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"Ok... So that was unprofessional. If you don't want to maintain a project anymore, you give it to someone else and link to that repo in your README. This just

"Ok... So that was unprofessional. If you don't want to maintain a project anymore, you give it to someone else and link to that repo in your README. This just screwed me over big time." https://github.com/actix/actix-web/issues/1#issuecomment-575611050 https://github.com/actix/actix-web/issues/1#issuecomment-575... These kind of entitled attitude is probably exactly why the guy just removed everything. More details / discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/actixnet_unsoundness_patch_is_boring/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/actixnet_unsou...

MatthewPhillips 7y ago
They're right, it was unprofessional... but since the maintainer is not being paid this is not a professional project. It's a personal project. And this seems like a perfectly personal thing to do with something that's preventing happiness.
- naasking 7y ago
  > And this seems like a perfectly personal thing to do with something that's preventing happiness. Sure, if you want to spread the misery. That's still kind of a dick move, even if he's perfectly within his rights.
- dsego 7y ago
  Well, it's easy to get confused when you look at the professional looking website with a well crafted logo, a promo list of features and a copyright notice from the "The Actix Team". The community page even says "We're a welcoming community so don't be afraid to engage.". Ouch!
  - buzzkillington 7y ago
    The easy way to tell is to remember if you're paying them or not.
    - onli 7y ago
      That's not true at all. You can pay for amateur bullshit, and you can get professional software and support for free (and free as in freedom).
      - buzzkillington 7y ago
        My Ethernet is stuck in ipv6, professionally tell me how to fix it, for free.
        saagarjha 7y ago
        Sure, could you provide some more detail?
        geofft 7y ago
        That's not an open source project any of us maintain. Also, there are expectations for both sides of a professional interaction. My employer buys various fancy networking equipment for lots of money and we absolutely wouldn't expect an answer for that question.
        onli 7y ago
        I actually did that for years in a linux forum.
      - oefrha 7y ago
        You can get professional software and support for free, until you can’t. This “you’ve provided me free support once, so it’s your obligation to support me for free indefinitely whenever I ask” attitude has certainly contributed to my open source exhaustion as a maintainer.
        shkkmo 7y ago
        Well, good luck getting a company you paid for a product to provide indefinite support, large professional software companies cancel projects and EOL software all the time.
      - 7y ago
  - rowanG077 7y ago
    Huh nothing you said indicates it is a professional project. Sleek does not equal professional.
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  Exactly. It can be argued it's unprofessional to become dependent on third-party software without any background recherche regarding the maintainer's motivation, team size, financial standing, etc., especially when said third-party software isn't a replaceable, standards-based component such as, say, Java Servlet containers and other web components used to be.
- walki 7y ago
  I absolutely agree with this. The author has spent an insane amount of time to build all this stuff and instead of getting recognition and/or being payed adequately he is getting shitstorm after shitstrom. As an outsider I have to say that I think what the Rust community has technically achieved is remarkable. But on the social side it is not so bright, avid Rust users constantly spam forums of other programming languages with toxic comments. But this incident shows that the situation is even worse than expected, the Rust community even treats its own peers like sh..
  - janoc 7y ago
    Well, no different than any other tech where the community is an echo chamber full of fanboys. Linux used to be like that, especially some of its distros (uhm Gentoo?), cryptocurrency fans are like that, Apple users probably don't need mentioning neither ...
    - nipinium 7y ago
      Gentoo is just a meme spread by some 4chan /g/ board's members. Maybe you meant Arch?
      - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
        ... Gentoo predates 4chan's existence by 3 years, is one of the older and more respected distros still around, and is the basis of Chrome OS and Container Linux. Don't assume that 4chan somehow defines the things they happen to be interested in.
      - mratsim 7y ago
        "btw I use Arch" is a meme as well
- endorphone 7y ago
  Professional pursuits are things related to a vocation, not directly tied to an exchange of money for every interaction under consideration. If you're in the industry of software development, and tie your identity to an open source project, it is de facto professional. In this example it is held as a significant accomplishment on this individual's linkedin page. Which isn't surprising as professional credibility is a primary motivation driving a lot of open source involvement. We are seeking a different, less direct form of compensation. So it's fair to say that acting like this is unprofessional. That doesn't mean it isn't merited, or that they might have been frustrated or had good reason. But professionally they would have been much better served by other means: Simply announcing that they're retiring from the project and encouraging forking and the percolation of a new canonical version, etc.
