He wanted to let the users of his software know why he was quitting. Not everything has to be honey soaked drivel. He gave his opinion. It had a little bit of well deserved ranting in there but it did let everyone know that the library is deprecated and you're now on your own with it.
ddlsmurf 7y ago
If you read this Gordon, thank you for all you did for so long, it was way more generous than we deserved. I'm sorry for how unappreciative it all turned out, I appreciated your work and you're right you definitely should not put up with that shit. Best of luck =)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
dade_ 7y ago
Open source gets inundated by the unwashed masses. I am so glad they taught our idiots in the office how to code, but the twits can't even figure out an a simple Excel formula.
cannonedhamster 7y ago
The author owes nobody anything. He's already done enough. If you've given away something for free, don't expect support or anything free in the future. It's literally like taking a gift from someone and then complaining that it doesn't have enough for you to act indignant to people who give things away for free. Don't like it? Don't use it or improve it and contribute back. Want more? Pay them to build it and add it to what's available for everyone as a way to say thanks.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  Agreed. I remember reading about an indie games developer who looked at his proposed user base and decided not to make his game freeware. He wrote there was an attitude of entitlement among people who get the free stuff. People who were prepared to pay, even a very small amount, behaved better. I saw that happen on the centos forums once or twice. It could attract spectacularly selfish individuals. As for people not RTFM'ing, I recall a small internal project I did for which I wrote up comprehensive intro, docs etc. I handed it over to the user who told me to explain it to them. I said "I wrote it all up, help and everything, there it is!". She smiled and said "but who reads those?". I came very close to blowing up at her just then.
- jnbiche 7y ago
  As someone who maintains open source software, I sympathize with the author and agree that he doesn't owe users personalized help. However, he does have to comply with the legal requirements of the license he uses. Personally, I don't use GPL/LGPL licenses, but if I did, I'd be careful to comply with the provisions of the license.
  - shakna 7y ago
    > However, he does have to comply with the legal requirements of the license he uses. No, the author doesn't. Not really. The license governs the use of people who don't hold the copyright. That's why the author of a project can just turn around and release under a new license.
    - 7y ago
cjwillcock 7y ago
Who is John Galt?
john_moscow 7y ago
I have used WiringPi along my side of work and I am thankful to the author for creating and maintaining it, but honestly I don't understand the motivation behind offering a free product with email support. There are many different people on the Internet with different cultural backgrounds, experience levels and work ethic and unfortunately it's not realistic to expect each of your users to share the same values as you do. Anecdotally, charging a license fee for your library/tool is a very good way to filter out 90% of the unprofessional behavior. Also if you rely on your free product to promote your consulting business, I would highly recommend creating a community forum where users can advice each other, and maybe offering paid support on top of that. Also using an open-source helpdesk app to semi-automatically send canned replies to commonly repeating inquiries saves a ton of time and keeps the assholes off your back, as long as the canned replies are reasonable and polite.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  Yep I have a couple of anonymous MIT softwares out there with decent documentation. that's all you get from me, along with quarterly or so updates. I do it for fun not to please everyone.
- olivierkaisin 7y ago
  This sums it all
- lloeki 7y ago
  I’ve been maintaining free software for a while and people have been actively hunting for my email for support, completely ignoring clear guidelines in README and ignoring GitHub issues.
coleifer 7y ago
I haven't used this library but I maintain a couple moderately well-used python libraries and completely sympathize with these frustrations. The absolute worst was a guy who asked for all sorts of changes then, when I had made it clear I was going a different direction, he tried to start a public shaming on Twitter, this site, Reddit, and even the Wikipedia page (since removed at my own request). It was un-believable. He was the cto of a company, too, at least at that time. It is sad that there are people out there who will try to ruin your day if you don't do what they want. Especially considering the work we put into these libraries.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Seriously.. If you ask nicely, argue your situation constructively and the developer still consider the best path isn't what you described, just fork it or pay someone to do the legwork if it's that critical to your mission, jeez..
- bartread 7y ago
  This rings a bell. I think I remember reading about it either on here or elsewhere. You probably don't need or want it, but you have my sympathy anyway: people can be extremely entitled. I've spent a lot of my career working with .NET, where similar events have occurred. Entitled, demanding, and obnoxious users effectively drove off the author of NDoc and killed the project.
- oefrha 7y ago
