4 ms·

Are you able to shed some light on where the entitlement is coming from? Asking as someone who has honestly never held such assumptions, I remember quite clear

by tomxor 4y ago

Are you able to shed some light on where the entitlement is coming from? Asking as someone who has honestly never held such assumptions, I remember quite clearly my initial instinct towards various FOSS projects as "their castle their rules", I'm kinda puzzled why anyone would think otherwise... but this is a long time ago in internet years.

stavros 4y ago
People (me included) think that publishing and maintaining software is an implicit guarantee of (or attempt at) some level of proper behavior. When the software doesn't work as it should, people feel that that guarantee has been violated. Many contribute fixes and actively improve the software, but many post entitled comments.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bsuvc 4y ago
  > People (me included) think that publishing and maintaining software is an implicit guarantee of (or attempt at) some level of proper behavior Except there is no implicit guarantee. For example the Apache 2.0 license outright says it, so there is no argument about "implicit guarantees" https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 7. Disclaimer of Warranty. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, Licensor provides the Work (and each Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using or redistributing the Work and assume any risks associated with Your exercise of permissions under this License
  - stavros 4y ago
    I agree.
  - b3morales 4y ago
    On the other hand you cannot create and maintain a community purely by contract.
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      I would bet that 95% of the open source projects on GitHub have no community. Does that mean they are not open source to you?
- robonerd 4y ago
  There is no such thing as an "implicit guarantee". Guarantees are affirmative assurances, they can't be implicit.
throwaway17_17 4y ago
I am inclined to think this a ‘generational’ issue. For those individuals that were using open source before the explosion of the modern internet, open source software was something we could seek out to then use for our own ends. Also, the people who wrote that software were ‘publishing’ it just to get it out there for anyone to use if those people found it useful. Conversely, people who started using open source after the internet exploded, and I think particularly, once being an open source maintainer was seen as an achievement and goal, the attitude changed. Individual users of the software were building things depending on the OSS and felt that their use of the OSS code implied a contract for continued development of that dependency. This feeling is made worse by fiscally gigantic corporations pushing ‘oss’ products and those corporations acting like their continuing to support their product is analogous to a solo dev putting a vim plugin on github. The reality of wide spread large ‘oss’ products and the implied (and often maliciously relied upon) personal obligations of producing OSS have led to the current state. That state being users of some OSS assuming that their usage of the software means the author owes them some obligation by virtue of their need. This whole issue is made worse by large organizations getting social credit and positive marketing by releasing ‘oss’ products. This leads to conflation of individuals releasing code to benefit the commons vs. organizations doing so to capture markets, gain publicity, etc.
ynniv 4y ago
Perhaps this is a hot take, but Rich's headline is wrong. His argument hinges on the idea that software chooses to be open source out of altruism: someone created something of value, and rather than requiring payment they gifted it to the world. But if you have ever been at an organization that makes open source software, there is always a calculation that at least suggests that the company is better served by using an open source license. Part of that calculation is people filing bug reports, proposing improvements, and in general being satisfied with the library. Some requests are too niche, and some arguments too baseless, but if the people using open source don't participate at all we often say that something isn't really open source at all (see Apple's "Public Source"). When that happens, people tend to make forks, build competing libraries, or give up and move on. Open Source isn't all about you, but it is a little bit about you.
- bdefore 4y ago
  > but if the people using open source don't participate at all we often say that something isn't really open source at all i cannot say who the 'we' is, but i suspect in some circles this may hold true. i do challenge that this is a reasonably held belief because it is an expansion of the historical responsibilities generally held towards those who would wish to open up their source for others. it may even suppress how much code is openly shared (since most engineers don't enjoy being community managers)
  - ynniv 4y ago
    It's an old debate, and I'm not familiar with the current usage. Stallman explains: "The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement." Clojure is Open Source by this definition, since it is developed by a collective group, as opposed to a permissibly licensed but static artifact. People are welcome to run their projects however they like, but the entitlement comes from the philosophy that Open Source is more than a contract, and is better when there is participation. Labels matter because they set expectations – Apple does not call their Public Source "Open Source", and people don't complain because they understand the difference.

