8 ms·

That's fine, but then the downstream shouldn't complain either when the code breaks, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The contract on paper disclaims a

by melony 5y ago

That's fine, but then the downstream shouldn't complain either when the code breaks, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The contract on paper disclaims all liability after all. There is a social contract and then there is the literal contract. A lot of commenters here seem to be willfully obtuse or simply ignoring the former.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
It still doesn't mean you can't call the guy out for being an asshole. However, that's the only relief you'll get in matters such as these. Other avenues would be to tweet about it and make it known that this is what you can expect from the same guy in the future so avoid him for future work as he won't be acting like an adult.
- syshum 5y ago
  That also does not mean you cant call out the corporations that are leaching off open source... I find it ironic that people are more upset at this guy for complaining about corporations, than they are about the corporations leaching... the dev and hacker communities have really gone full on #HailCorporate haven't they. Where did my anti-establishment Libre community of the 90's go... I long for the good old days
  - NotVerstappen 5y ago
    Watching people piss into the wind is fun until you get some on your shoes.
  - lolinder 5y ago
    We're not upset at the guy for complaining about corporations. We're upset at him for pulling a stunt that may have hurt some large corporations, but mostly just caught a lot of small projects in the crossfire.
  - lenkite 5y ago
    He is leeching off a "corpo" by hosting his library on a "corpo" site.
shukantpal 5y ago
> That's fine, but then the downstream shouldn't complain either when the code breaks, whether intentionally or unintentionally. There's no contract that says complaining is banned.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  That's the point. If the dev complaints are invalid because the contract doesn't say so, then the downstream complaints should also be invalid.
  - dariusj18 5y ago
    Except the license does say so
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      The license does say what? The license doesn't say any payment is necessary. The license doesn't say new versions will still work. The license doesn't say anything about complaints. If it's valid to complain about code breaking, it should also be valid to complain about lack of payment. These complaints are outside of the legal mandates of the license.
      - shaunpersad 5y ago
        It isn't valid to complain about the code breaking. At least not with any consequences. Because the license explicitly says that the software is provided without warranty. Likewise, the license explicitly says that the software is provided for free, therefore it isn't valid to complain about people not paying for it. Nobody's on the side of the big corps here, but "why aren't you paying for this thing that I've given to everyone explicitly for free" seems nonsensical.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        But plenty of people are complaining about the code breaking. I think both complaints are valid. Being legal and being beyond complaint are very different. "explicitly for free" is the legal contract, and it's okay to have norms that extend beyond that.
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Sebb767 5y ago
There's a difference between stopping to give away your stuff for free and acting maliciously. If I give away donuts for free and stop at some point, you have no right to complain. If I poison the donuts because you should've really thrown money at me for those donuts that I explicitly marked as free, I think you could complain after all.
- sertraline 5y ago
  My parents always taught me not to take donuts from unknown people, especially when they're free. It's common sense and corpos take all fault for taking an easy fix to save their own developer hours at someone's else expense. Now, when it turns out there are consequences to this, corpos aren't that happy.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    With that argument, you might as well say that open-source/free software shouldn't exist.
    - sertraline 5y ago
      My argument is that you shouldn't automatically trust it just because it's free. You shouldn't rely your entire infrastructure, and, perhaps, life, on it. If you do, there is no one at fault but you, because you passed all the responsibility to someone you have no control over. You are not entitled to protection and safety from the side of developer just because you said you rely on them - they are not going to carry your burden when it's not their job to do so. Either you stay cautious, in which case you maintain your own forks for your own business or reinvent the wheel, so you don't rely on others that much, or you admit that you can't just reject this dependency - in which case it becomes either a public infrastructure, or a "donut business" on its own, and both should be financed as such. Take Linux as example, Linux is backed up by corporations and financing because everyone understands how crucial Linux is for our living. People took all the necessary steps to guarantee that kernel dev team is not going to disappear at any moment. This is not the first and not the last time this happened. For some reason people think that open-source devs owe them something just because they had the right to bring their projects into existence. Javascript environment especially suffers from it because of unknown obsession of people to depend on packages which contain 1-2 lines of code at best, packages that can disappear at any moment. Faker dev acted maliciously, but no one could guarantee that he wouldn't. No one was there to care about his mental state, or his wallet contents, and only relatively small companies and few people donated to his project, something he worked on for over a decade. Sure, you can blame him all the way you want, but that won't undo the damage. If you rely on something maintained by an individual, you have to take into account that this individual is an actual human, this human actually exists and like any other human he is a subject of free will and uncertain futures, and whatever risks come with it. If you don't, this is what happens to you.

