[HN Gopher] Open source is not about you (2018)
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Open source is not about you (2018)
Author : capableweb
Score : 261 points
Date : 2022-07-02 09:39 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gist.github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gist.github.com)
| oxplot wrote:
| How does it get to this stage where someone has to write up a
| hostile post to get across this point? Have the maintainers been
| too nice/polite and/or accommodating and now resent it in face of
| requests they can't fulfill (and the backlash it may have
| caused)?
|
| I'm genuinely puzzled as to why bluntly refusing a feature,
| contribution, etc they didn't like hasn't worked for them. It's
| worked just fine for my limited experience in maintaining FOSS
| projects. Perhaps there is a scale aspect that I'm missing here.
| davedx wrote:
| I've said it before: "entitlement" goes both ways. Treating
| users of your software like the enemy is no way to behave,
| whether it's open source or not. If you don't like your users -
| maybe it's time to take a break from software development?
| capableweb wrote:
| Based on this post, you get the impression that Hickey think
| Clojure users are his enemies? I didn't get that impression
| at all, and I also know that Hickey sees Clojure users as
| friends, receives feedback from many in the community, and
| Clojure is open to community contributions, although
| differently than many other projects are run.
| b3morales wrote:
| Perhaps not Clojure, but there are other projects where
| this is an issue. Users are treated as a burden: the
| regular response to a bug or request is "well why don't you
| do it yourself then". I don't really want to start a flame
| war so I won't name names, but I have seen it. Though I'll
| say it is thankfully rare.
| wildmanx wrote:
| It's a typical pattern that I've seen in FOSS projects over the
| last decades. Somebody writes something cool, publishes it, is
| initially happy about adoption and positive feedback, and then
| people start to demand more and more of them. Fix this thing,
| add that thing, here is my code, when are you finally going to
| merge it, why are you not responding, you are not respectful of
| me, etc. etc. Then a mix of burnout and resentment happens and
| the more bold ones issue such a statement. Others just abandon
| their project and are never seen again.
|
| It's very sad, and it's rooted in a basic misconception of what
| FOSS actually is. That's why such posts are important to
| educate people, even if it sounds drastic.
| oxplot wrote:
| > It's a typical pattern that I've seen in FOSS
|
| You'd think that people working on FOSS are aware of this
| pattern and watch out for it. But seemingly not!
| mpyne wrote:
| Is there any reason that you think being aware of the
| pattern is enough to solve it, or feel no consequences from
| it? I think people are aware of the pattern (it's not hard
| to notice) but that doesn't solve the issues it creates.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| There may be another thing at play too. Many projects are
| presented as being useful: "I built this great thing, you
| should use it!" Open Source or not, this gets to be a
| promise people will be held accountable for.
|
| If instead a project is described as "I built this thing
| for me. Here's the source. Please don't trust me, or my
| code, with anything valuable" expectations can be better
| aligned perhaps.
|
| There can of course be middle grounds. "I wrote this
| useful code. If you need me to be your project manager
| for it, here's how you can pay for that privilege"
| wildmanx wrote:
| > If instead a project is described as "I built this
| thing for me. Here's the source. Please don't trust me,
| or my code, with anything valuable" expectations can be
| better aligned perhaps.
|
| Every open source project states this explicitly. In the
| license. Usually in all caps. Wanna see?
|
| MIT license has:
|
| --- THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF
| ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED
| TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A
| PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL
| THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM,
| DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF
| CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
| CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS
| IN THE SOFTWARE. ---
|
| See? "No warranty of any kind." I.e. "don't trust this
| with anything valuable". How can this be more explicit?
|
| GPL:
|
| --- 11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE,
| THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT
| PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED
| IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
| PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
| EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
| TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS
| FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE
| QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU.
| SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST
| OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. ---
|
| See? "The entire risk as to the quality and performance
| of the program is with you". How can this be more
| explicit?
|
| Nowhere does it state that the author is obliged to
| provide support, reply to issue reports, accept merge
| requests, or is even nice to anybody. It's great if they
| are, and I appreciate such projects as well, but nobody
| is entitled to that. So please don't assume it or berate
| people if you encounter the opposite. This builds false
| expectations in others who don't know any better. We need
| to help each other out to build proper understanding
| within the community.
| grzm wrote:
| I think there are at least two factors at play: genuine
| disagreement about what open source is, and a variant of
| the Eternal September effect.
| ironmagma wrote:
| > it's rooted in a basic misconception of what FOSS actually
| is
|
| I don't think so. It's rooted in the expectation of open
| source: that code is provided with the intent of being
| useful. But if you never merge patches, that isn't very
| useful. There's a forking cost and people are aware of it so
| it's just natural behavior.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| If it's not useful why are they using it?
| ironmagma wrote:
| Lock-in, usually. Using a tool that has it as a
| dependency. Also, if it's un-useful, they probably won't
| be using it for much longer since it will likely be
| forked. But that takes effort, so it's easier to ask for
| the original dependency to just be updated, especially if
| the patch has already been submitted (which is like 90%+
| of the work).
| capableweb wrote:
| Not sure which "hostile post" you are referring to, as I don't
| think the submitted article is hostile at all. It's just very
| clear in what the author is trying to get across.
|
| But anyway, this is how we got to the point of Hickey writing
| this post:
|
| - Heavy Clojure User received bunch of feedback from friends
| and colleagues asking why something hasn't been fixed yet in
| Clojure core
|
| - Heavy Clojure User sees that bunch of stuff hasn't been
| fixed, so they take it on themselves to fix these issues and
| submit patches
|
| - The workflow of "Submit patch -> Have Hickey review it and
| deny it -> Make changes -> Wait for Hickey again -> etc etc"
| was too slow for the Heavy Clojure User
|
| - So Heavy Clojure User made their post describing "How to
| contribute to Clojure", blaming the core team for not working
| tightly enough with the community and spending enough time
| reviewing/accepting patches
|
| - Hickey publishes this post titled "Open Source is Not About
| You" not entirely aimed at "Heavy Clojure User" but the
| community at large, while still being a reaction to that post
| by Heavy Clojure User
|
| - Heavy Clojure User apologizes for the initial post, for tying
| Clojure with their own identity and explains a period of self-
| reflection has begun.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Sometimes directness comes across as hostility. Telling
| someone they aren't entitled to something can come across as
| hostile, even though it isn't and is merely the truth.
| oxplot wrote:
| > as I don't think the submitted article is hostile at all
|
| Tone is lost in text and I don't have much background. If I
| was thinking of contributing to Clojure, this post is reason
| enough to stay away from it.
|
| Based on your explanation, I think Hickey should have simply
| ignored the user's post and let that be the end of it. I
| mentioned "blunt" response to individual contributions. That
| is quite different to a blanket statement with a "we don't
| owe you s... - f... off if you don't like it" vibe.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The blanket statement is correct, though. It may not be
| couched in a palatable way, but only in that it doesn't
| spend lots of words on how lovely everyone is and how few
| people it is addressing. It just says what's true and
| leaves it at that. If you'd rather not work in that
| environment then that's reasonable, but I think it's a
| little refreshing compared to what I normally read from big
| OSS projects.
| mvc wrote:
| > If I was thinking of contributing to Clojure, this post
| is reason enough to stay away from it.
|
| Without wanting to sound flippant or rude, I think they'd
| be cool with that. They're talking about contributions to
| the core language here. Not fixing typos in a README.
|
| In mature projects like this, all the low-hanging fruit is
| done. You can't just take a notion some weekend and fire
| off a useful pull request. It requires an investment. To
| make a good contribution to Clojure you have to....
| - clearly define the problem that needs to be solved
| - get other people on the core team to agree that it needs
| to be solved - document a number of ways to solve it,
| discuss with the community which one will work best -
| let these ideas stew for a while, people might change their
| minds
|
| The above constitutes 95% of the work and would typically
| take months rather than days. Once all that's done, coding
| up the implementation is the easy bit.
| sidlls wrote:
| I disagree with a good part of the substance of the article.
| Publishing open source software incurs a self-imposed
| obligation to do much of what Mr. Hickey says nobody is
| entitled to, in my opinion. If you don't want that
| responsibility, don't publish.
| rob_c wrote:
| Strongly agree but it won't impact users being users.
|
| Paying users have made an investment and have something to lose.
| Users of free at cost tools and products view that have nothing
| to lose so some act very badly. Unfortunately this won't go away
| with a rant, but support for fellow devs against bad users is
| always worth acknowledging.
| capableweb wrote:
| One submission in the past with lots of good discussions:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18538123 | 734 points | 2018
| | 281 comments
|
| One of the main takeaways personally from this post, is the
| unique position Clojure (and other lisps) are in, where language
| additions can be done as libraries instead of changing the core
| of the language.
|
| Other languages don't (always) have this possibility.
|
| Taking TypeScript as one example. If 20% of users want to be able
| to do something in TypeScript that the language doesn't support,
| they either can try to get the change into the core language, or
| live without it (or fork it). If it changes, it'll change for
| everyone using TypeScript
|
| But in Clojure (lisps in general), you don't have this
| restriction, so modifying the language for your own need, becomes
| a lot easier. Lots of work on Clojure is simply done in
| libraries, as it's possible and doesn't impact the core of the
| language, which everyone shares.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| TypeScript have multiple packages available which adds macros.
| capableweb wrote:
| Care to link some of those? Are they macros as in C-macros or
| macros as in Lisp-macros?
|
| Macros in C-like languages (like JavaScript or TypeScript)
| tends to be relatively basic text substitution macros, while
| in lisp they are part of the core language, and you construct
| macros just like you construct normal code.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| Your whole comments sounds like you are trying to get some kind
| of validation for using clojure.
