> As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all
I understand what the author means, but I think that in any human-2-human interaction, we are all entitled to at least basic courtesy. For example, if you show courtesy by contributing to an open source project and following all the guidelines they have, I think it's fair to assume that courtesy will be shown in return. I know that may be difficult to achieve (e.g., a high volume of noise preventing project authors from giving courtesy to those who deserve it), but that doesn'tt mean we are entitled to nothing. And this has nothing to do with open source or software; it's just common sense when dealing with people.
But yeah, if you contribute something of very poor quality (you didn't give it the attention it needed, it's full of bugs, or shows no attention to detail; or these days, it's packed with AI-generated content that makes it 10x harder to digest, even if the intention is good), then perhaps you are not entitled to anything
I built a commercial product that competes with open source alternatives in my space, and this tension is constant. People ask why they should pay me when they could use the open source version. And the honest answer is: if you have the time and expertise to run, maintain, and interpret the open source tool yourself, you absolutely should.
I'm not owed your money any more than Rich is owed your contributions. But most people asking that question are really asking 'can someone else do the hard part for free,' which is exactly the entitlement he's describing, just pointed at a different target.
It's an interesting world for sure, I maintain a somewhat popular package and got a form to fill from a Deloitte consultant about security once.
They seemed genuinely confused when I told them I was not going to fill compliance form and make patching commitments for free. Really makes you wonder how many maintainers are letting themselves be taken advantage of.
The people who maintain open source software are considered "the vendor" by these compliance types. When it comes to open source, the user is really the vendor and the user has responsibility to themselves for compliance (this is pretty much spelled out in the licence and WARRANTY file). The compliance industry doesn't acknowledge how open source works and have tried, since forever, to shoehorn it into a paid vendor model. Open source maintainers creating destination/marketing websites espousing the advantages of their software as if it is a sellable/buyable product doesn't help and perpetuates that perception.
Maybe that would be a good opportunity to offer them a quote for how much you could do the work for.
Yeah, that's what I do. Anytime anyone from a company sends an email about whatever, who wants me to help them (for their company) in private with something, I ask if they're willing to pay for my time spent on it, maybe 20% says yes. Most of the time they end up getting redirected to use the same venues the rest of the community has access to too.
Missed opportunity here. You could have offered consulting services, $10,000/hour. Compliance form requires at 40 hours of work minimum.
The other common “entitlement” is getting miffed when their suggested enhancement isn't something that you intend to do, or will/might get done but is very low priority so it won't be soon. Common responses are to suggest that you should reconsider “for the community”⁰, or start a moaning campaign on social media to try to get others to chip in and nag you. Or “threaten” to use something else instead, which always amused me¹ [way back] when I had some f/oss stuff out there.
Expecting quick responses to security issues is one thing, and perfectly acceptable IMO, but new features/enhancements or major changes (that might break other workflows, most importantly mine!) is quite another.
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[0] My response years ago when I had f/oss code out there was sometimes “why don't you do it for the community, and submit a patch?” which usually got an indignant response. Though these days if I ever publish code again it'll be on more of an “open source not open contribution” basis, so I'd not be accepting patches like that and my response would be more along the lines of “feel free to fork and DIY”.
[1] So, if I do the thing I don't want to do right now, you'll stay and probably keep making demands, and if I don't do the thing that I don't want to do right now, you'll go away and bother someone else? Let me think about that…
[delayed]
Lately I'm seeing more and more value in writing down expectations explicitly, especially when people's implicit assumptions about those expectations diverge.
The linked gist seems to mostly be describing a misalignment between the expectations of the project owners and its users. I don't know the context, but it seems to have been written in frustration. It does articulate a set of expectations, but it is written in a defensive and exasperated tone.
If I found myself in a situation like that today, I would write a CONTRIBUTING.md file in the project root that describes my expectations (eg. PRs are / are not welcome, decisions about the project are made in X fashion, etc.) in a dispassionate way. If users expressed expectations that were misaligned with my intentions, I would simply point them to CONTRIBUTING.md and close off the discussion. I would try to take this step long before I had the level of frustration that is expressed in the gist.
I don't say this to criticize the linked post; I've only recently come to this understanding. But it seems like a healthier approach than to let frustration and resentment grow over time.
Agreed, TFA is a good example of how to write down expectations explicitly.
But as far as dinging Hickey for the fact that he eventually needed to write bluntly? I'm not feeling that at all. Some folks feel that open-source teams owe them free work. No amount of explanation will change many of those folks' minds. They understand the arguments. They just don't agree.
