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"That expectation does not entitle anybody to anything though." This is true legally, but not otherwise (socially, practically) "That is their decision. Witho

"That expectation does not entitle anybody to anything though." This is true legally, but not otherwise (socially, practically) "That is their decision. Without any contract or promise, there is no obligation to anybody." Again, true legally, but IMHO a really silly position to take overall. Imagine I provide free electricity to everyone in my town. I encourage everyone to use it. I do it all for free. I'm very careful to ensure the legal framework means i have no obligation, and everyone knows i have no obligations to them legally. They all take me up on it. All the other providers wither and die as a result. 15 years later, i decide to shut it all down on a whim because i want to move on to other things. The lights go out for the town everywhere. Saying "i have no legal obligations" is true, but expecting people to not be pissed off, complain, and expect me to not do this is at best, naive. Calling them entitled is even funnier. It's sort of irrelevant if they are entitled or not, after i put them in this position. Legal obligation is not the only form of obligation, and not even the interesting ones most of the time. More importantly - society has never survived on legal obligation alone. I do not think you would enjoy living in a world where legal obligation is the only thing that mattered.

mlrtime 1y ago
Bad analogy, MinIO isn't a basic commodity required for life. Maybe a car analogy (because they hardly work). It's like lending your car to someone everyday then stopping, then the person complains that they have no way to get around. But there is walking, biking, busses or buying your own car.
- ishouldbework 1y ago
  Electricity is not a basic commodity required for life. It is convenient for sure.
- s1mplicissimus 1y ago
  I don't see how "basic commodity required for life" is a necessary criteria for any ethical standards to apply at all. This is about trust, community and how to be a good project steward.
  - FooBarWidget 1y ago
    Then will you be volunteering your time and resources? Remember: once you start volunteering, you cannot stop, because you will "break everyone's trust and expectations" or even be "malicious". Happy volunteering.
    - aendruk 1y ago
      The claim isn’t that “you cannot stop”, but that it’s rude to not communicate about that ahead of time. Of course the entitlement to volunteer work is also rude, and in my opinion worse.
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      This is exactly what happens when you volunteer. When you've had enough, or just want to spend your time in other ways, you're hounded to come back, to continue to help, and to varying degrees made to feel guilty because you decided to stop doing something that you had been offering for free. I don't think this is a reason to never volunteer but you have to develop a thick skin, know where your lines are, and at some point politely but firmly say "no."
Hendrikto 1y ago
This is a bad analogy. We are talking about building a very simple Docker image. It is more like you went around your neighborhood and turned peoples lights on in the evening, then stopped. Sure, it’s a lost convenience, but people can easily choose to just… push the button themselves. Or pay somebody to continue doing it for them. Or get a timer. It’s really not a big deal, and there are plenty of alternatives.
- weli 1y ago
  I think you are missing the point of legal vs societal obligations and your analogy is equally bad. Minio's sold you this free light bulb and they also freely offered the service to upgrade it to the newest version every time a new lightbulb was released. There are many light bulb brands out there, some paid, some free, most of them also offer the service to upgrade the lightbulb automatically, even the free ones. Then Minio decided to disable the feature to upgrade the lightbulb automatically, the code to update it is still there, they just don't want to do it anymore. Conveniently there is a Minio+ enterprise plan that has this feature. But hey! they tell you that you can easily set up your own server to update your lightbulb automatically. And most enterprise clients or people who have Minio lightbulbs in their office will do that. But for single enthusiasts who don't have a server because they are just running a Minio lightbulb in their shed it's a bad situation, because if they knew this from the beginning they would have gone with another free lightbulb that updated automatically. In short: Minio has the legal right to do whatever they want, people using minio have the right to be pissed. It's an all around bad publicity stunt and if I was a Minio investor I would really wonder why they are trying to piss off their loyal user base for a quick buck.
  - Hackbraten 1y ago
    > But for single enthusiasts who don't have a server because they are just running a Minio lightbulb in their shed it's a bad situation, because if they knew this from the beginning they would have gone with another free lightbulb that updated automatically. What keeps those enthusiasts from setting up a scheduled GitHub Action (or whatever system they prefer to use) to build the image for themselves? How much (amortized) effort are we actually talking about here? One minute per release?
cies 1y ago