| capableweb wrote:
| That's strange. Being able to professionally work in Clojure
| for the last ~6 years or so is enough validation for me that
| Clojure is the right choice (for me).
|
| Does my comment came across like that because I point out
| benefits from using Clojure, or what makes you say that?
| snarfy wrote:
| It's also true of Forth and derivatives.
| moomin wrote:
| The thing is, it's technically present, but culture is another
| matter. I maintain a Clojure project that ran using a number of
| interesting and convenient macros. In practice, it made things
| harder for people to read and was unidiomatic. If you want
| anyone else to use or modify your code, you'd better stick with
| Hickey's vision.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Absolutely, and this is being completely ignored in the whole
| discussion. We're utterly dependent upon Clojure "core" for
| anything to become idiomatic; saying that it's possible to
| make anything outside of core and do your own thing is about
| as productive as saying "just fork it" about opensource
| projects.
|
| I think that this post by Rich Hickey actually made me
| completely lose faith in Clojure's stewardship after about 5
| years. It basically signalled very strongly "we're not
| interested in listening to the community", which is fine, but
| that doesn't align very well with how long-lived, successful
| opensource projects are managed.
|
| And I say all this as someone who was very actively involved
| in some of Clojure's largest opensource projects.
| tsuujin wrote:
| I just picked up clojure as a hobby project outside of work
| and I'm enjoying the language in general so far. I have to
| say that reading this rant gives me a bit of doubt about
| continuing.
|
| I actually agree with most of what this guy is saying, but
| the delivery is not good.
| moomin wrote:
| It's an interesting road, and I like Clojure plenty, but
| ultimately it's a cul-de-sac. And the reason it's a cul-
| de-sac is pretty heavily laid out by the original post.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Clojure, the language, and Rich Hickey, the vision, have
| had a tremendous impact on my programming career.
| Transformations of data as the primary building block for
| writing code was such an enlightenment. I absolutely
| encourage you to continue your endeavor of learning
| Clojure, as it's almost guaranteed to be a net positive.
|
| It's just the stewardship of the language that is my
| biggest problem. It's very anti-community (as evidenced
| by this rant), and in general there is a tendency of
| "elitist" mentality the more you get into the core
| community.
|
| If you're able to ignore all that, and just do your own
| thing, you'll be fine.
| tsuujin wrote:
| Well, I managed it with the Emacs community, so I guess I
| can do the same here lol.
| capableweb wrote:
| I don't know, the community in general tend to use macros
| that are well written. I keep seeing core.async being used
| (`go`) in Clojure projects, and also various macros for
| writing HTTP servers (compojure being a popular one which
| main code interface is a macro `defroutes`).
|
| ClojureScript projects also routinely add support for making
| asynchronous code look synchronous (like `async/await` in
| vanilla JavaScript) via macros. shadow-cljs's `js-await`
| being one of the well-written ones:
| https://github.com/thheller/shadow-
| cljs/blob/49fb078b834e64f...
|
| Usage: (defn my-async-fn [foo]
| (js-await [the-result (promise-producing-call foo)]
| (doing-something-with-the-result the-result)
| (catch failure (prn [:oh-oh failure])))
|
| I'd say if adding a macro makes things harder to understand,
| you probably need to re-evaluate if you really should have a
| macro here, or the interface of the macro.
| moomin wrote:
| Yeah, there's a couple of widely understood idioms like
| global static configuration and adding async/await. But the
| macros I'm talking about were very simple, well-defined
| things that exist in other languages. They were just
| unfamiliar.
|
| In any event, they're ripped out now. But ultimately macros
| offer a lot more in theory than in practice.
| dgb23 wrote:
| And it shows. Some of the more impressive and powerful
| libraries have incredibly ergonomic and clear interfaces,
| because the language let's you simply do more with it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I'm not familiar with clojure or its libraries. Can you post
| some examples of well designed interfaces?
| capableweb wrote:
| If you're not familiar with lisps in general, it might be
| hard to grok the differences between lisp-macros (as used
| in Clojure) and "normal" macros you see in other (non-lisp
| [sans Elixir I think]) languages.
|
| But, if you are familiar already, and just wanna see
| examples of neat macros that makes the API nicer than what
| a function could provide, here are a few:
|
| - https://github.com/clojure/core.async/blob/master/example
| s/w...
|
| - https://github.com/weavejester/compojure
|
| - https://github.com/ptaoussanis/timbre
|
| - https://github.com/krisajenkins/yesql
|
| Furthermore, macros enables APIs like this, that would be
| impossible to have in JavaScript for example:
| (spy :info (* 5 4 3 2 1)) => 120 %>
| 15-Jun-13 19:19:13 localhost INFO [my-app.core] - (* 5 4 3
| 2 1) => 120
|
| `spy` here doesn't just print what the ` _` form is
| returning, but the form itself too. You wouldn 't be able
| to achieve this without macros, as the evaluation of the
| `_` form would happen before it gets passed to `spy`, so
| the initial form is already gone. Instead, a macro received
| the very code you pass into it, so you can print it,
| inspect it, rewrite it or whatever.
| pharmakom wrote:
| TLDR: take it or leave it
|
| And quite right too.
| capableweb wrote:
| Yup. The snippet I like best (which can act as a TLDR as well)
| from this is the following:
|
| > If you have expectations (of others) that aren't being met,
| those expectations are your own responsibility. You are
| responsible for your own needs. If you want things, make them.
| b3morales wrote:
| Depending on what you want for your project, though, this
| isn't unilateral. If you want a supportive community of
| engaged users, you must engage with them in return. It's
| necessary in any relationship to accommodate or at least
| recognize the needs and desires of the other party. You
| cannot expect them to stay involved if your answer to
| everything is "take it or leave it".
|
| I hasten to add that I am speaking in general. I am not
| familiar with Clojure and I am not saying that Rich Hickey
| and the Clojure project behave one way or the other.
| pessimizer wrote:
| People are actually afraid to say that directly for fear
| they'll be forked out of their own project. It's a legitimate
| fear, but it's also a fair fork. OSS maintainers are not
| responsible to us, but neither are we responsible to them.
| That's not how gifts work. If your maintainer is having an
| emotional breakdown or just wants to do something else, you
| route around it.
|
| Other licenses are available.
| dgb23 wrote:
| I think it's more than that. The quality of a foundational
| project, like a language, hinges in very large parts on
| stability and long term decisions. Saying "no" is the primary
| defense tool here.
|
| It is something that I've come to appreciate over the years,
| but didn't really get initially. A message like this one gives
| me great confidence in trusting the project.
| TootsMagoon wrote:
| You are not entitled to define what Open Source is for me.
| eminent101 wrote:
| Open Source is already defined here: https://opensource.org/osd
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I'm not going to impose stupid distribution terms on my users
| or force them to copy files around. It's dumb. If I'm making
| the code available to the public then just let the public
| have it. This post looks like it was written by an attorney
| not someone that cares about sharing ideas open and freely.
| eminent101 wrote:
| > it was written by an attorney not someone that cares
| about sharing ideas open and freely
|
| Of course it was written by attorneys. Do you know how FSF,
| DFSG and OSD even began? They found a legal solution to the
| problem of sharing code while guaranteeing certain rights
| for the user who use the code! The open source licenses are
| written by attorneys too.
|
| You are free to distribute under whatever terms you want
| but your code does not become open source just because it
| is shared with the public. Some countries do not even
| recognise "public domain". In such countries it becomes
| necessary to attach a valid open source license to your
| code. That's why the various open source licenses are
| drafted by attorneys to ensure they can provide appropriate
| rights to the user of the code.
| Destiner wrote:
| Thing is, different people have different goals for open
| source, and that's perfectly fine.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Ya that was my feeling too. I love most aspects of Clojure and
| especially ClojureScript, but his post feels like projection to
| me. When someone calls someone entitled, it just means that
| they feel a lack of entitlement in their own life, probably
| because they are being taken for granted.
|
| To truly transcend in programming or any other discipline, we
| must first conquer ourselves. Which might mean letting go of
| expectation, especially from others. If bug and feature
| requests are piling up to the point that they distract from the
| work, then maybe their piling up has value. Being mindful of
| that doesn't mean solving it. It could be more about
| delegation, or communication, or setting boundaries, or any
| number of things.
|
| I sympathize with him tremendously though. I don't even have a
| public body of work to showcase, or a way that leads to fame or
| fortune. Yet I still feel tremendous pressure to perform some
| days. His post doesn't read too terribly in the face of that
| kind of pressure.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > The only people entitled to say how open source 'ought' to work
| are people who run projects, and the scope of their entitlement
| extends only to their own projects.
|
| Yet, you believe you are entitled to say how all of open source
| 'ought' to work. Does it refer to everyone but you?
| mvc wrote:
| It's been a while since I read this rant but I suspect you have
| projected the " _all_ of open source " into your paraphrasing
| of what he said and that in fact he never purported to speak
| for all open source.
| IncRnd wrote:
| You are projecting your beliefs upon the structure of the
| article. In the actual article, Cognitect wasn't mentioned
| until five paragraphs later. The first five paragraphs talked
| exactly about open source in general terms not limited to
| Cognitech or to Clojure. What I quoted was the very first
| sentence.
| gfodor wrote:
| Did you read what you quoted?
| IncRnd wrote:
| What I pointed out through a rhetorical question is that the
| article's first sentence tells others their opinions of open
| source are limited, but the premise of that statement is that
| the author is separate from that rule and by the act of
| writing this statement is setting a broad opinion which
| others are not allowed to have, due to the same statement
| imposing a limitation on them.
|
| I was pointing out that the first sentence of the article
| contains a contradiction in its premise.