- hocuspocus 7y ago
  > It's a personal project. If you create an organization on GitHub for a project that is meant to remain personal, this kinda sends a wrong signal. Blaming some users for being rude and entitled, and then deleting an open source repo out of spite... it's a bit hard to feel sympathy for the guy here.
  - z0mbie42 7y ago
    For information, the repo has not been deleted but simply moved: https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-web https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-web
  - srg0 7y ago
    > If you create an organization on GitHub for a project that is meant to remain personal, Sounds like there were intentions or plans to transform a one man project into something bigger. Some steps were made. Hence, a nice looking website, a github org, benchmarks etc. All those signals are intentions, the vision of the future self. They may or may not come true. Nothing signaled an established business model or sustainable backing of any kind.
shirshak55 7y ago
Now due to that comment actix maintainer has disabled issue too. I don't know why people show such attitude as if they are paying him to do opensource.
- j-pb 7y ago
  In open source you give and take. The actix author almost certainly (unless they deploy their own kernel) has profited immensely from other peoples work. This is because as a community we have realized that we don't sell libraries, we sell stuff build with them, so we all win when we share. It is your choice to use open source software without open sourcing your own work or without contributing. But by engaging in open source you engage in a social contract, you become part of a community whose goal it is to foster collaboration and help one another, other people start to rely on you, just as you rely on their libraries, compilers, and kernels. The author choose to break that social contract out of spite. He created a scenario where people choose to rely on him, when they could have relied on other works, and then screwed them over majorly.
  - shirshak55 7y ago
    "The actix author almost certainly (unless they deploy their own kernel) has profited immensely from other peoples work." Prove it. "But by engaging in open source you engage in a social contract" https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba9519972d9 https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...
    - j-pb 7y ago
      >> Prove it. Actix was written in rust. Rust is OS. qed. Quote from Rich's gist. >> I'm sure you know better about the one true way to write software. But kindly don't burn the community down on your way out, with self-serving proclamations. The actix author could just have walked away, no harm done, push one button "Archive", go outside and enjoy the sun. Instead they choose to throw a tantrum, write a pamphlet and nuke everything. Entitlement goes both ways.
  - toyg 7y ago
teddyh 7y ago
> These kind of entitled attitude If you offer code to the public – and present it as an active, dependable project – professional behavior is exactly what you implicitly promise and signed up for. If you can’t offer that (at any time, and for any reason), then you should immediately make that clear, front-and-center, to any current and future users. It isn’t “entitlement” on part of the users – the users are making reasonable expectations based on promises implicitly made by the the project as it is presented.
- Steve0 7y ago
  I've never heard of "implicit promises". For me a promise is by definition explicit. Anything else are assumptions, in this case false assumptions.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    In many contexts, there’s often an implicit promise to be courteous to others, even if it’s not defined explicitly.
    - Kye 7y ago
      From my skim of the maintainer's comment, this happened because people didn't keep their end of the promise.
      - Karunamon 7y ago
        I, and most people reading this, likely never interacted with this person. From where I sit, this is what's colloquially referred to as a "dick move".
  - gfodor 7y ago
    “Implicit promises” is going into my Orwellian dictionary. What a farce, do people really believe such a thing?
    - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
endothrowho333 7y ago
Is it entitled? Most would agree, "very" (but that's not my concern nor judgement to make) Did the maintainer screw over people that were using Actix? Very likely. I sympathize with both sides here. I've been the unthanked, punching bag contributor on a few notable projects, and I've been a user of software whose leadership got into drama and squabbles, that ultimately fucked me over. There were times that I pulled certain projects and essays, that had greatly helped people, and taken my ball home because I was fed up with the people I was catering to. There is no correct answer here, dealing with people and their emotions, but there is a way for both sides to handle things without contributing negatively to other's lives.
- magicalhippo 7y ago
  > Did the maintainer screw over people that were using Actix? Very likely. How so? Just find a fork with a decent maintainer, or push your copy to your own repo. Let the Actix guy do his thing and move on with life.
