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"The only people entitled to say how open source 'ought' to work are people who run projects, and the scope of their entitlement extends only to their own proje
by jpe90 5y ago
"The only people entitled to say how open source 'ought' to work are people who run projects, and the scope of their entitlement extends only to their own projects.
Just because someone open sources something does not imply they owe the world a change in their status, focus and effort, e.g. from inventor to community manager.
As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all. You are not entitled to contribute. You are not entitled to features. You are not entitled to the attention of others. You are not entitled to having value attached to your complaints. You are not entitled to this explanation.
If you have expectations (of others) that aren't being met, those expectations are your own responsibility. You are responsible for your own needs. If you want things, make them.
Open source is a licensing and delivery mechanism, period. It means you get the source for software and the right to use and modify it. All social impositions associated with it, including the idea of 'community-driven-development' are part of a recently-invented mythology with little basis in how things actually work, a mythology that embodies, cult-like, both a lack of support for diversity in the ways things can work and a pervasive sense of communal entitlement."
https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba9519972d9 https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...
- 725686 5y agoRich Hickey is spot on...as always.
- visarga 5y ago> you are not thereby entitled to anything at all. well, technically you are entitled to the source code
- jszymborski 5y agoI don't think F.Brennan (OP) is making any demands here. He's simply commenting on a pattern of forsaking the good for the perfect in a lot of repositories that, in his opinion, cause them to stagnate. I see no expectations, or demands in this post. Only disappointment at what OP sees as a missed opportunity. OP is a pretty prolific contributor to open-source, and I get that ones purview doesn't extend past ones owns projects, but it certainly affords perspective. I hardly think any of the comments in this post are anything OP or any project maintainer should take personally or as undue pressure. It's simply well-trodden commentary [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good
- couchand 5y agoThis isn't about perfect vs. good, though. The PR as initially written was unsound. The maintainers worked to help point out the deficiencies. The author gave up and wrote a blog post rather than finishing it.