| gfodor wrote:
| This isn't a contradiction - the claim is that the only
| entitlement one has with open source is that which is
| outlined in the licenses. This is objectively the floor
| across all projects. From there, entitlements are granted
| by project authors and sit outside those granted by the
| licenses. The error, which is sadly common, is to presume
| entitlements of the latter kind follow necessarily from the
| former.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The problem is that this is relying on equivocation
| around the word "entitlement." One type of "entitlement"
| is an actual right that you can fight over in court, it's
| called the license. The other type of "entitlement" is
| just a pejorative euphemism for the word "expectation."
| By slipping back and forth between those meanings, you
| can create the impression of a proof that people's
| expectations are a type of illegal assault.
| lamontcg wrote:
| I'd still like the ability on GitHub to easily lock down PRs and
| issues to a trusted set of a dozen or two collaborators.
|
| I really don't like this idea that because I open source some
| code that I'm working on for free that I become the help desk and
| abuse sink for anyone who can figure out how to register on
| GitHub.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Can you not ban truly abusive individuals from a project?
| That's surprising.
|
| On the other hand, ignoring the merely annoying is free. And
| happens to me all the time.
| lamontcg wrote:
| There's a tax every time you need to read someone's pleading
| showerthought and close it because you don't have the time or
| don't care to do it. You still have to read it all, you still
| get annoyed by it all. Unless you're a total emotional robot
| none of it is actually free.
|
| It is also interesting that I'll get downvoted and criticized
| for wanting to run my own project this way. As the first
| sentence of the linked note puts it:
|
| > The only people entitled to say how open source 'ought' to
| work are people who run projects, and the scope of their
| entitlement extends only to their own projects.
|
| Lots of people out there seem to want to force me to
| collaborate with the world, for my own good, not just open my
| source code up for use. All I want to do is limit
| collaboration on my own solo free-as-in-beer project.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| You don't have to read it all. Also I think you can turn
| off issues/wiki on github as well.
| capableweb wrote:
| Unfortunately (and for seemingly no reason), you can't
| seem to turn off pull requests.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| A lot of people follow the mentality that because something is
| free that it means no criticism or improvement or expectation is
| valid.
|
| That is disingenuous because there are competitive forces just as
| much as a payment based system. Most things we like about open
| source are a direct result of that.
|
| People compete for personal clout, for community clout, future
| employment status, future business partnerships
| dimitar wrote:
| So what I notice is that there seems to be a spectrum between
| feature-conservative and feature-enthusiast open-source projects.
|
| RH doesn't name any names but there seem to be more feature-
| enthusiast projects out there. I wonder if someone could name an
| example and see the pros and cons of the two approaches.
| casion wrote:
| RH doesn't name names, but this is a response to
| behaviour/incident with Timothy Baldridge.
| dimitar wrote:
| I meant names of projects that seem to have trouble with
| feature bloat and code churn, not people.
| Heliosmaster wrote:
| His reply has been deleted from GitHub, but can be found on
| the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20190206101
| 354/https://gist.gith...
| capableweb wrote:
| What's missing is what triggered Hickey's post (linked in
| this submission).
|
| I think this is the original post from Timothy Baldridge:
| "Contributing to Clojure" - https://gist.github.com/halgari
| /c17f378718cbd2fd82324002133e...
|
| > So when I say in passing "if it doesn't matter to Rich,
| it won't get in", it's not a slight, it's a statement of
| fact. People are limited, and must prioritize, your ticket
| will most likely be deprioritized unless it's directly
| related to whatever Rich is currently working on.
|
| > In addition make sure every assumption, every detail
| you've thought of, every possible side-effect of your code,
| is mentioned in the ticket. Because if you forget to
| mention something, Rich will most likely catch it, and hand
| the ticket back to you with a comment of "did you think
| about X", that will add another few weeks into your dev
| time.
|
| > Now begins the "personal opinion" section, what I've
| stated here are the facts as I've worked on Clojure and the
| core projects. I got tired of the constant back-and-forth.
| Never being able to talk to the decision maker directly
| aside through a 3rd party. Problems that could be solved
| via a 10 minute meeting blow up into months of back and
| forth discussions, and if any party gets busy and forgets
| to get back to the other about the ticket, that process
| just takes longer.
|
| The TLDR of the post seems to have been that it takes to
| long for him to get in changes that he cares about, while
| he feels like the Core team is focusing on things that are
| not as important (implicitly at least).
|
| On a happy note, it seems Baldridge is at least
| acknowledging his missteps with the whole situation with
| the whole "Thanks for everything Rich, and please don't
| take my current leave-of-absence from the community as
| anger. It was out of anger last week, but now I'm using it
| as a way to reflect" part.
| casion wrote:
| The reply is on github, you have to click the "load earlier
| comments" button.
| capableweb wrote:
| I guess one good example (that was mentioned just yesterday
| here on HN) would be Flask vs FastAPI:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31953470 - "There are no
| open issues or pull requests on Flask "
|
| Quick count finds that FastAPI has 48422 lines of code, while
| Flask has 9995. Flask just achieved "Zero standing issues/PRs"
| while FastAPI has 1.1K open issues and ~500 open PRs.
|
| Large surface area/API quickly leads to be overwhelmed when
| you're trying to maintain it. Adding new features/fixing
| existing ones becomes harder as well.
|
| Best bet to make sure something is maintainable over time is to
| add as little as possible to it, and if you really have to,
| make sure you're also removing something at the same time.
|
| Otherwise you need a massive team just to be able to "survive"
| and not making things rot.
|
| There is this blogpost as well about the "half-life of code":
| https://erikbern.com/2016/12/05/the-half-life-of-code.html
|
| Someone run that tool on the Clojure codebase as well, and it
| really shows how well the Clojure codebase has been written, as
| most code that was initially written is still there and does
| what it needs, without having to be rewritten.
| dimitar wrote:
| Good point! As for the churn tool, it was for the history of
| Clojure paper with a comparison to Scala: https://twitter.com
| /thesephist/status/1472644432621150220?la...
|
| I don't know if Scala or FastAPI suffer from feature creep
| though.
| capableweb wrote:
| Thanks for finding that, I knew it was out there somewhere
| :)
| [deleted]
| kazinator wrote:
| > _As a user of something open source you are not thereby
| entitled to anything at all._
|
| Wait; I'm not even entitled to software not doing anything
| blatantly illegal on purpose, or perpetrating a privacy violation
| without my knowledge and consent?
|
| Also, "open source" has an even greater focus on getting paid
| than "free software". Surely, if people are paid, certain
| entitlements exist between certain people, even if none of them
| happen to be the author.
|
| E.g. if you use a phone that runs on a Linux kernel, you may be
| entitled to kernel security updates, at least for a certain
| support period.
|
| By the way, as a user of closed source, you're not entitled to a
| heck of a lot, either; according to the reams of text in a
| typical license agreement. If the thing causes data loss, too bad
| for you, says the disclaimer.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| > Wait; I'm not even entitled to software not doing anything
| blatantly illegal on purpose, or perpetrating a privacy
| violation without my knowledge and consent?
|
| Tor is an open source project and I very well expect that, in
| some jurisdictions, what Tor is explicitly trying to do... on
| purpose... would be considered illegal. I expect that the
| people running the Tor Project know that. I could even
| speculate that some Tor Project team members are hopeful that
| their effort facilitates private communication in the very
| places where such communication is likely to run most afoul of
| the law. Worse than that, laws are often ambiguous, fuzzy, and
| contradictory within a jurisdiction, let alone between
| different jurisdictions.
|
| So what does that mean to the entitlement that open source
| software does nothing blatantly illegal? I guess you can claim
| it, but I wouldn't expect much to come of it even assuming the
| project is being run with good intentions, nor would I count on
| it matching my expectations for same. I think it's better to
| not only discount legality as an entitlement, but not even hold
| it as an expectation. Legality is a decision point for the
| potential user, not a user entitlement the developers are duty
| bound to deliver to any one user.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _Tor is an open source project and I very well expect that,
| in some jurisdictions, what Tor is explicitly trying to do...
| on purpose... would be considered illegal._
|
| But that's something the user wants, as a feature. It may be
| the user who is deemed to be doing something illegal.
| capableweb wrote:
| > Wait; I'm not even entitled to software not doing anything
| blatantly illegal on purpose, or perpetrating a privacy
| violation without my knowledge and consent?
|
| Exactly! Try to reading through the licenses of the code you
| pull in, and it'll be evident. Here is a excerpt from the MIT
| license
|
| > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
| KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
|
| If the code you randomly pulled down from GitHub puts your
| computer on fire, you're the only one responsible for that
| happening.
|
| > Also, "open source" has an even greater focus on getting paid
| than "free software".
|
| Does it? Which Open Source license has any focus on getting
| paid at all? You seem to mix up "development/funding model"
| with "distribution license", where Open Source is the latter,
| not the former.
|
| > Surely, if people are paid, certain entitlements exist
| between certain people
|
| Depends on the funding model. Open Collective, Patreon and
| GitHub Sponsors are all donations, where you donate without any
| expectations of getting anything at all back.
|
| > E.g. if you use a phone that runs on a Linux kernel, you may
| be entitled to kernel security updates, at least for a certain
| support period.
|
| Sure, you probably are, but not from the Linux kernel, but from
| whoever you bought the phone from/your carrier. This article is
| about the kind of people write software like the Kernel, not
| the people who sell your products using FOSS.
| kazinator wrote:
| 1. Not all the content of a warranty disclaimer holds in all
| legal jurisdictions. Giving people free stuff doesn't absolve
| you of liability for harm. Not everyone who uses some open
| source thing is aware of it; it may have been installed by
| someone else.
|
| 2. By open source having "more of a focus on getting paid",
| what I mean is that the term taken over and capitalized as
| Open Source by some people in the 1990' who wanted to
| distance themselves from the GNU project's rhetoric about
| freedom in order to emphasize the commercial viability of
| free software development. They formed something called the
| Open Source Definition. It's fair to call having more of a
| "focus on getting paid" than free software in the GNU sense.
|
| 3. Not all money for work on open source is donation. People
| working on it sometimes get regular salaries. Customers
| sometimes pay for it in the form of commercial products.
|
| 4. Chances are high that whoever you buy your phone from does
| kernel development. Just about the only way they could avoid
| it would be to license the SoC/board from someone else who
| does (and then _they_ are almost certainly entitled to
| support).