j-pb 7y ago
In open source you give and take. The actix author almost certainly (unless they deploy their own kernel) has profited immensely from other peoples work. This is because as a community we have realized that we don't sell libraries, we sell stuff build with them, so we all win when we share. It is your choice to use open source software without open sourcing your own work or without contributing. But by engaging in open source you engage in a social contract, you become part of a community whose goal it is to foster collaboration and help one another, other people start to rely on you, just as you rely on their libraries, compilers, and kernels. The author choose to break that social contract out of spite. He created a scenario where people choose to rely on him, when they could have relied on other works, and then screwed them over majorly.
- siscia 7y ago
  Dude, sorry to break this to you! But basically any widely used software is supported by major companies just to avoid this problem. Libraries, compilers and kernels alike. If you want to rely on software being there, you should be ready to pay for people to support it. > This is because as a community we have realized that we don't sell libraries, we sell stuff build with them, so we all win when we share. It is clear to me that is not true anymore. It is really hard to find open source project without clear direct financial incentives. Again, as a community, we should start to pay for the components we use.
  - j-pb 7y ago
    Companies should contribute their fair share by supporting open sources projects monetarily, definitely! But that is a different issue, from the behavioral standards we as a community uphold implicitly, and which are broken by pulling a "left-pad" incident.
    - siscia 7y ago
      I believe we should not demand free work from people only because they were nice enough to push their code on GitHub and let stranger use it for free. I work in open source as well at both day job and for "fun" but I fix the issue that I want and if people want something from me as author of whatever, there is going to be a money talk.
tiku 7y ago
Once it's public and people depend on it you can't retract it like that. His goal was to make his work public, not private.
- siscia 7y ago
  Why?
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    It’s no longer “his” code.
- fouc 7y ago
  The point of open source is that people can maintain their own forks etc. There's plenty of mirrors of actix I'm sure.
- Touche 7y ago
  You can retract it. He just did it. You can take down any webpage under your control. I could delete this comment later if I like. You could delete yours. etc.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > I could delete this comment later if I like. Now you can’t.
- captainbland 7y ago
  You basically can. The cost of free stuff like this is "be nice to the guy giving it to you" or at least don't be actively abusive about it. If the community won't pay that price, expect it to evaporate.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    > The cost of free stuff is "be nice to the guy giving it to you". Can I get this on a poster please? Really well put.
geofft 7y ago
It's absolutely correct that people don't have obligations simply by putting some code online. But they do have obligations when they start telling people to use their code. We understand this as humans even in realms far from open source: if I see you approaching a door, I am under no obligation to open it just because I'm physically able to, but if I open a door for you, I'd better hold it until you're finished walking through, or I'm a jerk. By holding the door open, I've made an implicit promise that I'm not going to close it on you. It's not very hard to say, this is a project for my own technical interest, I don't intend to follow Rust norms about use of unsafe, and you shouldn't rely on it, but here's the code if anyone wants to look. That's fine! (And I do think we need to be better about making it common to do that. GitHub has no good tooling for such a repo, for instance: you can't disable pull requests unless you archive the project or make it private.) But that's not what Actix's docs say. See https://actix.rs/docs/ https://actix.rs/docs/ for instance: there's nothing to the effect that you shouldn't use or rely on it, and everything to the effect that you should. (In case that page gets taken down, it starts, "Actix is your door to developing web services with Rust and this documentation is going to guide you.") On https://actix.rs/community/ https://actix.rs/community/ it says you should report bugs to GitHub, implying that bug reports are in fact welcome, and there isn't a single statement that the project goals prioritize the author's technical excitement over correct code. Again, there's nothing wrong with wanting to prefer your technical excitement over having bug-free code. Just be clear about it.
- Touche 7y ago
  He held the door open for a lot of people. Some people spit at him as they walked through. He doesn't want to hold the door open any more, he's done it enough. He didn't sign up to be a doorman for life.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Right, and he can do that and that would be totally fine. People stop maintaining projects all the time. But by going out of his way to antagonize people (many of whom aren’t even the people who “spit” at him) he’s just not being very nice.
  - 7y ago