  Big fan of peewee (I love the interface and use it more than SQLA). I’ve reported a few bugs and each time the bug was fixed within at most a day or two, and a release was cut a few days later. As an open source maintainer myself I admire your commitment and productivity.
- delfinom 7y ago
  >He was the cto of a company, too, at least at that time. Your mistake was not completely destroying him. This behavior exists because one side likes to be civil which further encourages the irrational ones to continue.
SaberTail 7y ago
The complaint about leaving the author's email as the support contact reminds me of sqlite having to change their temp file prefix to "etilqs_" because they were getting support calls and abuse for unrelated applications [1] [1] https://github.com/mackyle/sqlite/blob/3cf493d/src/os.h#L52-L66 https://github.com/mackyle/sqlite/blob/3cf493d/src/os.h#L52-...
exabrial 7y ago
Major bummer but I totally understand. Poor guy.
jlg23 7y ago
Or just open a ticket on the package and inform the user one "has 'technically' done all one could do given time constraints"? I get the frustration, but this looks like a case of improper idiot handling that just escalated...
Accujack 7y ago
Creating or running an open source project can be a thankless task, made worse by the sheer number of entitled jerks who can find you and your project via the Internet. If you're selling software for pay, at least there's money in your pocket to compensate you for having to deal with the various types of a*oles in the human race, but without that it can rapidly become a chore to maintain even a small or niche package. That's why lots of software becomes orphaned. I salute anyone who has ever had the courage to try to write, maintain, or organize development for open source software.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
I've used WiringPI, it's a solid library, and - like a lot of people - I'm glad it exists. But here's a contrarian view - I'm not sure why someone offering a project for free in the educational space would expect users to act like paid professional customers. Or expect them to be non-noob experts who can modify and build the project without hand-holding. Or assume that email would be a viable line of support for a project with literally tens (hundreds?) of thousands of users. Or even expect them to be adults. So while I sympathise with the rage quit, I don't think it's realistic to release code and just expect users to understand - never mind accept - the terms you set for its use. All open source projects comes with politics included. You have to have an understanding of the space you're working in, the kinds of users who inhabit it, and the kinds of relationships they're likely to have with them. You need to know what your support boundaries and support technologies are. And if you work in a space where some of your users are likely to be assholes, you need to have a plan for that - even if it's just knowing that it's fine to ignore them. Edit: to be clear, I think this is more of a general open licence problem than the failing of this one specific author. Open licences don't encourage authors to define boundaries, or even to understand that boundaries are necessary and terms need to be defined. So it's not quite a surprise that things like this happen.
- jeroenhd 7y ago
  > So while I sympathise with the rage quit, I don't think it's realistic to release code and just expect users to understand - never mind accept - the terms you set for its use. I think it's perfectly fine to expect users to understand the terms. They downloaded a piece of code for free from a website with no company or support programme other than "hey I hope this is helpful, if you run into any issues I might be able to help over email". If it turns out that the author can't or won't help, accept your loss and fix it yourself, pay someone to fix it for you or wait for another volunteer to fix it. Alternatively, they bought some kind of product that included the code. If this product breaks, they must go to the company that makes the product, not the author of some library it uses. It's not like you're going to expect some sparkplug manufacturer to come up with a fix for your car when it breaks down, do you? People who feel entitled to anything when they get something for free are selfish assholes and should not be defended. They know fully well that they don't have any right for support, but they will make demands regardless, hoping that the other party will break and give in. I agree that you need to have a plan for people like this, but in most cases, that plan is "I'll just drop the project if it becomes too much of a hassle". And in my opinion, that's a fine plan.
MisterTea 7y ago
This is why I stopped thinking unfriendliness in hacker circles is unwarranted. It's massively frustrating when you get people berating/harassing/stealing from/etc you when the reality is there really isn't a product, just a passion or hobby. This is why any open software I author comes with the express warranty of "Help: No." If no is misunderstood then any reply will be along the lines of FOAD.
pjmlp 7y ago
Sad to see it go like that. Yet another example how ungrateful many people are towards free software. The only difference to piracy, is that not only do they not give back anything, they feel entitled to all kind of requests. So the result ends always being the same, moving to something else.
- girvo 7y ago
  I wonder what "pirating" your own software to handle the "free trial"/free tier case would be like? Weird thought, uploading your own software in a particular guise to BitTorrent or something, to allow for free usage but change the expectations of the user... That said, I distinctly remember a number of blog posts over the years where users using obviously pirated versions demanded support, so it seems impossible to avoid entirely haha