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > If the code you randomly pulled down from GitHub puts your
| computer on fire, you're the only one responsible for that
| happening.
|
| That's what's the license says, but your local laws and
| regulations might disagree, and your license does not
| overrule the law.
|
| Distributing malware is illegal and malware is defined
| differently in different countries. If you intend to upload
| sketchy code, make sure you've read up on what constitutes as
| cybercrime where you live because one of your victims may go
| to the police.
|
| To make a flawed comparison: setting up a stand with cookies
| that happen to be poisoned next to a sign that reads "cookies
| free to be eaten at your own risk" don't necessarily let you
| go free when someone ends up in a hospital.
|
| Now, as a counter argument, your average commercial OS is
| packed full of what would've constituted spyware twenty years
| ago, so you're probably free to package some types of
| malware. I don't know if what the colors.js guy did was
| illegal (at least he reminded people oftthe dangers of npm,
| which everyone then proceeded to forget) but I think he got
| away without a lawsuit. I doubt he'd gotten away would he
| have lived where I live, though.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder if anyone has actually been charged based on
| malicious open source contributions. Off the cuff, it seems
| unlikely -- the person whose computer was damaged would
| have to navigate multiply jurisdictions and explain
| something technical to a court, likely as an individual.
| kazinator wrote:
| The precursors to such a situation don't have to be
| exceptionaly unusual. It could be someone working in a
| language that is not normally compiled ahead of time and
| shipped in binary form (e.g. malicious Javascript). Even
| if not accompanied by a license, the code just has to use
| pieces of some open source work so that it is a derived
| work. That malware author is then effectively a
| contributing author, whether aware of it or not.
|
| > _the person whose computer was damaged would have to
| navigate multiply jurisdictions and explain something
| technical to a court, likely as an individual._
|
| Easily done if the person is actually a mega corporation.
| kenbolton wrote:
| The _only_ thing to which you are entitled-by definition-is
| access to the source. It is your responsibility to verify what
| the source does.
|
| The "getting paid" notion is off-topic and has nothing to do
| with the source being open. If I provide commercial support for
| someone and implement a solution using open source software, I
| am the one providing the support and I have no expectation that
| the original authors will hold my hand.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| You're not even entitled to have access to the source.
|
| If repository is down or if you don't know how to use git and
| demand updates being sent to you as zip files on your email -
| your demands mean nothing, you are not entitled to be given
| access to the source code.
|
| You have _permission_ to use it in some license limited way
| and that's all.
|
| If you _use_ open source code (ie. as part of your product),
| you may be _required_ to also provide source code,
| attribution etc.
| kazinator wrote:
| Most free software licenses don't concern themselves with
| _use_ , except that they may make it clear that use is not
| restricted in any way. A license that restricts use in any
| way is probably not free.
|
| > _you are not entitled to be given access to the source
| code._
|
| If you're the user of a binary image someone spun from a
| GNU licensed program, actually you _are_ entitled to that,
| if it is the Affero license (AGPL), you may be entitled to
| source code access even if you just use the thing as an
| online service. Specifically, you 're entitled to access to
| the source code of the modified version that you're
| actually using.
|
| > _If you _use_ open source code (ie. as part of your
| product), you may be _required_ to also provide source
| code, attribution etc._
|
| That's redistribution. If you redistribute some kinds of
| open source code in a product, you may have to provide
| source code, and that's even if that code is never called.
| The presence of that code in the image is the key thing,
| not whether it is used. Use occurs on the target system, by
| the end user.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| That depends on the licence, though. GPL3 requires that
| obtaining a license should not be harder than obtaining the
| binary distribution. If you use some kind of obscure
| version control system for your source code but link the
| binaries in your website, you're entitled to the source
| code in a similarly easy way.
|
| The developer could exercise their rights and insist on
| sending you a DVD with the source code on it (and make you
| pay for materials+shipping) but throwing up difficult
| burdens is clearly forbidden by the GPL.
|
| Some more extreme licenses grant you, as a user and as a
| developer, a lot of rights, but also a lot of burdens. I
| don't think the stricter ideological licenses such as GPL
| are used much by people who distribute their own code and
| then decide to make life difficult for their users, though.
| It's likely that the only cases where this rings true are
| people relying on GPL code that then want to avoid
| fulfilling their obligations to their customers.
| smashah wrote:
| open source is not just one thing. I think of it like a bunch of
| tribes loosely operating in amongst each other with some shared
| tenets (followed as necessary) and their internal own cultures.
|
| But that's the same as any organization. In normal business,
| you're meant to follow the main tenet of "maximize profit",
| "treat customers well". Businesses follow those tenets as they
| see fit. There's no reason for every open source project to be
| cookie cutter.
| [deleted]
| smsm42 wrote:
| I dislike this kind of semantic bickering. Yes, technically "open
| source" once meant only the distribution model of source
| availability. A lot of time passed since, and now "open source"
| means something else - a certain social phenomenon with its
| community, rules, culture and mores. Lamenting that people have
| grown to expect this is pointless.
|
| Yes, some people can be over-entitled towards open source - and
| it's the right thing to push back against them and remind them
| they wants aren't the law of the universe. But it's also wrong
| that "open source" is _just_ a licensing mechanism. It 's a
| culture, and how people behave forms this culture. That doesn't
| create entitlement, but it creates certain expectations. No one
| is obliged to deliver on those expectations - especially if they
| are exaggerated - but I don't think it makes sense to deny they
| exist, and usually accounting for at least some of them leads to
| better results than ignoring them.
| jeandejean wrote:
| It's a bit annoying to go through that post without knowing the
| context of why he's so pissed... Honestly, Open Source is a great
| source of frustration exactly because they're managed by
| benevolent dictators that are more often the latter while
| forgetting the former.
|
| Yeah sure that's their piece of code and you're free to fork if
| you don't like it, but why open sourcing your project in the
| first place if it is not to have a benevolent ear to potential
| contributors, in other terms to create a community? An Open
| Source project without the community is just futile.
| bdefore wrote:
| > why open sourcing your project in the first place if it is
| not to have a benevolent ear to potential contributors, in
| other terms to create a community?
|
| one reason: providing code that others may learn or benefit
| from even while you recognize that you won't have time to
| manage a community.
| jeandejean wrote:
| I definitely understand there are reasons outside of that,
| but you should be ready (and happy) for a community to build
| up on your release of interesting Open Source software.
| bdefore wrote:
| it's quite a thrill! until the months fly by and you get a
| particular kind of tone on an issue opened on your
| repository for a thing you can't devote time to anymore.
| and that burn can scar.
| asn1parse wrote:
| this post is representative of the mental illness thats endemic
| today. First of all, I can start open source project for any
| reason that I want including all the reasons that he listed that
| I'm not entitled to. There are no rules and nobody can dictate it
| either here or elsewhere. Secondly it seems that your lack of
| education and understanding has led you to this spot and I
| encourage you to seek more education probably outside the area
| that you consider your area of expertise. Finally the author of
| this post made the vital mistake of having expectations of other
| people, this is the prime mistake most people make and leads to
| their unhappiness.
| sidlls wrote:
| Sorry, but no. Publishing open source software incurs a self-
| imposed obligation to the community to support it--and that means
| most of what Mr. Hickey claims aren't entitlements--or else
| explicitly abdicate responsibility (and thus control) of it.
|
| There are of course no _legal_ obligations (unless the specific
| license of the project specifies otherwise). But this isn 't
| about that. It's about the expectations and norms that develop in
| a community.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| It makes sense, but it sounds a bit too radical. As one
| children's book says, "you become responsible forever for what
| you've tamed."
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > You are not entitled to the attention of others. You are not
| entitled to having value attached to your complaints. You are not
| entitled to this explanation.
|
| I wish I understood this earlier in my life.
| tomxor wrote:
| Are you able to shed some light on where the entitlement is
| coming from?
|
| Asking as someone who has honestly never held such assumptions,
| I remember quite clearly my initial instinct towards various
| FOSS projects as "their castle their rules", I'm kinda puzzled
| why anyone would think otherwise... but this is a long time ago
| in internet years.