Did you read the comments on Github (linked by the title)? So many commenters are just plain rude. They got free value for along time. Someone giving the free value decides to allocate their time otherwise. And the long-time receivers of the free value now cannot behave. And you seem to make excuses for them... It's just rude to behave like that after having enjoyed gifts for so long. They behave like spoiled children. Nothing to defend IMHO.
- jamespo 1y ago
  Github is awash with accounts with zero contributions to anything who use it to lobby for their personal requirements.
  - imiric 1y ago
    This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of OSS. You're essentially saying that only users who contribute to OSS are worthy of attention and support. This is no different than saying that only commercial users, or those from specific countries, backgrounds, or industries are worthy of the same. Those users who create issues, request features, and, yes, ask for support, are as valuable as those who contribute code or money. They're all part of the same community of users that help build a successful product. And they do it for free for you, because they're passionate about the product itself. If you think otherwise then you should make your terms of service explicit by using a restrictive license and business model. OSS is not for you. Yes, some people can be rude, demanding, and unworthy of your attention. But you make those boundaries clear, not treat all non-paying users as entitled children.
    - geodel 1y ago
      > But you make those boundaries clear, not treat all non-paying users as entitled children. True in theory but no one has infinite time to distinguish correctly between good feature requester or bad one.
    - evanelias 1y ago
      > If you think otherwise then you should make your terms of service explicit FOSS licenses already do that: they shout at you in all-caps that the authors PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. Meanwhile the licenses don't say anything about communities. For better or worse, OSI convinced everyone that "open source" is synonymous with using specific licenses that meet their definition. If that's the case, then how can it be a "fundamental misunderstanding of OSS" to strictly interpret OSS by the terms of the licenses, which don't mention any sort of "social contract", while they do include language explicitly contrary to such expectations of users?
Mawr 1y ago
> Again, true legally, but IMHO a really silly position to take overall. Is it? Let's take a look at the opposite scenario: What if MinIO never released any source code at all? They'd be just another 100% proprietary company like any other and would have never received any backlash for "pulling up the ladder behind them". So offering something for free and then rescinding later is treated worse than never offering anything for free at all! What a way to entice companies to do open source guys, great job!
- DannyBee 1y ago
  " So offering something for free and then rescinding later is treated worse than never offering anything for free at all!" This is true plenty of times. In particular, if you violate social expectations/etc, you will often see this. For example, here's an easy case: I am about to go plant a bunch of trees. A neighbor sees me going to do it, and offers to do it for me for free, because they like to do it. I say cool. They can even say "just so you know, i'm not your contractor, blah blah blah" or whatever. Doesn't matter. I go do something else with my time. A week later, they did half the job, and quit, or they did the whole job and made a hash of it, or whatever. 1. It wouldn't make sense for me to expect them to fail or stop doing it or do it poorly just because it was free. Nor plan for them to fail. 2. Most people would still complain even though they paid nothing, and are arguably no worse off (depending on the options you pick) then when they started. 3. Most people would definitely feel like it was worse than doing nothing. Now, in this example you could argue it's the poor quality/stopping halfway through that is causing this result, but you would IMHO see the same result even if they did a great job, but stopped after doing 90% of it, leaving me definitely no worse off, and probably much better off. In the end, people's expectations are emotional and not simply rational.
__bjoernd 1y ago
Sticking with your analogy -- your townsfolk getting energy for free. As rational people they must include the possibility of free service being over at any time in their planning and act accordingly. Otherwise they're just freeloading.
- DannyBee 1y ago
  Of course they are freeloading - and users often suck - but your latter doesn't follow. It's fair in the singular case (IE if this is the only open source/free thing you use), but especially as you are dealing with more and more things like this (IE use lots of open source), it is totally irrational to expect them to plan for any of 50 open source projects they use to stop at any time. It violates general good faith expectations. Just because someone is doing something for free doesn't mean you expect them to fail or stop - The cost is fairly orthogonal to most people's expectations. I don't expect any package in my linux distro to just stop existing or working at any time. Sure, it would be sensible to plan for eventual failure of things you depend on, but it's not rational to expect people to plan for random failure of any of the things they depend on at any time, regardless of the cost of those things. More to the point, it's not entitlement on their part to avoid sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop all the time :) The projects also often have the perspective of "it shouldn't be tha big a thing" but that's because they ignore they are not the only thing happening in their users world.