> I don't say this to criticize the linked post
What you have written is obviously a criticism of the linked post.
If I'm criticizing the linked post, then I'm also criticizing myself, because I could easily imagine having written it.
I think some might get the impression that you're complaining about Hickey's tone. Perhaps your emotional terms "frustration," "defensive," and "exasperated" may be the reason.
I don't see anything wrong with the way he expressed himself, and I think his point is totally legitimate. I mostly just felt bad that he experienced so much grief about it, on account of a gift he was offering to the world.
Tangent
It's funny how a hobby project becomes "a burden" when you have to consider making it friendly/easy to consume by everyone eg. writing docs from the basics like how to make a venv in python, get your env setup...
I get that. I am a non-programmer who vibe codes personal web apps for Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon TCG. I turn them into github pages for easy access for myself.
I don't share them with my hobby communities because I don't want to hear feedback because I don't want these finished projects to become eternal projects.
Curious what does your app do/web app? And how good is the vibe coding part, do you generally get what you're trying to achieve in first few runs?
That's cool you're able to make what you want with that tech.
It would be nice to have some context on this. I assume there was some drama regarding this "Cognitect" organisation named. As someone not involved with Clojure at, it's difficult to understand the context for why this post was created.
This was the context back then: https://old.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/a0pjq9/rich_hickey...
I was reminded of this gist when reading the discussion about MinIO (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47000041).
Presumably this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46990729
There was also a thread about MinIO not being maintained anymore.
Hard to say without commentary. Maybe the poster here was influenced by multiple threads (I guess that seems likely, if it was just one thread they influenced them, they could have linked it in that thread).
TFA was posted in 2018; that drama is from the past few days. What connection is there?
But the link to the post was posted here just now! - which I'm assuming means something.
Both share a theme: the trials and tribulations of running an open source project, I suppose. Some contributions, one way or another, demand more of them than the maintainer might like. How do you deal with this? How do you set the boundaries? And so on.
I guess we were responding to different things: my reading of GP's question was why the gist was posted (back in 2018), not why it was shared today.
But indeed yes, I can see that connection.
I think you're right anyway. Re-reading the post with your comment in mind, I think it's clear enough that this was what was actually meant.
You're not able to connect these two subjects?
A thesis on "don't abuse people in open source" and a bot "abusing people in open source"?
It was a reaction to the State of Clojure Survey 2018 (https://danielcompton.net/clojure-survey-2018) and discussions it sparked, in which there were depands for Clojure to change to a more community-driven development process.
I think community development with repos out in the open and all that is increasingly a too high cost. I will migrate my little open source projects from GitHub as soon as I can decide on what site to post source code releases (tar.gz). Happy to share my code, but no need for everything to be out in the open.
I fail to see the difference between public on github or public elsewhere.
No public version control. No issues or pull requests or other social features. Like every project, more or less, before GitHub or Sourceforge.
codeberg is run as a foundation with the explicit aim to help open source projects prosper
github is run by microsoft to sell tools to your CEO with the ultimate aim of making you redundant
I dislike this essay so much
I can't say whether it accomplished its original intent, but my experience is that it's held up in really disappointing situations which sit counter to my collectivist values
I have a ton of experience with community-building, and what's espoused in this essay is an attack on the values of that world imho.
My take-home is that there are many conceptions of what "open source" is about, and from where its value flows
If you want to create and maintain a community that's fine, maybe even great. TFA is just pointing out that the presence of an OSS license is not an implicit signal that the project is interested in any such community. They're separate things, and my read is that the author is frustrated with the constant conflating of the two. It's not an attack on your values at all.
It comes down to beggars asking skilled people for free labor. If the "community" really wants something, they can send a pull request.
I think "Open source is a licensing and delivery mechanism, period." is a statement that bears repeating.
Ultimately it is about you.
That you are entitled to have say too.
That such & such says should be followed, nope.
But one could say it's even less about you with close source.
I'll just leave this here: https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/stars/2024/1
Just look at clojure's stats and understand what this "wisdom" brings
> Sign in to GitHub to continue to Gist
That's new
Edit: https://web.archive.org/web/20260213161600/https://gist.gith...
I feel much better after reading this because our organizations are: - funding OSS developers - engaging with OSS developers to determine potential funding priorities - providing project hardware at the project level - providing hardware to the individual OSS developer
While we are not to the point of hosting events in Hawaii yet, I’m hoping we can see this as a teaming arrangement to accomplish great things together!
Can you add the year (2018) to the submission title? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...