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| I am inclined to think this a 'generational' issue. For those
| individuals that were using open source before the explosion
| of the modern internet, open source software was something we
| could seek out to then use for our own ends. Also, the people
| who wrote that software were 'publishing' it just to get it
| out there for anyone to use if those people found it useful.
|
| Conversely, people who started using open source after the
| internet exploded, and I think particularly, once being an
| open source maintainer was seen as an achievement and goal,
| the attitude changed. Individual users of the software were
| building things depending on the OSS and felt that their use
| of the OSS code implied a contract for continued development
| of that dependency. This feeling is made worse by fiscally
| gigantic corporations pushing 'oss' products and those
| corporations acting like their continuing to support their
| product is analogous to a solo dev putting a vim plugin on
| github. The reality of wide spread large 'oss' products and
| the implied (and often maliciously relied upon) personal
| obligations of producing OSS have led to the current state.
| That state being users of some OSS assuming that their usage
| of the software means the author owes them some obligation by
| virtue of their need.
|
| This whole issue is made worse by large organizations getting
| social credit and positive marketing by releasing 'oss'
| products. This leads to conflation of individuals releasing
| code to benefit the commons vs. organizations doing so to
| capture markets, gain publicity, etc.
| ynniv wrote:
| Perhaps this is a hot take, but Rich's headline is wrong. His
| argument hinges on the idea that software chooses to be open
| source out of altruism: someone created something of value,
| and rather than requiring payment they gifted it to the
| world. But if you have ever been at an organization that
| makes open source software, there is always a calculation
| that at least suggests that the company is better served by
| using an open source license. Part of that calculation is
| people filing bug reports, proposing improvements, and in
| general being satisfied with the library. Some requests are
| too niche, and some arguments too baseless, but if the people
| using open source don't participate at all we often say that
| something isn't really open source at all (see Apple's
| "Public Source"). When that happens, people tend to make
| forks, build competing libraries, or give up and move on.
|
| Open Source isn't all about you, but it is a little bit about
| you.
| bdefore wrote:
| > but if the people using open source don't participate at
| all we often say that something isn't really open source at
| all
|
| i cannot say who the 'we' is, but i suspect in some circles
| this may hold true. i do challenge that this is a
| reasonably held belief because it is an expansion of the
| historical responsibilities generally held towards those
| who would wish to open up their source for others. it may
| even suppress how much code is openly shared (since most
| engineers don't enjoy being community managers)
| ynniv wrote:
| It's an old debate, and I'm not familiar with the current
| usage. Stallman explains: "The two terms
| describe almost the same category of software, but they
| stand for views based on fundamentally different values.
| Open source is a development methodology; free software
| is a social movement."
|
| Clojure is Open Source by this definition, since it is
| developed by a collective group, as opposed to a
| permissibly licensed but static artifact. People are
| welcome to run their projects however they like, but the
| entitlement comes from the philosophy that Open Source is
| more than a contract, and is better when there is
| participation. Labels matter because they set
| expectations - Apple does not call their Public Source
| "Open Source", and people don't complain because they
| understand the difference.
| stavros wrote:
| People (me included) think that publishing and maintaining
| software is an implicit guarantee of (or attempt at) some
| level of proper behavior. When the software doesn't work as
| it should, people feel that that guarantee has been violated.
|
| Many contribute fixes and actively improve the software, but
| many post entitled comments.
| robonerd wrote:
| There is no such thing as an "implicit guarantee".
| Guarantees are affirmative assurances, they can't be
| implicit.
| bsuvc wrote:
| > People (me included) think that publishing and
| maintaining software is an implicit guarantee of (or
| attempt at) some level of proper behavior
|
| Except there is no implicit guarantee.
|
| For example the Apache 2.0 license outright says it, so
| there is no argument about "implicit guarantees"
|
| https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
|
| 7. Disclaimer of Warranty. Unless required by applicable
| law or agreed to in writing, Licensor provides the Work
| (and each Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS
| IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND,
| either express or implied, including, without limitation,
| any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT,
| MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You
| are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness
| of using or redistributing the Work and assume any risks
| associated with Your exercise of permissions under this
| License
| stavros wrote:
| I agree.
| b3morales wrote:
| On the other hand you cannot create and maintain a
| community purely by contract.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > You are not entitled to the attention of others.
|
| I wish advertisers would understand that.
| GChevalier wrote:
| I admit I chuckled at "You are not entitled to this
| explanation" while reading the article. How far can it go xD
| Buttons840 wrote:
| He's not entitled to me reading his rant, or changing my
| behavior based upon it. Is this deeper?
|
| You know, I don't think I've ever participated in a
| conversation that used the word "entitlement" and came away a
| better person.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I agree, the non-stop one-sided accusations of entitlement
| didn't seem very productive to me. I wonder if some day
| someone will write a post about things maintainers aren't
| entitled to. I can think of several things.
|
| This is in no way exclusive to software. It's people in
| general. Dealing with people is extremely difficult. At
| least software developers aren't likely to get sued over
| these complaints.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Yes, the word "entitlement" is mainly used in response to
| widely acceptable behaviors, and is almost always a
| passive-aggressive escalation.
|
| I may not be entitled to be listened to when I speak, but
| it's still reasonable for me to speak with the
| expectation that I will be listened to. If I do speak,
| it's not an aggressive claim that I'm entitled to speak
| and you must listen.
| asib wrote:
| That sounds like a you problem more than a general rule
| that using the word engenders unproductive conversation.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >How far can it go
|
| You aren't entitled to know that ;)
| [deleted]
| monksy wrote:
| To some extend of being a human you are. Are you entitled to
| expect things to go exactly your way? No. Are you entitled to
| get what you want without trade? No.
|
| However, the whole claim of "we are going to do everything we
| want" and you're going to give us appreciation and some kind of
| resources (admiration, money, time, commits) is just selfish.
|
| Humans are social animals, what you create and put out is
| mention to be used by someone. It's not just wankery that is
| there for people to not get something of it.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Everyone has their own frame of reference and their own opinion
| on what is right or wrong in a particular situation. There
| could also be a singular objective hierarchy of morality or
| righteousness - but each person is going to have to come to
| their own conclusion about if that exists or not.
|
| I think the philosophy of engagement they outline there is
| internally consistent, but I don't think it supports where they
| go next:
|
| > _If you think Cognitect is not doing anything for the
| community, or is not listening to the community, you are simply
| wrong._
|
| It's consistent to say that you do things for your own reasons
| and other people are not entitled to any engagement w/r/t their
| opinions on your work - but then also you are not entitled to
| anyone else agreeing to your opinions either. You can have all
| the opinions you want about your own work - but you're not
| entitled to anyone agreeing with them. The idea that doing the
| work should mean something for you is, after all, just another
| opinion.
|
| Alternatively, you could proceed from an ethic of building a
| shared understanding of creative community. Then you get to say
| things like "you are wrong if you don't think we are helping" -
| because you have a definition of community that you're
| following and the work you are doing is structured to support
| that definition. But then complaints do have value and
| standing, because you're promoting a kind of social contract.
| Not all complaints have standing ofc - but certainly some will!
| bachmeier wrote:
| As much as I respect Rich Hickey, it's hard to say anything
| positive about this. It has basically nothing to do with open
| source. It's _entirely_ specific to how he chooses to run his own
| projects.
|
| Open source is not a gift in the sense that you "get what they
| give you". You are entitled to the source code. You are entitled
| to modify the code. You are entitled to distribute your
| modifications.
|
| Are you entitled to be part of the development process and to
| state your opinions about how things are going? Yes...if those
| are the rules of the project. The thing is, that has nothing to
| do with open source, it's always project-specific, so the full
| post largely doesn't make any sense as a comment on open source.
| wildmanx wrote:
| > The thing is, that has nothing to do with open source, it's
| always project-specific, so the full post largely doesn't make
| any sense as a comment on open source.
|
| That's how I read this article. He argues that it's a
| misconception that "open source" _implies_ the entitlements
| that he rejects. There may be projects which offer such
| entitlements (though it 's unlikely phrased like that), but
| other projects don't, and nobody should assume they are
| entitled to anything just because of the "open source" label --
| beyond the rights guaranteed by the chosen license.
|
| He argues for freedom. The programmers freedom to ignore
| anything beyond the license, and the users freedom to go choose
| a different project if they don't like the choices of some
| project. That's also what you are saying.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I don't agree. Two sentences in particular drive me crazy:
|
| > As a user of something open source you are not thereby
| entitled to anything at all. You are not entitled to
| contribute.
|
| The first sentence is wrong according to any standard
| definition of open source. The second is specific to the
| project. It may or may not be true. He's making strong
| statements about how we should view _open source_ rather than
| his project:
|
| > The time to re-examine preconceptions about open source is
| right now. Morale erosion amongst creators is a real thing.
|
| That's a statement about open source, and it's not filler
| that he threw in without much thought. It's at the core of
| his argument.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I think the context of Clojure as a project and a community
| needs to be taken into account when reading Hickey's "you
| are not entitled to anything" piece.
|
| Clojure as a community is _VERY_ welcoming, it has a
| healthy level of discussion, a wide variety of users, and
| many innovative projects. I was surprised when I first read
| that gist in 2018, but I've come to believe it's a reaction
| to some people who perhaps had made demands or
| public/private gripes about Clojure in a way that rubbed
| Hickey the wrong way.
|
| He perhaps could have communicated his sentiments
| differently. It seems a bit "scorched earth" to me.
| Admittedly, he doesn't say exactly who/what he's reacting
| to, so maybe it's justified.
|
| But IMHO, for every raging a-hole who need to be told to
| slow their roll, there are probably a few earnest, well-
| meaning folks who will think twice about reaching out and
| contributing with valuable ideas, for fear of crossing the
| "you-are-not-entitled-to-anything" line.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| I think you have a wrong definition of entitled. You're
| never entitled to make contributions to any open source
| project. Any such project may or may not give you that
| right, but it's not something you're entitled, it's
| explicitly given to you.
| bachmeier wrote:
| If so, then Merriam-Webster is also confused:
|
| > having a right to certain benefits or privileges
|
| The right to contribute is a property of the project, not
| a property of open source, which has nothing to say on
| how projects are run. And for the record, I don't agree
| with his project management style.
| mpyne wrote:
| > not a property of open source, which has nothing to say
| on how projects are run
|
| If open source does not require that a project accept
| external contributions, then Hickey is right to say that
| you are not _entitled_ to contribute just by virtue of
| being open source.