by tomxor 4y ago

stavros 4y ago

People (me included) think that publishing and maintaining software is an implicit guarantee of (or attempt at) some level of proper behavior. When the software doesn't work as it should, people feel that that guarantee has been violated. Many contribute fixes and actively improve the software, but many post entitled comments.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bsuvc 4y ago
> People (me included) think that publishing and maintaining software is an implicit guarantee of (or attempt at) some level of proper behavior Except there is no implicit guarantee. For example the Apache 2.0 license outright says it, so there is no argument about "implicit guarantees" https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 7. Disclaimer of Warranty. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, Licensor provides the Work (and each Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using or redistributing the Work and assume any risks associated with Your exercise of permissions under this License
- stavros 4y ago
  I agree.
- b3morales 4y ago
  On the other hand you cannot create and maintain a community purely by contract.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    I would bet that 95% of the open source projects on GitHub have no community. Does that mean they are not open source to you?
robonerd 4y ago
There is no such thing as an "implicit guarantee". Guarantees are affirmative assurances, they can't be implicit.

throwaway17_17 4y ago

I am inclined to think this a ‘generational’ issue. For those individuals that were using open source before the explosion of the modern internet, open source software was something we could seek out to then use for our own ends. Also, the people who wrote that software were ‘publishing’ it just to get it out there for anyone to use if those people found it useful. Conversely, people who started using open source after the internet exploded, and I think particularly, once being an open source maintainer was seen as an achievement and goal, the attitude changed. Individual users of the software were building things depending on the OSS and felt that their use of the OSS code implied a contract for continued development of that dependency. This feeling is made worse by fiscally gigantic corporations pushing ‘oss’ products and those corporations acting like their continuing to support their product is analogous to a solo dev putting a vim plugin on github. The reality of wide spread large ‘oss’ products and the implied (and often maliciously relied upon) personal obligations of producing OSS have led to the current state. That state being users of some OSS assuming that their usage of the software means the author owes them some obligation by virtue of their need. This whole issue is made worse by large organizations getting social credit and positive marketing by releasing ‘oss’ products. This leads to conflation of individuals releasing code to benefit the commons vs. organizations doing so to capture markets, gain publicity, etc.

ynniv 4y ago

Perhaps this is a hot take, but Rich's headline is wrong. His argument hinges on the idea that software chooses to be open source out of altruism: someone created something of value, and rather than requiring payment they gifted it to the world. But if you have ever been at an organization that makes open source software, there is always a calculation that at least suggests that the company is better served by using an open source license. Part of that calculation is people filing bug reports, proposing improvements, and in general being satisfied with the library. Some requests are too niche, and some arguments too baseless, but if the people using open source don't participate at all we often say that something isn't really open source at all (see Apple's "Public Source"). When that happens, people tend to make forks, build competing libraries, or give up and move on. Open Source isn't all about you, but it is a little bit about you.

bdefore 4y ago
> but if the people using open source don't participate at all we often say that something isn't really open source at all i cannot say who the 'we' is, but i suspect in some circles this may hold true. i do challenge that this is a reasonably held belief because it is an expansion of the historical responsibilities generally held towards those who would wish to open up their source for others. it may even suppress how much code is openly shared (since most engineers don't enjoy being community managers)
- ynniv 4y ago
  It's an old debate, and I'm not familiar with the current usage. Stallman explains: "The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement." Clojure is Open Source by this definition, since it is developed by a collective group, as opposed to a permissibly licensed but static artifact. People are welcome to run their projects however they like, but the entitlement comes from the philosophy that Open Source is more than a contract, and is better when there is participation. Labels matter because they set expectations – Apple does not call their Public Source "Open Source", and people don't complain because they understand the difference.