3 ms·

Recently, I've noticed a certain idea a lot I didn't see before: that if you make something a lot of people like, you have a responsibility to them. In the real

by arjie 6mo ago

Recently, I've noticed a certain idea a lot I didn't see before: that if you make something a lot of people like, you have a responsibility to them. In the real world, this happens if someone has planted a tree in their garden and people like how it looks, then when they want to cut it down, "the community" would like an opinion. Likewise, in the open-source world, after a certain number of things start depending on your work, people often say it "should be considered a public good" - which is particularly confusing because public good seems something entirely different from its other well-known definition. I think this whole idea of "if you make something nice that other people like, you are obligated to serve people forever" is totally bogus. I (well Claude+Codex) write a lot of LLM code these days and many of the base libraries are open source. If I had to write ratatui it would take a long time. But if someone decided to bully the ratatui maintainer I wouldn't ever know. And there's no way to un-bully someone anyway.

junofan 6mo ago
OSS has gone off the rails recently. There’s a project under the Apache Software Foundation—I forget which—that is essentially a byproduct of the operations of a Chinese beverage company. That’s more like what I remember. We’re talking about code that users can modify themselves to solve their own problems. That’s it. I don’t need to hear about the struggle.
- intothemild 6mo ago
  > We're talking about code that users can modify themselves to solve their own problems. That's it. I don't need to hear about the struggle. That's exactly the kind of attitude that this discusses. You create something that solves your problems, you put it up on GitHub, free, and open... Suddenly it turns out others have the same problems you did, your software solves them. It starts ok. People are nice. But as it gains traction, a certain kind of toxic person becomes more and more common. The "YOU FIX IT NOW! I DONT KNOW" Kind of person. You wake in the morning, look at your email, and it's a stream of being screamed at. That takes a toll. All because you had an idea one time to build something that solved your problem you thought "hey I might just open source this". > That's it. I don't need to hear about the struggle.
  - j1elo 6mo ago
    Let me tell you a solution for the "FIX IT NOW" types: > This is an Open Source project that gets developed at the author's discretion. We provide paid work services for urgent fixes, cost is $500 per day with a minimum of 4 days. Put that in the README, under a header that can be linked to in bug reports from entitled people. Worst thing that could happen is that the maintainer ends up earning a couple grand.
    - intothemild 6mo ago
      I like it, only one problem.. the fix it now types also are the same ones that didn't read anything.
saagarjha 6mo ago
> In the real world, this happens if someone has planted a tree in their garden and people like how it looks, then when they want to cut it down, "the community" would like an opinion. I wouldn't actually put this forward as an argument for the concept of "community ownership", but I will point out that there are many circumstances where the ownership of trees on your yard is actually significantly decided by the community you live in. Whether that's your HOA, or city regulations, or tree law, what you do on your own personal property is often not just your own isolated thing.
delfinom 6mo ago
>I think this whole idea of "if you make something nice that other people like, you are obligated to serve people forever" is totally bogus. Personal opinion, I think western society at large has a ton of brain rot. People are increasingly falling onto monkey instincts. They'll gaslight you to death that you owe it to help but then try to almost murder you if you don't.
rogermarley 6mo ago
It's more whether one allows oneself to be taken advantage of or not. Only a vocal minority take that stance, others would just be disappointed if it went away. I like the approach ngrok took - made a v1 that remained open source, but once realized it had high demand, built v2 closed as a paid service. Another approach is to offer professional services around it. Basically it's very optional to accept the attitude of others that you should provide them value for free.

by arjie 6mo ago

junofan 6mo ago

OSS has gone off the rails recently. There’s a project under the Apache Software Foundation—I forget which—that is essentially a byproduct of the operations of a Chinese beverage company. That’s more like what I remember. We’re talking about code that users can modify themselves to solve their own problems. That’s it. I don’t need to hear about the struggle.

intothemild 6mo ago
> We're talking about code that users can modify themselves to solve their own problems. That's it. I don't need to hear about the struggle. That's exactly the kind of attitude that this discusses. You create something that solves your problems, you put it up on GitHub, free, and open... Suddenly it turns out others have the same problems you did, your software solves them. It starts ok. People are nice. But as it gains traction, a certain kind of toxic person becomes more and more common. The "YOU FIX IT NOW! I DONT KNOW" Kind of person. You wake in the morning, look at your email, and it's a stream of being screamed at. That takes a toll. All because you had an idea one time to build something that solved your problem you thought "hey I might just open source this". > That's it. I don't need to hear about the struggle.
- j1elo 6mo ago
  Let me tell you a solution for the "FIX IT NOW" types: > This is an Open Source project that gets developed at the author's discretion. We provide paid work services for urgent fixes, cost is $500 per day with a minimum of 4 days. Put that in the README, under a header that can be linked to in bug reports from entitled people. Worst thing that could happen is that the maintainer ends up earning a couple grand.
  - intothemild 6mo ago
    I like it, only one problem.. the fix it now types also are the same ones that didn't read anything.

saagarjha 6mo ago

> In the real world, this happens if someone has planted a tree in their garden and people like how it looks, then when they want to cut it down, "the community" would like an opinion. I wouldn't actually put this forward as an argument for the concept of "community ownership", but I will point out that there are many circumstances where the ownership of trees on your yard is actually significantly decided by the community you live in. Whether that's your HOA, or city regulations, or tree law, what you do on your own personal property is often not just your own isolated thing.

delfinom 6mo ago

>I think this whole idea of "if you make something nice that other people like, you are obligated to serve people forever" is totally bogus. Personal opinion, I think western society at large has a ton of brain rot. People are increasingly falling onto monkey instincts. They'll gaslight you to death that you owe it to help but then try to almost murder you if you don't.

rogermarley 6mo ago

It's more whether one allows oneself to be taken advantage of or not. Only a vocal minority take that stance, others would just be disappointed if it went away. I like the approach ngrok took - made a v1 that remained open source, but once realized it had high demand, built v2 closed as a paid service. Another approach is to offer professional services around it. Basically it's very optional to accept the attitude of others that you should provide them value for free.