|
| You're right that this is a more to do with the project
| in question than whether it's open source, but open
| source _does_ compel projects to do other things. So it
| is not weird for Rich to clarify for users of his open
| source project that its being open source doesn 't compel
| that project to accept external contributions, in the way
| that being open source compels them to distribute the
| software.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I agree with this but I don't really blame people for
| assuming they have the right to contribute code anyway.
| There are developers out there who _directly challenge_
| others to contribute when they say things like "patches
| welcome" in response to feature requests or bug reports.
| Now people aren't entitled to contribute? Makes no sense
| to me to be honest.
|
| Only thing worse than submitting a patch and being
| ignored is watching someone else commit the feature or
| fix in spite of the contribution.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > The second is specific to the project.
|
| Therefore it's correct to say that being a user of
| something opensourse doesn't give you a right to
| contribute.
|
| Otherwise it's like claiming that it's wrong to say that
| "as a US citizen you're not entitled to use the Air Force
| One" because the president is a US citizen and has the
| right to use it.
| MereInterest wrote:
| I think it depends on whether "contribute" refers to a
| specific official repository managed by a specific
| project, or to the general problem meant to be solved by
| the codebase. Open source doesn't give the right to
| contribute to a specific repo, but it does give the right
| to fork a project. That fork is a contribution to the
| general problem.
| casion wrote:
| > it does give the right to fork a project
|
| This is license specific. You can create an open source
| project which does not allow forking.
|
| Edit: Notably it seems some commenters here confuse the
| idea that FLOSS will allow for forking but open source
| does not necessarily do so.
| mpyne wrote:
| > Edit: Notably it seems some commenters here confuse the
| idea that FLOSS will allow for forking but open source
| does not necessarily do so.
|
| This is not a confusion on their part, but on yours.
| "open source" is defined as it is deliberately, in
| response to organizations trying to confuse their users
| about the terms of the software they've offered. What you
| see today is the outcomes of years of debate from decades
| ago, and trying to have it mean something different would
| require a similar debate to change well-settled terms.
|
| If you want to talk about software where the source is
| available but may not be forked or redistributed, use
| terms like "source available" (which has its own
| Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-
| available_software, showing that this isn't just my term
| or those of the other commenters here).
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > Edit: Notably it seems some commenters here confuse the
| idea that FLOSS will allow for forking but open source
| does not necessarily do so.
|
| this depends on your definition if open source. OSI's
| definition of open source states
|
| """
|
| 3. Derived Works
|
| The license must allow modifications and derived works,
| and must allow them to be distributed under the same
| terms as the license of the original software. """
| https://opensource.org/osd
|
| Which allows forking. I don't think that any definition
| of open source not allowing that have a wide spread
| support.
|
| Aside from the software license there is the question on
| trademark licensing. Some projects like Mozilla are quite
| strict on that, that however doesn't prevent forking
| Firefox, but just requires using a different name (like
| IceWeasle)
| casion wrote:
| If it "depends on your definition", then it would appear
| that you agree with me when I say "does not necessarily
| do so".
| pessimizer wrote:
| It does not necessarily do so if you make up your own
| thing and label it open source rather than using the
| standard, intelligible, non-deceptive definition. For
| example, if you name your dog "Open Source," that doesn't
| even give me the right to pet it.
|
| But I don't think anybody is interested in talking about
| your dog.
| MereInterest wrote:
| It is license specific, and if forking is not allowed
| then it is not an open source license [0]. I consider
| "Open source" and "FLOSS" as equivalent terms, since
| "open source" as a term was proposed as an equivalent
| term to avoid negative connotations of "free" as low
| quality or not worth paying for[1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-
| source_software#...
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20021001164015/http://www
| .openso...
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| The L for "libre" in FLOSS may be to avoid negative
| connotations of "free" as low quality or not worth paying
| for.
|
| The link you referenced are talking about an entirely
| different conflict, and it is very much not meant to be
| equivalent. Open Source was all about distancing from the
| political ideas associated with free software and the GNU
| project.
|
| Edit: A text by the other side of that conflict
|
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-
| freedom.htm...
| fuzzzerd wrote:
| It depends on your definition of contribute. You aren't
| entitled to have your PR merged to the main project, but
| you are entitled to fork the project and make your changes
| over there. The first is contributing directly to the
| project, while the second is contributing to open source at
| large. I believe the author was referring to project
| specific contributions.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| The best explanation I've heard is that OSS is free as in
| puppy, not free as in beer
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Are you entitled to be part of the development process and to
| state your opinions about how things are going? Yes...if those
| are the rules of the project.
|
| You can always fork the project if you disagree with how it's
| being maintained (or not maintained, as is the case often
| enough). Right to Fork is integral to FLOSS.
| casion wrote:
| Integral to FLOSS, but not integral to open source.
| imaltont wrote:
| OSS part of FLOSS stands for open source software. It is an
| integral part of free software as defined by the FSF, and
| to open source as defined by the OSI. Any other usages of
| the term(s) is either ill-informed or malicious in an
| attempt to make it more ambiguous.
| miloignis wrote:
| Integral to Open Source too, I believe. Anything else would
| just be Source Available or something. If I can't modify
| and share, it's not very open.
| nemetroid wrote:
| Rich is making the same argument as you are: a project being
| open source does not determine whether users are entitled to be
| part of the development process for that project.
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| >Are you entitled to be part of the development process and to
| state your opinions about how things are going? Yes...if those
| are the rules of the project.
|
| Open source isn't a a code of conduct. It is a licensed though.
| The subject and title is not about random projects, it's about
| clojure and open source.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > it's about clojure and open source
|
| No, it's about Clojure. It's not in any way about open
| source. Software can be open source no matter how the person
| writing it runs their projects.
| Heliosmaster wrote:
| I would phrase it that open source is just about the
| license of code, not about anything else, and definitely
| not about how changes are applied to such code.
|
| Usually, it just practically means that you are allowed to
| make changes and redistribute them, but without giving any
| guarantees on how these changes are going to be made
| available to others.
| dahart wrote:
| Maybe it would be better to understand the context of events
| that lead to the letter than argue with generic platitudinal
| responses about what open source is that are totally debatable,
| e.g., you are only entitled to whatever source code they give
| you and nothing more, and you are only entitled to distribute
| your modifications if the open source license allows it,
| redistribution is not automatically a feature of all open
| source.
|
| It's certainly true that there are users out there who expect
| unreasonable things to happen just because they say so, right?
| Have you been on the receiving end of user demands? I certainly
| have. Your reaction might be different if you knew that part of
| the story. This is why your reaction sounds like it might land
| under Hickey's qualification "If you don't recognize yourself
| in the message above, it's not for/about you!" He's speaking to
| the unreasonable people who have demanded things of him and his
| project, not the reasonable ones who already understand what
| open source is or is not, right?
|
| *edit: there is some context here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31958698
| grzm wrote:
| > _" The thing is, that has nothing to do with open source, it
| 's always project-specific, so the full post largely doesn't
| make any sense as a comment on open source."_
|
| I think that's exactly the point he's making. To phrase it
| another way, open source is orthogonal to the relationship
| between the stewards and the community.
| pure_simplicity wrote:
| He is clearly responding to people who have a misunderstanding
| of what open source is, so you cannot blame him for correcting
| the wrong understanding as if he is the one who defined open
| source to include these additional expectations that go beyond
| the license. He is merely pointing out how the way he runs his
| project is also in accordance with the license.
| moomin wrote:
| The thing is, yes the people who run a project can do what they
| like, but everyone else remains entitled to their opinion. In the
| best case scenario, people who are profoundly unhappy can walk,
| and indeed that's what's happened to Clojure. In the worst case,
| the investment in a platform is so large that people can't leave.
| Those people are likely to be pretty vocal if your decisions
| negatively affect them.
| PhilKunz wrote:
| I think a little bit differently about that:
|
| There are some duties that apply to people that are open sourcing
| stuff:
|
| * Don't lie about what it does. * Don't hack people by smuggling
| some nasty code into minor version updates. * Don't leave people
| vulnerable to third party exposure by not taking care of your
| private keys.
|
| I am an Open Source dev myself, having about 300 modules on npm.
| I use it as reputation credit for actually getting jobs that pay
| good money.
|
| If you are an Open Source dev, you are a "Code Influencer". You
| have to be straight about what you do. It is the same for normal
| influencers when they have to declare any paid promotion stuff.
| Lio wrote:
| Sorry but there are no extra duties implied by open source
| other than what's in the licence. Licences usually explicitly
| say that there is no support and no implied duties other than
| those guaranteed by law.
|
| Open source/free software existed long before nebulous[1] terms
| like "influencer" came into fashion.
|
| All it means is that you get the source code and some limited
| rights to modify, distribute and run the code. The rest is on
| you. If you don't like the licence, don't use
| the software. If you don't trust the author or group
| behind it, don't use the software. If you don't think the
| project is well run or not, don't use the software. If
| you don't like the politics of the people involved, don't use
| the software. If the website "smells funny", don't use
| the software. If you can't tell if the software is
| safe or not... you guessed it, don't use the software.
|
| If you drink from puddles then it's up to you to decide if the
| water is clean or not.
|
| 1. i.e. there is no definition in law to what this means.
| kweingar wrote:
| These "extra duties" aren't implied by open source, they're
| implied by common decency.
|
| An open source developer does have a duty to not mislead
| their users or publish malware.
| Lio wrote:
| "Common decency", much like "common sense", is just a
| projection of one's own values on to others.
|
| I dislike telemetry and ad tracking and I avoid software
| that includes them whenever possible. I think they're
| against common decency but I know that others disagree and
| think both are perfectly acceptable.
|
| We'd all like to believe that we share a definition of what
| "common decency" is but sadly we don't. It's why we resort
| to the law to settle disputes and why we need legal
| professionals to interpret that law.
