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This is an interesting problem open source might start facing. There are a lot (I assume) of mature, critical libraries with a single owner. These libraries sta
by dehrmann 2y ago
This is an interesting problem open source might start facing. There are a lot (I assume) of mature, critical libraries with a single owner. These libraries started their life around 30 years ago, and the maintainers are ready to move on. Taking on maintenance isn't very exciting since all the fun work's been done, but the open source world needs it.
- acdha 2y agoThat’s what I was thinking, too. There are some fun aspects but there’s also a lot of stress: if you fix a bug, what are the odds that someone added a dependency on that behavior in one of the thousands of dependencies which accumulated over the decades? Yes, tests are great but I’d still bet that your inbox would get more grumping than thanks until we can unbreak open source culture.
- tresclow 2y agohttps://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/ Are we sure this whole discussion can't be reduced to just links to xkcd strips?
- dehrmann 2y agoPicard and Dathon… at El-Adrel
- kelnos 2y ago> unbreak open source culture. This aspect isn't really specific to open source culture, it's human nature. People want free stuff. People feel entitled to free stuff. People feel entitled to the uncompensated labor of others.
- acdha 2y agoNo, but the part where people don’t make a distinction between how they view paid support contracts and open source is. “Uncompensated labor of others” covers everything from sneaking into a concert to reading an entire book at the bookstore to pirating a movie/game to buying an academic license for something you use at work to harassing an open source maintainer into adding a change you want. Since I only wanted to talk about the last one, I used wording specific to that.