238 points by kbumsik 7y ago

Step 1. Person A makes some piece of software under an open source license. (GPL) Step 2. This piece of software becomes widely used, primarily since it's open source licensed Step 3. (Modern variation) Person A feels cheated for not getting rich and creates some kind of drama. This doesn't make any sense at all, to me.

corndoge 7y ago
That isn't what the article said at all
- groundlogic 7y ago
  "The article", written by a person offended by someone else getting richer from their code; whilst seemingly not breaking any licenses.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    So, it's just an uncharitable pot shot when the article is perfectly relatable when taken at face value. I'd probably even add your mentality, ubiquitous on HN, to his list. People come out of the woodwork to shit on others. It seems even moreso when it's just a hobby project. You're basically taking one last snipe at him while he exits the theater. For what? Is this what you thought the world needed more of?
    - groundlogic 7y ago
      I'm a bit annoyed about people running popular open source projects suddenly creating drama like this. The reason these projects got popular in the first place were often that the author didn't care for fame, glory or money; they just wanted to solve a problem. And well, to be clear: most of us prefer to use an open source library, over a commercial library. What I'm a bit upset over here is the bait and switch here. Using the open source aspect of your library to get widely spread, but also somehow expecting to make money off this, somehow - this doesn't make sense.
      - Zenst 7y ago
        If you find that annoying then maybe, just maybe you have a small idea how annoyed the author is from people literally abusing his work beyond the scope it was offered and causing all sorts of grief and abuse from people demanding support for a product that he never sold and never even scoped as supported. Whilst many are great users, who use as intended, just reading his post in full outlines just some of the instances and issues that have caused what was a passion and a hobby project to become a source of abuse and mental anguish. Nobody should have to endure that, more so when they did nothing wrong.
        groundlogic 7y ago
        If the code was used in an illegal way in terms of licenses; I feel for the author. Otherwise not really. Example: If you license something under e.g. the MIT license, a company ends up using it correctly, and you feel bad about the transaction - sorry, that's on you. I really don't get why this is controversial. You license your code under a license for a reason.
        ziddoap 7y ago
        Produce something of value, for free. Then, when you start getting 10,000+ e-mails shitting on you for not also doing XYZ for free, because how dare you not, I'll take your opinion with a more open mind. The author made it fairly clear that this was not just a money situation.
        groundlogic 7y ago
        ..so, in a hyphothetical case, let's say "you" published some code under the MIT license. You then got 10k emails. What's your point? What do you want to say?
        ziddoap 7y ago
        It's not hypothetical. >I never intended for wiringPi to be statically linked either – and thanks to the incompetence of many people who have done just this, I’ve had over 10,000 emails from people who upgraded their Pi and found that code stopped working because they were reliant on a system (typically some java/javascript/node or home automation or UPS thing) which had statically linked an older version My point is, the author intended the project to be used for X. It was used for Y. Author doesn't want to support Y. Author gets bombarded with e-mails complaining they don't support Y. This isn't "suddenly creating drama like this" or "also somehow expecting to make money off this" as you asserted. Another pertinent part of the article you seem to be skipping is: >Add to that the people who have “bludgeoned” wiringPi to work on other fruit Pi platforms, but left my name as the contact email … You claiming the author is just creating drama solely because of money is a gross misreading of the situation.
    - banana_giraffe 7y ago
