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Caveat: Not everyone in FOSS is American, but… Here in the US folks tend to have some amount of burden on their creations, tools they use, etc. Just because yo
by hiphacker123 4y ago
Caveat: Not everyone in FOSS is American, but…
Here in the US folks tend to have some amount of burden on their creations, tools they use, etc. Just because you put out a sign that says “Not My Problem” doesn’t make it so.
Great example is these big gravel trucks hauling rocks to job sites, they’ll rain stones on the roadway and the cars and sometimes pedestrians because the workers are sometimes too careless to pull down the tarp to secure their load. They’ll put up a sign saying “DRIVER NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR DAMAGE” but the problem is they 100% are both legally and morally responsible.
We also have some rules around nuisance, enticement, etc. For instance, if I have a pool and a kid jumps my meager fence and drowns I might we’ll still be responsible, at least legally, because I put up an enticing thing but failed to consider how idiots might misuse it.
To me, the pool one starts to get at or near “South of Sanity” but that’s from where this mentality applies.
Often you’ll get some Node project some cool tech person shits out, pimps out to social media , then abandons when the real work comes out. Folks will pick it up early on as traction builds, then be stuck with abandonware when the author gets a new job or chases a different shiny ball. I would argue you at least owe a caveat in the README about your level of commitment to the project, a bit beyond a mere “not my problem” license line.
- massysett 4y agoWow. This attitude is exactly why I don’t post software anymore. I’m not delusional; I know that the world might be better off without my creations littering it. But if I were an attorney advising $Bigcorp, messages just like this one are why I would advise against posting any free software unless there is a business case for how the benefit outweighs the risk. And a disclaimer does not eliminate risk, not even the heightened disclaimer you suggest (why isn’t the disclaimer in the license enough?) The instant I have to defend a lawsuit, I’ve lost. It doesn’t matter if the suit is meritless and I “win.” Then instant someone sues me, the only winner is my lawyer. I guess this was all inevitable when people started relying on free software. They somehow think people who have given them something for free owe them something. I guess this works fine when the giver is $Bigcorp doing it for profit-seeking reasons. But this attitude is going to strangle the old small-time hobbyists who really were just scratching an itch. Now I know why some software is posted under pseudonyms.
- the_mitsuhiko 4y agoYou are absolutely right here. If anything the excluding of implied warranty works better in the US than many other countries for Open Source as typically a price is required for implied warranties to exist but even there are limitations. I also tend to agree that there is a certain level of added burden that comes with popularity that you cannot get rid of. This starts from the basic fact that I noticed a few years back of becoming a target of social engineering. I do however think for as long as we believe Open Source is a good thing and there is limited ways for developers to receive monetary compensation for their work, we should be quite careful here. Enrolling people into things purely based on the popularity of their creation without compensation to me feels problematic.
- radus 4y agoI think it would be ideal if the increase in responsibility was accompanied by some actual reward, so the “congratulations” would be more genuine. I don’t know what kind of reward would make sense - money makes sense, but who’s money? Maybe you get a voice in the development and direction of the language and ecosystem? That would also constitute more responsibility but it might feel less burdensome and give you a seat at the table for the next such decision.