|
| What you're describing, misleading users or publishing
| malware, these are not things controlled by some notion of
| common decency or some personal moral code but either by
| statutory rights or criminal laws. e.g. in the UK with have
| the Computer Misuse Act to stop people adding things like
| time locks to software.
|
| That's completely different to whether the source to an
| application is available and whether you can distribute
| modified versions of that source.
| MereInterest wrote:
| You're describing things that are legal requirements and
| legal duties. The parent is arguing that there is a moral
| requirement and a moral duty to uphold.
| capableweb wrote:
| Those "moral requirements & duties" usually go into a "Code
| of Conduct" or "Contributor Guidelines" instead of in the
| license of the project, as they are separate from the
| distribution, usage and modification of the code.
|
| And rightly so. The community seems to constantly mix "open
| source" the distribution model with the "open/community"
| development model that some projects adhere to.
|
| We would all be better off by being more precise with what
| words we use to describe all of these things, and what our
| expectations are. Just like what Hickey did here.
| MereInterest wrote:
| I am referring to moral duties that exist independent of
| the project they are in. An individual project's Code of
| Conduct may recognize pre-existing moral requirements,
| and may apply additional moral goals that the project
| upholds, but it can neither supplant nor disclaim moral
| requirements that pre-date it. If an update to a project
| adds a keylogger and exfiltrates your login information,
| that project has failed in its moral duty, even if not
| explicitly stated in the project's CoC.
| b3morales wrote:
| Well, one of the problems is that there are groups
| (though few) who want the social sheen of having an "open
| development process" while not actually accepting input.
| The fact that the source is published is _deliberately_
| conflated with the idea that the community is open, for
| marketing purposes.
| [deleted]
| Paianni wrote:
| So everyone should reject all proprietary software outright
| (at least for internet-connected devices) and become fluent
| in programming languages to determine good from evil?
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| > There are some duties that apply to people that are open
| sourcing stuff:
|
| No, zero duties. The express purpose of Open Source is that I
| can release code for free to world, and it's your
| responsibility to figure out if it's what you need. Adding some
| arbitrary "duties" that people must fulfill to release open
| source, is something else, and should not be called just "Open
| Source" as that already has a definition.
|
| If you get hit by any of those points you list, then you're the
| one responsible for that.
|
| > If you are an Open Source dev, you are a "Code Influencer".
|
| That's mixing up terms. Open Source developers are developers
| who release Open Source code, that's it. People who try to
| "influence" the ecosystem one way or another, could be called
| "code influencers" I guess, but please don't mix them together.
| One doesn't imply the other.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Nope, you never have zero duties, as much as you would like
| to be a jerk to people. Just like putting salmonella in your
| free cookies will get the police to show up at your door real
| quick, releasing open source code with malicious behavior, or
| lying about what you're doing, or just straight up being a
| rude person is not really acceptable, open source maintainer
| or not. There are appropriate consequences for all of these,
| and not all of them involve the legal system.
| dahart wrote:
| I agree but you've just explained nicely why this duty has
| nothing to do with open source software. The duties you're
| talking about are universal. Are there any special duties
| open source devs have that other people don't have?
| capableweb wrote:
| Purposefully poising people without disclosing that, is
| illegal. Yes.
|
| Purposefully infecting computers with viruses without
| disclosing that, is probably illegal too. Yes.
|
| Publishing code that on purpose infects computers with
| virus but disclosing that, is probably not illegal.
|
| Publishing code without any disclosures at all, which
| happens to infect people, is probably not illegal either.
|
| You don't have to download random code from GitHub and run
| it. No one is forcing you to. And if you do so, you're
| responsible for your own actions.
|
| Lying about what you're doing or being rude is shitty, and
| the ecosystem should not support that, I agree with that.
| But throwing in a MIT license together with some code you
| publish, doesn't simply that you won't lie or that you
| won't be rude. It just says that you can use that code if
| you want to.
|
| What you're looking for if you're looking for promises of
| not being lied to, is something closer to a Code of Conduct
| or Contributing Guidelines. It's outside the scope of
| (most) licenses.
| orlp wrote:
| >> * Don't lie about what it does. >> * Don't hack
| people by smuggling some nasty code into minor version
| updates. >> * Don't leave people vulnerable to third
| party exposure by not taking care of your private keys.
| > > If you get hit by any of those points you list,
| then you're the one responsible for that.
|
| If someone on the street hands you a free sample, say a candy
| bar, is it then your responsibility to check that the candy
| bar:
|
| 1. contains no razor blades (malicious behavior), and
|
| 2. contains no peanuts because of your allergy even though
| the packaging says it doesn't (lying about what it is)?
|
| Obviously not, anyone handing those out violating those
| assumptions is an asshole and in most jurisdictions a
| criminal. It is _not_ the responsibility of the acceptor to
| check these things, our society expects (and enforces through
| the law) that people are honest and non-malicious. Even if
| the sample is free.
|
| The exact same applies to source code you distribute. It
| would not be reasonable to analyze every free candy bar for
| hidden razor blades by meticulously taking it apart, nor do a
| spectral analysis for peanut traces in exactly the same way
| it is not reasonable for people to verify every line of code.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> It is not the responsibility of the acceptor to check
| these things, our society expects (and enforces through the
| law) that people are honest and non-malicious. Even if the
| sample is free.
|
| >> The exact same applies to source code you distribute. It
| would not be reasonable to analyze every free candy bar for
| hidden razor blades by meticulously taking it apart, nor do
| a spectral analysis for peanut traces in exactly the same
| way it is not reasonable for people to verify every line of
| code.
|
| That is not what the licenses say.
|
| Most FLOSS licenses have a clause like this:
|
| THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY
| KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE
| WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
| PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS
| OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR
| OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR
| OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
| SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
|
| If the author explicitly disclaims all responsibilty about
| the released software, then all responsibilty falls on the
| user.
| PhilKunz wrote:
| So how is a normal influencer then an actual influencer, and
| not just a person "releasing" content "for free to (the)
| world"?
| capableweb wrote:
| I couldn't care less about the definition of what an
| "influencer" is or not.
|
| What we're talking about here is releasing code as FOSS.
| Just because I add a MIT license to code I publish
| publicly, doesn't mean I want to be some "influencer" or
| whatever. It just implies (rather explicitly) exactly what
| it says in the license text, nothing more, nothing less.
| threatofrain wrote:
| I'd say that your rules apply to everyone whether or not they
| are part of an open source community.
|
| Being a closed source dev doesn't make malware morally
| acceptable. Lying is a complicated thing as everyone does it,
| but no matter the context, you can't be surprised if you face
| social consequences for deceiving people. And allowing people
| to use your stuff for wrongdoing is also going to affect your
| reputation, in the same way that someone using your Facebook
| account for bad shit is going to come back to you.
|
| A more interesting discussion would be on the relationship
| between a volunteer organization and its volunteers, as this
| post is probably in response to a recognized community
| contributor.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Those are all nice things to do when managing a project but
| they are definitely not obligations. Some of us open source
| developers don't even work as professional software developers.
|
| I for one reserve the right to simply abandon a project once I
| decide it's served its purpose. I often start projects to make
| tools for my own personal use, to learn something by trying to
| reinvent a better wheel or just to prove to myself that I'm not
| insane for imagining different ways to do things. Fear of
| inadvertently creating responsibility for myself, such as
| responsibility to polish, maintain or even finish projects, has
| led me to not actually publish lots of software I've written.
|
| One such project actually made it to HN once. It's really nice
| when other people see your project, I'm happy even with
| criticism because it means I can learn something. However, I
| really don't want this to turn into an unpaid duty. I try to do
| things properly when I'm programming but at the same time I
| have increasingly limited free time and attention.
|
| For example, I wrote a user space driver for my laptop's
| keyboard LEDs:
|
| https://github.com/matheusmoreira/ite-829x
|
| I just wanted to turn them off because they default to bright
| blue lights. Then I thought it'd be interesting to add some
| application-specific color schemes.
|
| While reverse engineering it, I discovered some insane
| functionality. The Windows driver would intercept all
| keystrokes and send signals to the keyboard to light up the
| keys when they're pressed. Why not do it in hardware? I started
| documenting those features but it was just so insane I decided
| it was better to just stop. I really don't want to feel
| pressured to finish that, especially since I'm not going to use
| it.
|
| Then it turned out I actually had users, and one person created
| an issue asking for help with the somewhat cryptic user
| interface I came up with. I realized in horror the issue was
| created months ago and I didn't even see it. I tried to help as
| much as I could but still.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| I recognise myself so much in this post.
|
| > I realized in horror the issue was created months ago and I
| didn't even see it.
|
| I even had one issue opened for three years before I found my
| self with some extra time for the project. Was quite
| surprised, but delighted, when the submitter responded with a
| thank you, and "worth the wait" just minutes after resolving
| it.
|
| I guess what I'm saying is, don't let the pressure take you
| down to much. Most people are probably both patient and
| grateful.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| No one is entitled to much in life. But people expect many things
| which they aren't entitled to. This is normal, and does not mean
| there's something functionally wrong with people that expect
| certain things.
|
| I expect my neighbor to not flip me off every morning. Am I
| entitled to it? No, not really. Being an asshole is not illegal.
| But I would probably still complain about it. Does that make me
| entitled?
|
| What you need to do is manage expectations. Which... this is one
| way to do it.
| bdefore wrote:
| Expectations can be set by the license, most of which used for
| open source explicitly outline that the author is under no
| obligations.
|
| There's quite a distance between your example and the behavior
| of most open source developers. Are you implying that those who
| don't respond to suggestions are flipping you off?