      Ages ago, I wrote and maintained some Windows open source stuff. It wasn't GPL, but it was "here's the source code, and a binary version, have fun!". I had a little niche of a certain type of tool in the Windows world, if you searched for how to do a specific thing, my tools would show up. Most of it included my real name and email address in the executable and DLLs details tab, as well as the source code. I was the top of the little niche, and more than happy to help other developers out there. I'd help users as best as I could, but my tools were mostly geared at developers (though, users never stopped amazing me at clever unintended ways to use things) The emails I got from this could be broken down into two categories: Actual questions about the tools, including bug reports or problems integrating it into some other project. That was about 5% of the emails I saw. The other 95% was "Program <x> stopped working! I can't find any contact anywhere expect in this one DLL, I demand you help me fix it!" It was super disheartening, since my attempt to explain my role as someone that provided a tool or library to whoever wrote their application was responded with either "Your name is in this application, I don't care what your role is, you need to help me fix it!", or "If you didn't want to provide support, why is your email here?" And that's, basically, how I ended up using random combinations of words on sites like this one. Maybe people with a thicker skin can deal with this crap, but I can't anymore.
      - groundlogic 7y ago
        It's super weird for a "developer" to demand assistance from another developer, just because they wrote and published the code, regardless of license.
        banana_giraffe 7y ago
        Sorry if I came of suggesting that. At least in my case the only people demanding support were end-users of applications I didn't write but did use my code. Developers that contacted me were always understanding, with a rare exception, that free stuff got free support.
      - x0x0 7y ago
        This was so so my experience. The people that contacted me were, in the majority, some of the most entitled assholes. I quit reading the email address associated w/ my open source project, and one user tracked down my (then) work email to demand support!
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    Are you DanielK?
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
Open sourcing something is deciding to share it. It isn't committing to support it or update it or help you make money with it. It's not shocking people get burnt out by constant harassment by entitled people who demand the developer "support them" for free.
- groundlogic 7y ago
  > Open sourcing something is deciding to share it. It isn't committing to support it or update it or help you make money with it. Exactly. This and nothing else. I really don't understand why this is so hard to understand.
guggle 7y ago
> This doesn't make any sense at all, to me. Of course it doesn't, because that's not what is explained. Read again maybe. If anything, the author asks for respect.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
That's not at all what this is about. He didn't want money, he just didn't want to be treated like crap.
varjag 7y ago
I see some people can't just wrap their mind around doing something not for profiting off others.
imtringued 7y ago
Not to be a complete ass or anything, but technically posting a comment on HN REQUIRES you to read the article before spreading complete misinformation. Your comment completely contradicts everything written in the article. It doesn't make sense to you because you don't want it to make sense to you. Step 1. The author doesn't use GPL. Step 2. The author clearly intended wiringPi to have a limited audience. He doesn't want it to become widely used. He intentionally limited support to a handful of hardware devices. It was meant to be used by experienced C programmers. Step 3 isn't about the author being cheated. Fame or money were never mentioned. The author is overwhelmed with work, whether it is caused by the open source project, a new job or caring for his family doesn't matter. However there is a special situation happening here that generally only applies to open software projects. The vast majority of the bug reports involve problems that have already been solved in newer versions. This means that even if the author had an infinite amount of time, all of it would be wasted on already solved problems. There is no reason to work on the project anymore since the rate of progress has stalled. The project has entered a zombie stage and then one day the maintainer announces that the project will be shutdown.
itsbruce 7y ago
That is not what the article said. You are being just the kind of asshole the author complains about.