by melony 5y ago

stjohnswarts 5y ago

It still doesn't mean you can't call the guy out for being an asshole. However, that's the only relief you'll get in matters such as these. Other avenues would be to tweet about it and make it known that this is what you can expect from the same guy in the future so avoid him for future work as he won't be acting like an adult.

syshum 5y ago
That also does not mean you cant call out the corporations that are leaching off open source... I find it ironic that people are more upset at this guy for complaining about corporations, than they are about the corporations leaching... the dev and hacker communities have really gone full on #HailCorporate haven't they. Where did my anti-establishment Libre community of the 90's go... I long for the good old days
- NotVerstappen 5y ago
  Watching people piss into the wind is fun until you get some on your shoes.
- lolinder 5y ago
  We're not upset at the guy for complaining about corporations. We're upset at him for pulling a stunt that may have hurt some large corporations, but mostly just caught a lot of small projects in the crossfire.
- lenkite 5y ago
  He is leeching off a "corpo" by hosting his library on a "corpo" site.

shukantpal 5y ago

> That's fine, but then the downstream shouldn't complain either when the code breaks, whether intentionally or unintentionally. There's no contract that says complaining is banned.

Dylan16807 5y ago
That's the point. If the dev complaints are invalid because the contract doesn't say so, then the downstream complaints should also be invalid.
- dariusj18 5y ago
  Except the license does say so
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    The license does say what? The license doesn't say any payment is necessary. The license doesn't say new versions will still work. The license doesn't say anything about complaints. If it's valid to complain about code breaking, it should also be valid to complain about lack of payment. These complaints are outside of the legal mandates of the license.
    - shaunpersad 5y ago
      It isn't valid to complain about the code breaking. At least not with any consequences. Because the license explicitly says that the software is provided without warranty. Likewise, the license explicitly says that the software is provided for free, therefore it isn't valid to complain about people not paying for it. Nobody's on the side of the big corps here, but "why aren't you paying for this thing that I've given to everyone explicitly for free" seems nonsensical.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        But plenty of people are complaining about the code breaking. I think both complaints are valid. Being legal and being beyond complaint are very different. "explicitly for free" is the legal contract, and it's okay to have norms that extend beyond that.

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Sebb767 5y ago

There's a difference between stopping to give away your stuff for free and acting maliciously. If I give away donuts for free and stop at some point, you have no right to complain. If I poison the donuts because you should've really thrown money at me for those donuts that I explicitly marked as free, I think you could complain after all.

sertraline 5y ago
My parents always taught me not to take donuts from unknown people, especially when they're free. It's common sense and corpos take all fault for taking an easy fix to save their own developer hours at someone's else expense. Now, when it turns out there are consequences to this, corpos aren't that happy.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  With that argument, you might as well say that open-source/free software shouldn't exist.
  - sertraline 5y ago
    My argument is that you shouldn't automatically trust it just because it's free. You shouldn't rely your entire infrastructure, and, perhaps, life, on it. If you do, there is no one at fault but you, because you passed all the responsibility to someone you have no control over. You are not entitled to protection and safety from the side of developer just because you said you rely on them - they are not going to carry your burden when it's not their job to do so. Either you stay cautious, in which case you maintain your own forks for your own business or reinvent the wheel, so you don't rely on others that much, or you admit that you can't just reject this dependency - in which case it becomes either a public infrastructure, or a "donut business" on its own, and both should be financed as such. Take Linux as example, Linux is backed up by corporations and financing because everyone understands how crucial Linux is for our living. People took all the necessary steps to guarantee that kernel dev team is not going to disappear at any moment. This is not the first and not the last time this happened. For some reason people think that open-source devs owe them something just because they had the right to bring their projects into existence. Javascript environment especially suffers from it because of unknown obsession of people to depend on packages which contain 1-2 lines of code at best, packages that can disappear at any moment. Faker dev acted maliciously, but no one could guarantee that he wouldn't. No one was there to care about his mental state, or his wallet contents, and only relatively small companies and few people donated to his project, something he worked on for over a decade. Sure, you can blame him all the way you want, but that won't undo the damage. If you rely on something maintained by an individual, you have to take into account that this individual is an actual human, this human actually exists and like any other human he is a subject of free will and uncertain futures, and whatever risks come with it. If you don't, this is what happens to you.