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>I don’t understand why people have such high expectations and demands from OSS volunteers. Because OSS volunteers frequently push people to use their projects

>I don’t understand why people have such high expectations and demands from OSS volunteers. Because OSS volunteers frequently push people to use their projects. Sure, I didn't pay them, but they advertised to me and encouraged me and resulted me in expending time and resources in adopting their project. I have a valid claim that they act in a manner that doesn't rug pull me.

mynameisvlad 2y ago
Oh I'm sorry how could I forget about your wants and needs as a consumer? While you were spending your time being "advertised to, encouraged, and expending time and resources adopting their project" they did, you know, actual work to create and maintain said project. Let's not kid ourselves here. You chose to use their project. You are free to use any other one that fulfills your needs, fork an existing one, or, hell, create one yourself. Nobody is putting a gun up to your head and saying "you must use this project or else". Strictly as a consumer, you have absolutely zero pull on what a project or its maintainers do, and you shouldn't delude yourself in thinking otherwise just because you expended a modicum of effort to use a project. In short, get over yourself. Your time commitment is many magnitudes smaller than theirs.
- imiric 2y ago
  As someone involved in open source, both as a user and maintainer, this is a very user hostile position to take. For one, respect your users. If you made the decision to publish an OSS project, acknowledge that you can become a dependency in someone's workflow. While your users likely aren't supporting you financially, their usage of your projects, feedback, testing, indirect support and community building, all contribute to the success, and any status, fame, or potential employment that might come your way because of it. Saying that you don't owe your users anything and mistreating them like you suggest is just a dickish move, and earns you no good will in the open source community. These are relationships that you should cherish, not look down upon because you get to call the shots about your project. Everyone has difficult moments and perpetual unpaid work shouldn't be expected from anyone, but if you feel like abandoning a popular OSS project, the polite thing to do is to communicate this with your users, and find someone else willing to continue maintenance.
  - mynameisvlad 2y ago
    There is a massive gap between what would be nice (what you describe) and what should be expected (the rest of the thread) from maintainers. While a smooth exit and transfer of ownership (and politeness in general) is nice to have, it should not be the norm out of a free product with no implicit or explicit support offered. And no, publishing a project is not an implicit offer of support, as much as some might want it to be. If someone chooses to offer something (whether that’s updates, support or anything else), awesome, but it should not be expected or demanded out of anyone you don’t pay money for. Heaping on responsibilities to people just because they created, maintained, or contributed to a project is just a recipe for burnout and eventual deterioration of a project. Sometimes, the user is wrong. If the user is demanding and expecting things out of a free project created and maintained by volunteers doing it in their own spare time, then they are a shitty user. You may choose to interact with them out of the kindness of your heart, but it should not be the norm or expectation from every maintainer out there.
    - imiric 2y ago
      I agree that expecting, or worse―demanding―, a specific behavior from a maintainer is out of place. But at the same time, categorically refusing to meet a user request or expectation just because they're not paying you implies that you prioritize paying users, which corrupts how the software is built. It means that you consider people who use your software for free (gratis) to not have any voice in how the software is developed, but paying users do. This is a very reductionist point of view of OSS to provide only the barebone essential freedoms of the license you chose, without taking into account the people using the software, and the community that can develop around it. If money is the main issue, there are ways to monetize OSS projects so that paying users effectively subsidize support and requests of non-paying users. But regardless if that system is in place or not, all users deserve a fair treatment, and maintainers should put in _some_ effort to do the right thing. In the context of Neofetch, a popular OSS project, the right thing would've been to not ghost the community, announce your eventual departure, and start the discussion of finding a new maintainer. These are not unreasonable expectations, and require minimal effort from the maintainer. This person decided to abandon software development altogether, and that's fine, but this way of handling things would ensure that users would think twice about using any of their software in the future.
DiggyJohnson 2y ago
Some, not all. In this case were you ever subjected to the promotion of any of these tools?
- wang_li 2y ago
  Not neofetch because it's a useless vanity thing. (E.g. /r/unixporn is pointless because it's just screenshots of people's random linux systems.) But other projects, yes.