guardiangod 7y ago

First of all, sorry to hear that WiringPi is deprecated, and I would like to thank the author for all the effort he put into this project. When I read his blog post on his reasoning, I can't help but be reminded of the feud between xscreensaver's author and Debian maintainers. Debian maintainers refused to upgrade the app's version and refused to remove the 'For support contact the author's email' notice. The author's fed up with all the support emails he gets from Debian (outdated) installations' users and put in a message prompt blasting Debian. It was very ugly for both sides. I think that there can be an extension on GPL that says, if you bundle this library and is not using the latest official version from the author, you are not allowed to include the author's contact information. If you insist on bundling the author's email with your outdated software, then you are in violation of GPL. As for people stealing his code. Sorry to hear this. I got nothing except to try to contact EFF.

dogecoinbase 7y ago
I can't help but be reminded of the feud between xscreensaver's author and Debian maintainers. For the curious, the post: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop-shipping-xscreensaver/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop... And the instigatory thread: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=819703 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=819703
- CDSlice 7y ago
  Careful, that first link redirects you to a NSFW image coming from HN
  - coleifer 7y ago
    Party-pooper.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    If it's not safe for your work, you need a different job.

alanbernstein 7y ago

I can empathize with most of this, but I can't say I understand the "last straw" bit. How is there anything wrong with DanielK's request?

kogir 7y ago
Assuming the project stands alone (I can't check right now), the author can release it however they want. The license governs how other people use it, not the author and copyright owner.
gwillz 7y ago
It's a subtle thing for sure. Just because he prefaces it with "not to be an ass" doesn't justify being an ass. Overall, it's still phrased in a demanding way.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  He wasn't being an ass, DanielK was. It's HIS original software, he can distribute as he pleases.
  - gwillz 7y ago
    That's right. I was quoting DanielK.
0xffff2 7y ago
IANAL, but fundamentally I view licenses as grants of rights to non-copyright holders. As the (I think) sole copyright holder on the WiringPi code, the author is morally, if not legally (again, IANAL) entitled to do whatever the hell they want, irrespective of any licenses the code has been released under.
- alanbernstein 7y ago
  Ah, that makes sense. I assumed Danielk knew what he was talking about, but I suppose not.

edoceo 7y ago

I also make free software. It's a battle dealing with folks who want both free code AND free work! Making code GPL is both a blessing a curse. Tales lakie this make me stop and double-check my choices

flyinglizard 7y ago
What’s forcing you to even respond, let alone provide support?
LeonM 7y ago
It's not just free/libre/open source software that has this issue. I run an email security SaaS business. It's closed source, but the suite is free of charge to use for personal, non-commercial domains. We get numerous support requests each day of users on the free tier (who are obviously commercial users btw) that DEMAND us to fix all sorts of email problems for them. They regularly threaten that they will write a bad review on $_SOCIAL_NETWORK if we don't fix their email delivery issues for free. It's frustrating and also exhausting to try to stay professional towards these 'customers'. Interesting observation: This behavior seems to be culture dependent. I'd say about 90% of our over-demanding free-tier users are from the same region on the planet.
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  So, the people that pay nothing, consider your time worth nothing? Can you eliminate the free tier, or is that part of funneling to paid users?
  - LeonM 7y ago
    Partly it's funneling, but mostly the idea is that we want to offer a 'safe' environment for evaluating the tech. We see customers who use our software for a personal domain for a while, and then introduce it at work, or tell a colleague/friend about it. Word-of-mouth marketing goes a long way. But, due to the group of over-demanding free tier users we are considering to switch to a limited time free trial.
- 7y ago

flyinglizard 7y ago

I read this and still don’t understand what is the issue behind the drama. If you don’t want to support it, then don’t; if someone stole your public domain work, contact the EFF or more realistically just understand it’s cost of doing business. We all get tired at some point and move on, you don’t owe anyone anything. And thanks for the library!

cryptonector 7y ago
It's not "public domain work". The "drama" is that the community abused the author, so the author quit providing free labor to the community.
- flyinglizard 7y ago
  Would he still be “abused” if he refrained from opening his inbox? Or were there protesters outside his door?
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    Personalty think if Debian won't change the support email then he should just put in an auto response listing the Debian's maintainers email addresses.
    - exocos 7y ago
      As far as I know, Debian does not ship WiringPI. Debian does not even have an official RPi image. What has any Debian maintainer to do with this?
  - daveFNbuck 7y ago
    So he should stop using email in order to keep doing unpaid work?
stjohnswarts 7y ago
He wanted to let the users of his software know why he was quitting. Not everything has to be honey soaked drivel. He gave his opinion. It had a little bit of well deserved ranting in there but it did let everyone know that the library is deprecated and you're now on your own with it.

ddlsmurf 7y ago

If you read this Gordon, thank you for all you did for so long, it was way more generous than we deserved. I'm sorry for how unappreciative it all turned out, I appreciated your work and you're right you definitely should not put up with that shit. Best of luck =)

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

dade_ 7y ago

Open source gets inundated by the unwashed masses. I am so glad they taught our idiots in the office how to code, but the twits can't even figure out an a simple Excel formula.