MatthewPhillips 7y ago

They're right, it was unprofessional... but since the maintainer is not being paid this is not a professional project. It's a personal project. And this seems like a perfectly personal thing to do with something that's preventing happiness.

naasking 7y ago
> And this seems like a perfectly personal thing to do with something that's preventing happiness. Sure, if you want to spread the misery. That's still kind of a dick move, even if he's perfectly within his rights.
dsego 7y ago
Well, it's easy to get confused when you look at the professional looking website with a well crafted logo, a promo list of features and a copyright notice from the "The Actix Team". The community page even says "We're a welcoming community so don't be afraid to engage.". Ouch!
- buzzkillington 7y ago
  The easy way to tell is to remember if you're paying them or not.
  - onli 7y ago
    That's not true at all. You can pay for amateur bullshit, and you can get professional software and support for free (and free as in freedom).
    - buzzkillington 7y ago
      My Ethernet is stuck in ipv6, professionally tell me how to fix it, for free.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        Sure, could you provide some more detail?
      - geofft 7y ago
        That's not an open source project any of us maintain. Also, there are expectations for both sides of a professional interaction. My employer buys various fancy networking equipment for lots of money and we absolutely wouldn't expect an answer for that question.
      - onli 7y ago
        I actually did that for years in a linux forum.
    - oefrha 7y ago
      You can get professional software and support for free, until you can’t. This “you’ve provided me free support once, so it’s your obligation to support me for free indefinitely whenever I ask” attitude has certainly contributed to my open source exhaustion as a maintainer.
      - shkkmo 7y ago
        Well, good luck getting a company you paid for a product to provide indefinite support, large professional software companies cancel projects and EOL software all the time.
    - 7y ago
- rowanG077 7y ago
  Huh nothing you said indicates it is a professional project. Sleek does not equal professional.
tannhaeuser 7y ago
Exactly. It can be argued it's unprofessional to become dependent on third-party software without any background recherche regarding the maintainer's motivation, team size, financial standing, etc., especially when said third-party software isn't a replaceable, standards-based component such as, say, Java Servlet containers and other web components used to be.
walki 7y ago
I absolutely agree with this. The author has spent an insane amount of time to build all this stuff and instead of getting recognition and/or being payed adequately he is getting shitstorm after shitstrom. As an outsider I have to say that I think what the Rust community has technically achieved is remarkable. But on the social side it is not so bright, avid Rust users constantly spam forums of other programming languages with toxic comments. But this incident shows that the situation is even worse than expected, the Rust community even treats its own peers like sh..
- janoc 7y ago
  Well, no different than any other tech where the community is an echo chamber full of fanboys. Linux used to be like that, especially some of its distros (uhm Gentoo?), cryptocurrency fans are like that, Apple users probably don't need mentioning neither ...
  - nipinium 7y ago
    Gentoo is just a meme spread by some 4chan /g/ board's members. Maybe you meant Arch?
    - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      ... Gentoo predates 4chan's existence by 3 years, is one of the older and more respected distros still around, and is the basis of Chrome OS and Container Linux. Don't assume that 4chan somehow defines the things they happen to be interested in.
    - mratsim 7y ago
      "btw I use Arch" is a meme as well
endorphone 7y ago
Professional pursuits are things related to a vocation, not directly tied to an exchange of money for every interaction under consideration. If you're in the industry of software development, and tie your identity to an open source project, it is de facto professional. In this example it is held as a significant accomplishment on this individual's linkedin page. Which isn't surprising as professional credibility is a primary motivation driving a lot of open source involvement. We are seeking a different, less direct form of compensation. So it's fair to say that acting like this is unprofessional. That doesn't mean it isn't merited, or that they might have been frustrated or had good reason. But professionally they would have been much better served by other means: Simply announcing that they're retiring from the project and encouraging forking and the percolation of a new canonical version, etc.
hocuspocus 7y ago
> It's a personal project. If you create an organization on GitHub for a project that is meant to remain personal, this kinda sends a wrong signal. Blaming some users for being rude and entitled, and then deleting an open source repo out of spite... it's a bit hard to feel sympathy for the guy here.
- z0mbie42 7y ago
  For information, the repo has not been deleted but simply moved: https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-web https://github.com/fafhrd91/actix-web
- srg0 7y ago
  > If you create an organization on GitHub for a project that is meant to remain personal, Sounds like there were intentions or plans to transform a one man project into something bigger. Some steps were made. Hence, a nice looking website, a github org, benchmarks etc. All those signals are intentions, the vision of the future self. They may or may not come true. Nothing signaled an established business model or sustainable backing of any kind.