mlrtime 1y ago

Bad analogy, MinIO isn't a basic commodity required for life. Maybe a car analogy (because they hardly work). It's like lending your car to someone everyday then stopping, then the person complains that they have no way to get around. But there is walking, biking, busses or buying your own car.

ishouldbework 1y ago
Electricity is not a basic commodity required for life. It is convenient for sure.
s1mplicissimus 1y ago
I don't see how "basic commodity required for life" is a necessary criteria for any ethical standards to apply at all. This is about trust, community and how to be a good project steward.
- FooBarWidget 1y ago
  Then will you be volunteering your time and resources? Remember: once you start volunteering, you cannot stop, because you will "break everyone's trust and expectations" or even be "malicious". Happy volunteering.
  - aendruk 1y ago
    The claim isn’t that “you cannot stop”, but that it’s rude to not communicate about that ahead of time. Of course the entitlement to volunteer work is also rude, and in my opinion worse.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    This is exactly what happens when you volunteer. When you've had enough, or just want to spend your time in other ways, you're hounded to come back, to continue to help, and to varying degrees made to feel guilty because you decided to stop doing something that you had been offering for free. I don't think this is a reason to never volunteer but you have to develop a thick skin, know where your lines are, and at some point politely but firmly say "no."

Hendrikto 1y ago

This is a bad analogy. We are talking about building a very simple Docker image. It is more like you went around your neighborhood and turned peoples lights on in the evening, then stopped. Sure, it’s a lost convenience, but people can easily choose to just… push the button themselves. Or pay somebody to continue doing it for them. Or get a timer. It’s really not a big deal, and there are plenty of alternatives.

weli 1y ago
I think you are missing the point of legal vs societal obligations and your analogy is equally bad. Minio's sold you this free light bulb and they also freely offered the service to upgrade it to the newest version every time a new lightbulb was released. There are many light bulb brands out there, some paid, some free, most of them also offer the service to upgrade the lightbulb automatically, even the free ones. Then Minio decided to disable the feature to upgrade the lightbulb automatically, the code to update it is still there, they just don't want to do it anymore. Conveniently there is a Minio+ enterprise plan that has this feature. But hey! they tell you that you can easily set up your own server to update your lightbulb automatically. And most enterprise clients or people who have Minio lightbulbs in their office will do that. But for single enthusiasts who don't have a server because they are just running a Minio lightbulb in their shed it's a bad situation, because if they knew this from the beginning they would have gone with another free lightbulb that updated automatically. In short: Minio has the legal right to do whatever they want, people using minio have the right to be pissed. It's an all around bad publicity stunt and if I was a Minio investor I would really wonder why they are trying to piss off their loyal user base for a quick buck.
- Hackbraten 1y ago
  > But for single enthusiasts who don't have a server because they are just running a Minio lightbulb in their shed it's a bad situation, because if they knew this from the beginning they would have gone with another free lightbulb that updated automatically. What keeps those enthusiasts from setting up a scheduled GitHub Action (or whatever system they prefer to use) to build the image for themselves? How much (amortized) effort are we actually talking about here? One minute per release?

cies 1y ago

Did you read the comments on Github (linked by the title)? So many commenters are just plain rude. They got free value for along time. Someone giving the free value decides to allocate their time otherwise. And the long-time receivers of the free value now cannot behave. And you seem to make excuses for them... It's just rude to behave like that after having enjoyed gifts for so long. They behave like spoiled children. Nothing to defend IMHO.