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's clearly arguing that we expect many things that we have
| no right to. Open source developers aren't bound by any
| expectations that we have of them, but we also have no duty
| or obligation not to have expectations.
|
| My 2C/ is that some open source maintainers have severe
| boundary issues that are pretty natural for people to have.
| They need to be liked by everyone, which is probably why they
| decided to do OSS, because if you give people things for
| free, they like you.
|
| People's expectations rise to the challenge and demand the
| maximum amount of free stuff, and the maintainer is pushed to
| their limits to satisfy them for little or no renumeration.
| But if they stop, people won't like them, and that sets off
| some useful animal heuristic where that possibility causes
| them to feel in actual danger (which they may project onto
| the project i.e. "the project is being endangered by entitled
| users asking for things.") The loss of what you think people
| love you for (giving away free shit) is a loss of identity
| and one's place in the world.
|
| The reaction of the demanding users is just as natural.
| Remember: if you feed a stray dog, people don't naturally
| feel the dog is now obligated to you, _they feel that you are
| now obligated to the dog._
|
| You have to be modern, establish boundaries, and not place
| enough of yourself in the expectations of other people that
| they can destroy you with disappointment.
|
| It might be better to move to proprietary or Free software.
| With Free software, you're establishing something and
| granting it to the public (not becoming something), and you
| can walk into and out of it with no feeling of guilt or of
| being taken advantage of. No one else will get rich off your
| work, and if your work helps people it will live forever.
| With proprietary software, you're dealing with safe,
| formalized purchase and support relationships. It's this OSS
| shit that seems to drive everyone crazy.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'd certainly be interested in hearing the story behind that.
|
| Personally, I have no use for Clojure, myself, and, thus, no
| opinions on the project, or its participants; other than to
| sincerely wish them well, and success in their endeavors.
|
| Because Clojure (as a specific project) is not something that I
| use, my opinion of the tool _has no bearing_ on whether or not it
| is a good tool, or on its creators /community. I completely
| recognize and accept that my opinion of the tool and its creators
| is _absolutely worthless_.
|
| So, I'm best off, keeping my mouth shut on the tool and its
| creators. I can live with that.
|
| Since this was linked on the front page of HN, and seems to have
| remained up for four years, I can comment on what it says, in a
| very limited fashion, as there are a couple of things that
| resonate with me.
|
| In my case, I'm the original author of a fairly important
| infrastructure tool, that has been completely taken over, and is
| being maintained, by a new team of highly capable individuals.
| I'm barely even a footnote on the project, and that suits me just
| fine. I pop into the Facebook group for the project, from time to
| time, and spew up a little historical anecdote, as a trivia
| exercise.
|
| But I started writing that project in 2008, and released it in
| 2009. I then had to shepherd, maintain, evangelize, and defend
| the project for ten years, in a sizable community of, for lack of
| a better word, trolls. The project was meant to help them, and
| Serve their needs. Getting them to accept and embrace the tool
| was ... _challenging_. I was met with suspicion, hostility,
| entitled demands, condescension, hostile takeover attempts,
| insults, attacks of various types, etc.
|
| Ahhh ... fun times.
|
| But in the end, it worked out.
|
| One of the reasons that I have all but walked away from the tool,
| is that ten years of keeping the pot boiling was exhausting. A
| lot of other stuff didn't get done, while I was working on that,
| and I had to hold myself back, in many ways. I also made a number
| of interpersonal mistakes, while evangelizing/defending the
| project, and learned some harsh, humbling, lessons about myself,
| and about others.
|
| I am eternally grateful to the team that took the project over. I
| am sure that it is not their idea of a "perfect tool," but it
| gave them an excellent baseline, and they have extended it, far
| beyond my initial vision. It now Serves thousands and thousands
| of people daily. I was also able to soak up a lot of the bullets
| for them. I'm a pretty tough old coot, and knew what I was
| signing up for (I am intimately familiar with the target
| demographic). Now that it's an established project, and some of
| the new team are quite respected in the community, it is being
| treated well.
|
| All that, to say, that I was tempted to write a manifesto like
| this, numerous times, but decided that it would only make things
| worse.
|
| I think, in my case, that was a good decision.
| kryptiskt wrote:
| If you want to build a real community around it there needs to be
| give and take, you can't just throw the stuff over the wall for
| the hoi polloi. That might not be suitable for a small project
| you are content with doing yourself or you might want to set
| yourself up as the unquestioned god-emperor, who allows others to
| work for your greater glory but who will not allow any competing
| vision. I don't like the latter kind of project at all.
|
| Open source is about you, or could be about you, if you find the
| right kind of open source community.
| wildmanx wrote:
| What open source _means_ and what different people choose to
| _use_ it for are different things. Of course as a maintainer
| you may get more out of it if you put effort in for building a
| community, which then can help you improve the project,
| contribute, etc. But that 's extra effort, and nobody should
| assume that everybody commits to that extra effort just because
| they release source code under a FOSS license.
| streaming wrote:
| As someone who started and ran a very successful open source
| project, I feel his pain. You get a large following of adopters,
| some of whom feel entitled to demand features or priority for bug
| fixes even though they aren't contributing anything to the
| project. If they don't get what they want, they start bad-
| mouthing you in order to bring more pressure. After about 6
| months of observing this, I finally had a good discussion with my
| brilliant Principal Architect, who helped me respond as
| follows... If you would like a new feature or bug fix, you have
| the following options; 1 - Improve the code yourself. 2 - Pay
| someone to improve the code. 3 - Ask nicely, and wait patiently.
| Or, 4 - Openly criticize the project leads.
|
| If it were me, I wouldn't choose option 4. But that's just me.
|
| Once I posted this to the main forum thread where people
| discussed the project, most of the participants rallied to
| support me, and peer pressured in the discussion threads helped
| keep open source entitlement to a minimum.
| tikhonj wrote:
| Meh, I think this attitude misses the some of the fundamental
| social dynamics in the open source world: projects--at least the
| ones you've heard of--aren't just code, they're communities.
| People using, or even just _talking about_ , a project are a part
| of the community. A small part, perhaps, but a part nonetheless.
| If a project wants to be "successful" in the sense of being
| popular or active, it needs to maintain a community which almost
| always includes the fringes outside the core contributors. People
| who are part of a community, however tangentially, will want
| _something_ from it, or they 're just going to leave--that isn't
| entitlement, that's just how people's attention works!
|
| There's a reason that--"just fork it" rhetoric aside--forking an
| active project is often seen as an actively hostile social move:
| it's not about the code or the license, which allow forking by
| design, but rather about potentially _splitting the community_.
| And this also makes sense; if you 've built something and want
| people to use it, having somebody else take their own version and
| convince people to switch isn't going to feel great! But there's
| an inherent contradiction between "trying to split the community
| by forking is hostile" and "the community is entitled to
| nothing": if you're getting some value from having a community,
| people in the community wanting input on the direction is _not_
| pure entitlement! Now, to be clear, this does not mean that every
| complaint or request on a maintainer 's time is reasonable, and
| I've certainly seen many interactions that cross the line--but,
| ultimately, if you're a maintainer and care about having a
| community around your project, you become a steward of the
| community by definition. And for stewarding a community? The "you
| are not entitled to anything" attitude is fundamentally toxic
| _and counterproductive_.
|
| Critically, none of this applies if you're just making an open
| source project for yourself. Do whatever you want! But then don't
| be surprised if somebody forks your efforts and gathers people
| around a "competing" effort. But you can't have your cake and eat
| it too; if you want a project that goes _beyond_ just yourself,
| the community around the project starts to be something that
| matters.
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| >You are not entitled to this explanation.
|
| The rest of the post would be good if not for this crack that
| lets the rot in.
| Destiner wrote:
| Dunno, made me chuckle a bit.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Noone is entitled to it, but we all got it nonetheless. It's a
| gift.
| krapp wrote:
| It's true, though.
| motbus3 wrote:
| open source has been used as a way of fighting patent trolls and
| also claiming ownership of similar systems.
| longrod wrote:
| A huge part of open source is open community, open to feedback,
| open to suggestions, feature requests and contributions.
| Obviously there's no entitlement but it's one of the few actual
| benefits of open sourcing.
|
| Edit: I know about "open source but not open contribution" thing
| which is quite rare (esbuild for one). I don't think that's a
| good idea for the health of the project.
|
| I know not everyone has the mental strength to run and moderate a
| community but in the software world, a community is akin to being
| a celebrity. People follow you, wait on you, listen to you, value
| you, troll you, throw insults at you, shout at you, and show
| attitude to you when you don't owe them anything. The best part
| is that someone somewhere knows you. Fame is a huge motivator.
|
| If all of the open source projects had huge communities and no
| funding, there'd be more actively maintained projects than there
| are now with very few communities. I might even say that a few
| dollars here and there might not even make a huge difference
| compared to a few people making issues, taking interest and
| contributing.
|
| Now I know not everyone is like that or should be like that. I am
| not generalizing here but come on. When you put your effort out
| there, it is quite reasonable to expect some form of compensation
| or appreciation.
|
| If all the open source projects just put the code out there and
| called it a day, that'd be a huge disservice to the world. Open
| source is the birthing ground for a lot of software engineers and
| all their learning is due to them being a part of a community and
| contributing.
|
| And as to be expected the bad comes with the good. That's
| alright. If you take the decision to run a community, don't worry
| about a few bad apples here and there. It's a part of the deal.
|
| The benefits of being open community far outweigh the cons. It's
| no obligation but it sure is a good thing.
| bdefore wrote:
| while i agree that open contribution software is a genuine good
| for this world for the reasons you enumerate, it is a _subset_
| of open source software. OSS by itself does not imply that the
| author wishes to manage a community around the code they are
| freely giving. this common conflation causes authors to abandon
| or suppress ever releasing their source openly.
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