shirshak55 7y ago

Now due to that comment actix maintainer has disabled issue too. I don't know why people show such attitude as if they are paying him to do opensource.

j-pb 7y ago
In open source you give and take. The actix author almost certainly (unless they deploy their own kernel) has profited immensely from other peoples work. This is because as a community we have realized that we don't sell libraries, we sell stuff build with them, so we all win when we share. It is your choice to use open source software without open sourcing your own work or without contributing. But by engaging in open source you engage in a social contract, you become part of a community whose goal it is to foster collaboration and help one another, other people start to rely on you, just as you rely on their libraries, compilers, and kernels. The author choose to break that social contract out of spite. He created a scenario where people choose to rely on him, when they could have relied on other works, and then screwed them over majorly.
- shirshak55 7y ago
  "The actix author almost certainly (unless they deploy their own kernel) has profited immensely from other peoples work." Prove it. "But by engaging in open source you engage in a social contract" https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba9519972d9 https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...
  - j-pb 7y ago
    >> Prove it. Actix was written in rust. Rust is OS. qed. Quote from Rich's gist. >> I'm sure you know better about the one true way to write software. But kindly don't burn the community down on your way out, with self-serving proclamations. The actix author could just have walked away, no harm done, push one button "Archive", go outside and enjoy the sun. Instead they choose to throw a tantrum, write a pamphlet and nuke everything. Entitlement goes both ways.
- toyg 7y ago

teddyh 7y ago

> These kind of entitled attitude If you offer code to the public – and present it as an active, dependable project – professional behavior is exactly what you implicitly promise and signed up for. If you can’t offer that (at any time, and for any reason), then you should immediately make that clear, front-and-center, to any current and future users. It isn’t “entitlement” on part of the users – the users are making reasonable expectations based on promises implicitly made by the the project as it is presented.

Steve0 7y ago
I've never heard of "implicit promises". For me a promise is by definition explicit. Anything else are assumptions, in this case false assumptions.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  In many contexts, there’s often an implicit promise to be courteous to others, even if it’s not defined explicitly.
  - Kye 7y ago
    From my skim of the maintainer's comment, this happened because people didn't keep their end of the promise.
    - Karunamon 7y ago
      I, and most people reading this, likely never interacted with this person. From where I sit, this is what's colloquially referred to as a "dick move".
- gfodor 7y ago
  “Implicit promises” is going into my Orwellian dictionary. What a farce, do people really believe such a thing?
  - 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

endothrowho333 7y ago

Is it entitled? Most would agree, "very" (but that's not my concern nor judgement to make) Did the maintainer screw over people that were using Actix? Very likely. I sympathize with both sides here. I've been the unthanked, punching bag contributor on a few notable projects, and I've been a user of software whose leadership got into drama and squabbles, that ultimately fucked me over. There were times that I pulled certain projects and essays, that had greatly helped people, and taken my ball home because I was fed up with the people I was catering to. There is no correct answer here, dealing with people and their emotions, but there is a way for both sides to handle things without contributing negatively to other's lives.

magicalhippo 7y ago
> Did the maintainer screw over people that were using Actix? Very likely. How so? Just find a fork with a decent maintainer, or push your copy to your own repo. Let the Actix guy do his thing and move on with life.