cannonedhamster 7y ago

The author owes nobody anything. He's already done enough. If you've given away something for free, don't expect support or anything free in the future. It's literally like taking a gift from someone and then complaining that it doesn't have enough for you to act indignant to people who give things away for free. Don't like it? Don't use it or improve it and contribute back. Want more? Pay them to build it and add it to what's available for everyone as a way to say thanks.

tempguy9999 7y ago
Agreed. I remember reading about an indie games developer who looked at his proposed user base and decided not to make his game freeware. He wrote there was an attitude of entitlement among people who get the free stuff. People who were prepared to pay, even a very small amount, behaved better. I saw that happen on the centos forums once or twice. It could attract spectacularly selfish individuals. As for people not RTFM'ing, I recall a small internal project I did for which I wrote up comprehensive intro, docs etc. I handed it over to the user who told me to explain it to them. I said "I wrote it all up, help and everything, there it is!". She smiled and said "but who reads those?". I came very close to blowing up at her just then.
jnbiche 7y ago
As someone who maintains open source software, I sympathize with the author and agree that he doesn't owe users personalized help. However, he does have to comply with the legal requirements of the license he uses. Personally, I don't use GPL/LGPL licenses, but if I did, I'd be careful to comply with the provisions of the license.
- shakna 7y ago
  > However, he does have to comply with the legal requirements of the license he uses. No, the author doesn't. Not really. The license governs the use of people who don't hold the copyright. That's why the author of a project can just turn around and release under a new license.
  - 7y ago

cjwillcock 7y ago

Who is John Galt?

john_moscow 7y ago

I have used WiringPi along my side of work and I am thankful to the author for creating and maintaining it, but honestly I don't understand the motivation behind offering a free product with email support. There are many different people on the Internet with different cultural backgrounds, experience levels and work ethic and unfortunately it's not realistic to expect each of your users to share the same values as you do. Anecdotally, charging a license fee for your library/tool is a very good way to filter out 90% of the unprofessional behavior. Also if you rely on your free product to promote your consulting business, I would highly recommend creating a community forum where users can advice each other, and maybe offering paid support on top of that. Also using an open-source helpdesk app to semi-automatically send canned replies to commonly repeating inquiries saves a ton of time and keeps the assholes off your back, as long as the canned replies are reasonable and polite.

stjohnswarts 7y ago
Yep I have a couple of anonymous MIT softwares out there with decent documentation. that's all you get from me, along with quarterly or so updates. I do it for fun not to please everyone.
olivierkaisin 7y ago
This sums it all
lloeki 7y ago
I’ve been maintaining free software for a while and people have been actively hunting for my email for support, completely ignoring clear guidelines in README and ignoring GitHub issues.

coleifer 7y ago

I haven't used this library but I maintain a couple moderately well-used python libraries and completely sympathize with these frustrations. The absolute worst was a guy who asked for all sorts of changes then, when I had made it clear I was going a different direction, he tried to start a public shaming on Twitter, this site, Reddit, and even the Wikipedia page (since removed at my own request). It was un-believable. He was the cto of a company, too, at least at that time. It is sad that there are people out there who will try to ruin your day if you don't do what they want. Especially considering the work we put into these libraries.

m-p-3 7y ago
Seriously.. If you ask nicely, argue your situation constructively and the developer still consider the best path isn't what you described, just fork it or pay someone to do the legwork if it's that critical to your mission, jeez..
bartread 7y ago
This rings a bell. I think I remember reading about it either on here or elsewhere. You probably don't need or want it, but you have my sympathy anyway: people can be extremely entitled. I've spent a lot of my career working with .NET, where similar events have occurred. Entitled, demanding, and obnoxious users effectively drove off the author of NDoc and killed the project.
oefrha 7y ago
Big fan of peewee (I love the interface and use it more than SQLA). I’ve reported a few bugs and each time the bug was fixed within at most a day or two, and a release was cut a few days later. As an open source maintainer myself I admire your commitment and productivity.
delfinom 7y ago
>He was the cto of a company, too, at least at that time. Your mistake was not completely destroying him. This behavior exists because one side likes to be civil which further encourages the irrational ones to continue.

