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> “solid, convincing, extraordinary evidence or argumentation to support that.” Just ordinary evidence. If there was a charity event which asked for a voluntee
by jodrellblank 4mo ago
> “solid, convincing, extraordinary evidence or argumentation to support that.”
Just ordinary evidence. If there was a charity event which asked for a volunteer to organise drinks, and you volunteered, and then there were no drinks, and you said “I don’t owe you anything stop being entitled, if you want an event with drinks you can fork the idea and organise your own”, people would be unhappy and reasonably so. It’s not that you had a legal obligation to do that work, it’s that you told everyone you would and that stopped other people from doing it.
If rsync had no maintainer and someone publicly offered to take it on and maintain it, that would also block other people taking that spot. It stops people investing time effort and money into a fork or replacement to an abandoned project. If the volunteer then either didn’t do anything or wrecked it and said “I don’t owe you anything etc.” that would be bad in a similar way.
If you want to be able to tell people you are the maintainer, that the thing is maintained, and you get to control what happens to a widely used project, you can’t really stand by the position “why did people expect me to maintain it? I only told them I would maintain it, why would they believe me, that’s not fair”.
Make it clear that it’s abandonware and has no maintainer, and you can totally uphold the “not my problem, says so in the license, deal with it” position. But if your thing becomes popular then you should expect a company like RedHat to fork it into ‘redsync’ and run it their way as their project, not look to you as ‘upstream’ and sideline you completely. Which is what a lot of open source people say they want but don’t behave as if they want that. Probably because there actually is some prestige and power and status and reputation involved, even though people try to claim there isn’t.
- tptacek 4mo agoThat metaphor doesn't operate here. People are building stuff and making it available. Nobody's making a commitment. Nobody's "volunteering" for you.
- jodrellblank 4mo agoExplain why the metaphor doesn’t operate here? Bonus points, don’t use the word “entitled”.
- tptacek 4mo agoWhy would I need to? Nobody volunteered. In the analogy, you found something on a shelf somewhere and decided to depend on it. The person who put it on the shelf never agreed to support you in that endeavor.
- jodrellblank 4mo ago“This is abandonware” And “This is maintained and I am the maintainer” Are different states. 'Maintenance' is not work-free or effortless, so the second sentence is explicitly volunteering to do some non-zero amount of work, right? I don't see how it can be read any other way, you either have to argue that maintenance isn't work, or that "I am the maintainer" is not volunteering oneself into the role of doing that work.
- akerl_ 4mo agoIf I have a garden in my yard and I say “I am the gardener of this garden”, what commitment have I made to you, a third party who just happened to be within earshot, about how much time I will spend working on the garden?
- jodrellblank 4mo agoWe're not talking about someone who "just happens to be within earshot" of something that is inside your private garden and not open to the public. If you put a note on the public noticeboard saying "I have planted some things in this area of the public commons and I am the maintainer them" can you defend the idea that you are not voluntarily offering to maintain something?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- akerl_ 4mo agoYes.