j-pb 7y ago

In open source you give and take. The actix author almost certainly (unless they deploy their own kernel) has profited immensely from other peoples work. This is because as a community we have realized that we don't sell libraries, we sell stuff build with them, so we all win when we share. It is your choice to use open source software without open sourcing your own work or without contributing. But by engaging in open source you engage in a social contract, you become part of a community whose goal it is to foster collaboration and help one another, other people start to rely on you, just as you rely on their libraries, compilers, and kernels. The author choose to break that social contract out of spite. He created a scenario where people choose to rely on him, when they could have relied on other works, and then screwed them over majorly.

siscia 7y ago
Dude, sorry to break this to you! But basically any widely used software is supported by major companies just to avoid this problem. Libraries, compilers and kernels alike. If you want to rely on software being there, you should be ready to pay for people to support it. > This is because as a community we have realized that we don't sell libraries, we sell stuff build with them, so we all win when we share. It is clear to me that is not true anymore. It is really hard to find open source project without clear direct financial incentives. Again, as a community, we should start to pay for the components we use.
- j-pb 7y ago
  Companies should contribute their fair share by supporting open sources projects monetarily, definitely! But that is a different issue, from the behavioral standards we as a community uphold implicitly, and which are broken by pulling a "left-pad" incident.
  - siscia 7y ago
    I believe we should not demand free work from people only because they were nice enough to push their code on GitHub and let stranger use it for free. I work in open source as well at both day job and for "fun" but I fix the issue that I want and if people want something from me as author of whatever, there is going to be a money talk.

tiku 7y ago

Once it's public and people depend on it you can't retract it like that. His goal was to make his work public, not private.

siscia 7y ago
Why?
- saagarjha 7y ago
  It’s no longer “his” code.
fouc 7y ago
The point of open source is that people can maintain their own forks etc. There's plenty of mirrors of actix I'm sure.
Touche 7y ago
You can retract it. He just did it. You can take down any webpage under your control. I could delete this comment later if I like. You could delete yours. etc.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > I could delete this comment later if I like. Now you can’t.
captainbland 7y ago
You basically can. The cost of free stuff like this is "be nice to the guy giving it to you" or at least don't be actively abusive about it. If the community won't pay that price, expect it to evaporate.
- majewsky 7y ago
  > The cost of free stuff is "be nice to the guy giving it to you". Can I get this on a poster please? Really well put.

geofft 7y ago

It's absolutely correct that people don't have obligations simply by putting some code online. But they do have obligations when they start telling people to use their code. We understand this as humans even in realms far from open source: if I see you approaching a door, I am under no obligation to open it just because I'm physically able to, but if I open a door for you, I'd better hold it until you're finished walking through, or I'm a jerk. By holding the door open, I've made an implicit promise that I'm not going to close it on you. It's not very hard to say, this is a project for my own technical interest, I don't intend to follow Rust norms about use of unsafe, and you shouldn't rely on it, but here's the code if anyone wants to look. That's fine! (And I do think we need to be better about making it common to do that. GitHub has no good tooling for such a repo, for instance: you can't disable pull requests unless you archive the project or make it private.) But that's not what Actix's docs say. See https://actix.rs/docs/ https://actix.rs/docs/ for instance: there's nothing to the effect that you shouldn't use or rely on it, and everything to the effect that you should. (In case that page gets taken down, it starts, "Actix is your door to developing web services with Rust and this documentation is going to guide you.") On https://actix.rs/community/ https://actix.rs/community/ it says you should report bugs to GitHub, implying that bug reports are in fact welcome, and there isn't a single statement that the project goals prioritize the author's technical excitement over correct code. Again, there's nothing wrong with wanting to prefer your technical excitement over having bug-free code. Just be clear about it.

Touche 7y ago
He held the door open for a lot of people. Some people spit at him as they walked through. He doesn't want to hold the door open any more, he's done it enough. He didn't sign up to be a doorman for life.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Right, and he can do that and that would be totally fine. People stop maintaining projects all the time. But by going out of his way to antagonize people (many of whom aren’t even the people who “spit” at him) he’s just not being very nice.
- 7y ago