Comment by PeterZaitsev

Comment by PeterZaitsev 2 months ago

There is so much self imposed hurt in Open Source. Many maintainers feel they owe something to their project community, even if they are rude, entitled, unhelpful bunch. It is self imposed though. In reality unless you have a Support agreement or similar, you do not really own folks anything.

I wish more Open Source community players to stand up for their interest more strongly.

In the end, whenever you like it or not, few are going to pay for what they can get for free, and it especially applies to large enterprises

palata 2 months ago

> I wish more Open Source community players to stand up for their interest more strongly.

Which IMO means using copyleft licenses. Not necessarily strong copyleft: I mostly use MPLv2 and EUPL, that I find let people use my code in their proprietary software, but forces them to distribute the changes they make to my code. The best of both worlds.

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arccy 2 months ago

the people who have the ability to make changes are a mostly disjoint set from the entitled ones who complain loudly in your issue tracker.
the only thing licenses help with is discouraging people from using it in the first place

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- palata 2 months ago
  
  > the only thing licenses help with is discouraging people from using it in the first place
  It may discourage people from using it, often because it's easier to go with a permissive alternative. But if there was no permissive license at all and only weak copyleft, then I am absolutely convinced that people would use them just fine.
  One important thing I believe you miss is that weak copyleft gives developers leverage to contribute back during their work time. If my company needs this particular library which is MPLv2, then as a developer, internally I can tell my managers that I must upstream my changes. Whereas if it is permissive, then I can try to ask the permission to upstream my changes, and obviously that will be refused (because it takes time which costs money).
  By using a reciprocal license, you give developers a legal reason to contribute back during their work time. Ain't that amazing?
  
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OutOfHere 2 months ago

[flagged]

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lionkor 2 months ago

Thats the point though, and you're missing it: In FOSS, the maintainer doesnt owe you anything. It doesn't matter what the bug is. Most popular software licenses contain a clause about no warranty etc. for a reason.
Maintainers owe you absolutely nothing for just using their software.
Go pay them if you want them to work for you, and see if they want that.

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- atq2119 2 months ago
  
  Correct. I think the one thing that is "owed", if that is even the right word, is that you don't knowingly put malicious software out there. But that's it.
  
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- OutOfHere 2 months ago
  
  If a public software is very far off from working as advertised, effectively demonstrating bad faith, if its code is being hosted on a social hosting site, you can bet that I will complain about it to the site, and get everyone else to complain as well. If the software is no longer being developed and has been dead for years, then it's a different story, and the intent then is to move elsewhere. The license file is not an excuse using which to hide lies.
  
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ascorbic 2 months ago

Did you pay for the software? Do you have a contract? No? Then they owe you literally nothing. You are lucky that they give it to you for free. You can open issues if you find a bug, and hopefully the maintainers will fix it, or somebody else will. But if they don't, then you are lucky that it's open enough that you can fix it or pay somebody to. But they are under no obligation to do anything.

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duckmysick 2 months ago

The only thing the authors owe the users of their open source projects is fulfilling the terms of the license. Anything else is extra. Additional support is not guaranteed.

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- OutOfHere 2 months ago
  
  You are forgetting something, which is that if the code is hosted on a social site, e.g. GitHub, many additional rules apply.
  Gross misrepresentation of one's software will earn complaints to GitHub. It is the responsibility of the author that the repo's readme does not ovepromise and underdeliver.
  
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  ascorbic 2 months ago
  
  There is nothing in GitHub's terms of service or AUP that says anything even close to that.
  
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- jltsiren 2 months ago
  
  With the caveat that author is a role, not a person. The same person may have further responsibilities in other roles. In particular, if you distribute the software directly to consumers, consumer protection laws may override some license terms.
  
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blueflow 2 months ago

> Authors owe their users what is advertised in the project's readme, nothing more and nothing less.
Actually not even that. No contract, no enforcement.

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