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That's correct, but misses the point. If you are paid for FOSS work then whoever pays you can expect you to do certain things. But that's the "get paid" part, n

That's correct, but misses the point. If you are paid for FOSS work then whoever pays you can expect you to do certain things. But that's the "get paid" part, not the "FOSS" part. It would be the same with paid work on proprietary software.

jodrellblank 6y ago
Yes it would be the same with paid work on proprietary software, which is why the comment I was replying to "FOSS is FOSS. Creator or current maintainer owes you and other users exactly nothing." is a non-sequitur, it doesn't hold up. Whether you have the source code and rights to redistribute it is orthogonal to whether the creator or current owner has a contract with you and "owes" you anything. Having access to the source doesn't automatically mean the owner/maintainer owes you nothing. I think the comment is promoting only the "FOSS == gratis" side of getting things for free ($0) and not considering the original "FOSS == insight and rights, even if paid for" side of things.
- nextlevelwizard 6y ago
  Even if you pay for piece of software that does not entitle you any say on the direction the software is going or priority on your bug reports or feature requests. There can be explicit contract where you are funding specific feature, but just donating to a project does not entitle you to anything. You can stop using the software if it does not provide you any use. That is the only thing you are entitled to.
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    I never said "payment ENTITLES you to support", I said having access to the source does NOT mean NO entitlement to support, one does not control the other either way because access to the source and paid support contracts are separate things. > "there can be explicit contract where you are funding specific feature" Yes, I said as much when I said you can have a contract for support and also have FOSS software. Here, you are downvoting me and agreeing with me. There can be a explicit contract where you have the source source and also are entitled to some development that you're paying for. > "You can stop using the software if it does not provide you any use. That is the only thing you are entitled to." NO, here you are changing your mind again and narrowing it back down to "it was free so you have no rights". You cannot make the judgement that because someone has open source software, they didn't pay for it, and you cannot make the judgement that if they have open source software, they are not entitled to anything. The three are DIFFERENT things. The original point of FOSS was to avoid vendor lockin, not to get free downloads from Github. In case it isn't extremely clear, downloading a free and foss tool from Github does not entitle you to feature requests or support. Donating to it does not either. Saying "every FOSS user has no entitlement to support or feature requests because the code is FOSS" is incorrect, and a bad idea for the programming/tech industry to be spreading, partly because a lot of developers would benefit from spreading the idea of paid FOSS because they want to work on it and get paid, and partly because users would benefit from the increase in paying for software and also getting the source as part of that, including whatever entitlement to support paying would have got them normally.

jodrellblank 6y ago

Yes it would be the same with paid work on proprietary software, which is why the comment I was replying to "FOSS is FOSS. Creator or current maintainer owes you and other users exactly nothing." is a non-sequitur, it doesn't hold up. Whether you have the source code and rights to redistribute it is orthogonal to whether the creator or current owner has a contract with you and "owes" you anything. Having access to the source doesn't automatically mean the owner/maintainer owes you nothing. I think the comment is promoting only the "FOSS == gratis" side of getting things for free ($0) and not considering the original "FOSS == insight and rights, even if paid for" side of things.

nextlevelwizard 6y ago
Even if you pay for piece of software that does not entitle you any say on the direction the software is going or priority on your bug reports or feature requests. There can be explicit contract where you are funding specific feature, but just donating to a project does not entitle you to anything. You can stop using the software if it does not provide you any use. That is the only thing you are entitled to.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  I never said "payment ENTITLES you to support", I said having access to the source does NOT mean NO entitlement to support, one does not control the other either way because access to the source and paid support contracts are separate things. > "there can be explicit contract where you are funding specific feature" Yes, I said as much when I said you can have a contract for support and also have FOSS software. Here, you are downvoting me and agreeing with me. There can be a explicit contract where you have the source source and also are entitled to some development that you're paying for. > "You can stop using the software if it does not provide you any use. That is the only thing you are entitled to." NO, here you are changing your mind again and narrowing it back down to "it was free so you have no rights". You cannot make the judgement that because someone has open source software, they didn't pay for it, and you cannot make the judgement that if they have open source software, they are not entitled to anything. The three are DIFFERENT things. The original point of FOSS was to avoid vendor lockin, not to get free downloads from Github. In case it isn't extremely clear, downloading a free and foss tool from Github does not entitle you to feature requests or support. Donating to it does not either. Saying "every FOSS user has no entitlement to support or feature requests because the code is FOSS" is incorrect, and a bad idea for the programming/tech industry to be spreading, partly because a lot of developers would benefit from spreading the idea of paid FOSS because they want to work on it and get paid, and partly because users would benefit from the increase in paying for software and also getting the source as part of that, including whatever entitlement to support paying would have got them normally.