mynameisvlad 2y ago

Oh I'm sorry how could I forget about your wants and needs as a consumer? While you were spending your time being "advertised to, encouraged, and expending time and resources adopting their project" they did, you know, actual work to create and maintain said project. Let's not kid ourselves here. You chose to use their project. You are free to use any other one that fulfills your needs, fork an existing one, or, hell, create one yourself. Nobody is putting a gun up to your head and saying "you must use this project or else". Strictly as a consumer, you have absolutely zero pull on what a project or its maintainers do, and you shouldn't delude yourself in thinking otherwise just because you expended a modicum of effort to use a project. In short, get over yourself. Your time commitment is many magnitudes smaller than theirs.

imiric 2y ago
As someone involved in open source, both as a user and maintainer, this is a very user hostile position to take. For one, respect your users. If you made the decision to publish an OSS project, acknowledge that you can become a dependency in someone's workflow. While your users likely aren't supporting you financially, their usage of your projects, feedback, testing, indirect support and community building, all contribute to the success, and any status, fame, or potential employment that might come your way because of it. Saying that you don't owe your users anything and mistreating them like you suggest is just a dickish move, and earns you no good will in the open source community. These are relationships that you should cherish, not look down upon because you get to call the shots about your project. Everyone has difficult moments and perpetual unpaid work shouldn't be expected from anyone, but if you feel like abandoning a popular OSS project, the polite thing to do is to communicate this with your users, and find someone else willing to continue maintenance.
- mynameisvlad 2y ago
  There is a massive gap between what would be nice (what you describe) and what should be expected (the rest of the thread) from maintainers. While a smooth exit and transfer of ownership (and politeness in general) is nice to have, it should not be the norm out of a free product with no implicit or explicit support offered. And no, publishing a project is not an implicit offer of support, as much as some might want it to be. If someone chooses to offer something (whether that’s updates, support or anything else), awesome, but it should not be expected or demanded out of anyone you don’t pay money for. Heaping on responsibilities to people just because they created, maintained, or contributed to a project is just a recipe for burnout and eventual deterioration of a project. Sometimes, the user is wrong. If the user is demanding and expecting things out of a free project created and maintained by volunteers doing it in their own spare time, then they are a shitty user. You may choose to interact with them out of the kindness of your heart, but it should not be the norm or expectation from every maintainer out there.
  - imiric 2y ago
    I agree that expecting, or worse―demanding―, a specific behavior from a maintainer is out of place. But at the same time, categorically refusing to meet a user request or expectation just because they're not paying you implies that you prioritize paying users, which corrupts how the software is built. It means that you consider people who use your software for free (gratis) to not have any voice in how the software is developed, but paying users do. This is a very reductionist point of view of OSS to provide only the barebone essential freedoms of the license you chose, without taking into account the people using the software, and the community that can develop around it. If money is the main issue, there are ways to monetize OSS projects so that paying users effectively subsidize support and requests of non-paying users. But regardless if that system is in place or not, all users deserve a fair treatment, and maintainers should put in _some_ effort to do the right thing. In the context of Neofetch, a popular OSS project, the right thing would've been to not ghost the community, announce your eventual departure, and start the discussion of finding a new maintainer. These are not unreasonable expectations, and require minimal effort from the maintainer. This person decided to abandon software development altogether, and that's fine, but this way of handling things would ensure that users would think twice about using any of their software in the future.

DiggyJohnson 2y ago

Some, not all. In this case were you ever subjected to the promotion of any of these tools?

wang_li 2y ago
Not neofetch because it's a useless vanity thing. (E.g. /r/unixporn is pointless because it's just screenshots of people's random linux systems.) But other projects, yes.