jamespo 1y ago
Github is awash with accounts with zero contributions to anything who use it to lobby for their personal requirements.
- imiric 1y ago
  This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of OSS. You're essentially saying that only users who contribute to OSS are worthy of attention and support. This is no different than saying that only commercial users, or those from specific countries, backgrounds, or industries are worthy of the same. Those users who create issues, request features, and, yes, ask for support, are as valuable as those who contribute code or money. They're all part of the same community of users that help build a successful product. And they do it for free for you, because they're passionate about the product itself. If you think otherwise then you should make your terms of service explicit by using a restrictive license and business model. OSS is not for you. Yes, some people can be rude, demanding, and unworthy of your attention. But you make those boundaries clear, not treat all non-paying users as entitled children.
  - geodel 1y ago
    > But you make those boundaries clear, not treat all non-paying users as entitled children. True in theory but no one has infinite time to distinguish correctly between good feature requester or bad one.
  - evanelias 1y ago
    > If you think otherwise then you should make your terms of service explicit FOSS licenses already do that: they shout at you in all-caps that the authors PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. Meanwhile the licenses don't say anything about communities. For better or worse, OSI convinced everyone that "open source" is synonymous with using specific licenses that meet their definition. If that's the case, then how can it be a "fundamental misunderstanding of OSS" to strictly interpret OSS by the terms of the licenses, which don't mention any sort of "social contract", while they do include language explicitly contrary to such expectations of users?

Mawr 1y ago

> Again, true legally, but IMHO a really silly position to take overall. Is it? Let's take a look at the opposite scenario: What if MinIO never released any source code at all? They'd be just another 100% proprietary company like any other and would have never received any backlash for "pulling up the ladder behind them". So offering something for free and then rescinding later is treated worse than never offering anything for free at all! What a way to entice companies to do open source guys, great job!

DannyBee 1y ago
" So offering something for free and then rescinding later is treated worse than never offering anything for free at all!" This is true plenty of times. In particular, if you violate social expectations/etc, you will often see this. For example, here's an easy case: I am about to go plant a bunch of trees. A neighbor sees me going to do it, and offers to do it for me for free, because they like to do it. I say cool. They can even say "just so you know, i'm not your contractor, blah blah blah" or whatever. Doesn't matter. I go do something else with my time. A week later, they did half the job, and quit, or they did the whole job and made a hash of it, or whatever. 1. It wouldn't make sense for me to expect them to fail or stop doing it or do it poorly just because it was free. Nor plan for them to fail. 2. Most people would still complain even though they paid nothing, and are arguably no worse off (depending on the options you pick) then when they started. 3. Most people would definitely feel like it was worse than doing nothing. Now, in this example you could argue it's the poor quality/stopping halfway through that is causing this result, but you would IMHO see the same result even if they did a great job, but stopped after doing 90% of it, leaving me definitely no worse off, and probably much better off. In the end, people's expectations are emotional and not simply rational.

__bjoernd 1y ago

Sticking with your analogy -- your townsfolk getting energy for free. As rational people they must include the possibility of free service being over at any time in their planning and act accordingly. Otherwise they're just freeloading.

DannyBee 1y ago
Of course they are freeloading - and users often suck - but your latter doesn't follow. It's fair in the singular case (IE if this is the only open source/free thing you use), but especially as you are dealing with more and more things like this (IE use lots of open source), it is totally irrational to expect them to plan for any of 50 open source projects they use to stop at any time. It violates general good faith expectations. Just because someone is doing something for free doesn't mean you expect them to fail or stop - The cost is fairly orthogonal to most people's expectations. I don't expect any package in my linux distro to just stop existing or working at any time. Sure, it would be sensible to plan for eventual failure of things you depend on, but it's not rational to expect people to plan for random failure of any of the things they depend on at any time, regardless of the cost of those things. More to the point, it's not entitlement on their part to avoid sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop all the time :) The projects also often have the perspective of "it shouldn't be tha big a thing" but that's because they ignore they are not the only thing happening in their users world.