SaberTail 7y ago

The complaint about leaving the author's email as the support contact reminds me of sqlite having to change their temp file prefix to "etilqs_" because they were getting support calls and abuse for unrelated applications [1] [1] https://github.com/mackyle/sqlite/blob/3cf493d/src/os.h#L52-L66 https://github.com/mackyle/sqlite/blob/3cf493d/src/os.h#L52-...

exabrial 7y ago

Major bummer but I totally understand. Poor guy.

jlg23 7y ago

Or just open a ticket on the package and inform the user one "has 'technically' done all one could do given time constraints"? I get the frustration, but this looks like a case of improper idiot handling that just escalated...

Accujack 7y ago

Creating or running an open source project can be a thankless task, made worse by the sheer number of entitled jerks who can find you and your project via the Internet. If you're selling software for pay, at least there's money in your pocket to compensate you for having to deal with the various types of a*oles in the human race, but without that it can rapidly become a chore to maintain even a small or niche package. That's why lots of software becomes orphaned. I salute anyone who has ever had the courage to try to write, maintain, or organize development for open source software.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

I've used WiringPI, it's a solid library, and - like a lot of people - I'm glad it exists. But here's a contrarian view - I'm not sure why someone offering a project for free in the educational space would expect users to act like paid professional customers. Or expect them to be non-noob experts who can modify and build the project without hand-holding. Or assume that email would be a viable line of support for a project with literally tens (hundreds?) of thousands of users. Or even expect them to be adults. So while I sympathise with the rage quit, I don't think it's realistic to release code and just expect users to understand - never mind accept - the terms you set for its use. All open source projects comes with politics included. You have to have an understanding of the space you're working in, the kinds of users who inhabit it, and the kinds of relationships they're likely to have with them. You need to know what your support boundaries and support technologies are. And if you work in a space where some of your users are likely to be assholes, you need to have a plan for that - even if it's just knowing that it's fine to ignore them. Edit: to be clear, I think this is more of a general open licence problem than the failing of this one specific author. Open licences don't encourage authors to define boundaries, or even to understand that boundaries are necessary and terms need to be defined. So it's not quite a surprise that things like this happen.

jeroenhd 7y ago
> So while I sympathise with the rage quit, I don't think it's realistic to release code and just expect users to understand - never mind accept - the terms you set for its use. I think it's perfectly fine to expect users to understand the terms. They downloaded a piece of code for free from a website with no company or support programme other than "hey I hope this is helpful, if you run into any issues I might be able to help over email". If it turns out that the author can't or won't help, accept your loss and fix it yourself, pay someone to fix it for you or wait for another volunteer to fix it. Alternatively, they bought some kind of product that included the code. If this product breaks, they must go to the company that makes the product, not the author of some library it uses. It's not like you're going to expect some sparkplug manufacturer to come up with a fix for your car when it breaks down, do you? People who feel entitled to anything when they get something for free are selfish assholes and should not be defended. They know fully well that they don't have any right for support, but they will make demands regardless, hoping that the other party will break and give in. I agree that you need to have a plan for people like this, but in most cases, that plan is "I'll just drop the project if it becomes too much of a hassle". And in my opinion, that's a fine plan.

MisterTea 7y ago

This is why I stopped thinking unfriendliness in hacker circles is unwarranted. It's massively frustrating when you get people berating/harassing/stealing from/etc you when the reality is there really isn't a product, just a passion or hobby. This is why any open software I author comes with the express warranty of "Help: No." If no is misunderstood then any reply will be along the lines of FOAD.

pjmlp 7y ago

Sad to see it go like that. Yet another example how ungrateful many people are towards free software. The only difference to piracy, is that not only do they not give back anything, they feel entitled to all kind of requests. So the result ends always being the same, moving to something else.

girvo 7y ago
I wonder what "pirating" your own software to handle the "free trial"/free tier case would be like? Weird thought, uploading your own software in a particular guise to BitTorrent or something, to allow for free usage but change the expectations of the user... That said, I distinctly remember a number of blog posts over the years where users using obviously pirated versions demanded support, so it seems impossible to avoid entirely haha