Comment by gkya
7 years ago
While the message is partially kind of correct, the delivery lacks everything that's humane.
> 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.
If this is the case, why open source or publish it in the first place? If you want people to read the code, but not interact with you, why not write that into the license? Why not use something like CC-SA?
> As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all. You are not entitled to contribute. You are not entitled to features. 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.
Looking at that last sentence, then, why not STFU, Mr. Hickey? Assuming the "users" are Clojure programmers, if they're entitled merely to nil, why bother with this angsty rant?
> Open source is a licensing and delivery mechanism, period. It means you get the source for software and the right to use and modify it. All social impositions associated with it, including the idea of 'community-driven-development' are part of a recently-invented mythology with little basis in how things actually work, a mythology that embodies, cult-like, both a lack of support for diversity in the ways things can work and a pervasive sense of communal entitlement.
This is completely wrong. The reason we have open source in the first place is years long, decades long, determined community effort. Mr. Hickey is not entitled to change the definition of F/OSS.
You're conflating "Open Source" with FOSS.
FOSS is the mantra of a particular community-oriented software-development zeitgeist, where things are developed by a community, without a project maintainership per se—i.e. where "the project" refers to whatever the most active fork of the project is, rather than to the project as maintained by some particular BDFL.
FOSS projects are usually maintained under the aegis of one or more software foundations, like GNU or the ASF.
"Open source", on the other hand, means exactly what it says. Microsoft does Open Source. Apple does Open Source. Oracle does Open Source. It means exactly as little as the image conjured in your head by that list.
It's not that simple. Open source projects, including Clojure, benefit from the community through bug reports, documentation, free user support, articles, etc.
To make it as simple as you suggest, there should be a code repository and nothing more. I don't think that's the case in the majority of open source projects or even what Clojure desires.
That being said, if you're not contributing back to a project (in any sensible way, not just code) maybe you should tone down your demands. I completely sympathise with author but things are a bit more complex in reality. Ignoring the benefits of these interactions/contributions is not fair to the rest of the community that is contributing. Maybe the author does that feel that's currently enough? I can totally relate.
FOSS is just "free and open source software" - a catch-all for both camps to avoid offending anyone. It doesn't imply any particular development methodology or project maintainership.
I do not think it's fair or correct to confine Open Source to that definition the last paragraphy of your comment implies. It may only be a subset of Open source. ASF itself defines what it does as Open Source.
What's described in this rant is basically "Source Available". Open Source means more than that, per ASF, per OSI, and per many who publish software under non copyleft licenses.
I've never read anything that supports the claim that licenses have anything to do with the actual development process.
Please stop claiming authority over a descriptive term of open source. Nobody has authority to define open source.
I did not do that anywhere, especially in the comment you're responding to. It's Hickey who attempts to make such claim, not me.
Whether intentionally or not, you've been trolling this thread and perpetuating a flamewar. Please stop, and please don't do that on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> If this is the case, why open source or publish it in the first place? If you want people to read the code, but not interact with you, why not write that into the license?
Because there's a difference between 'can' and 'must'. It's great when people use my OSS work, give feedback, and even file bugs. What's not great is when people adopt the position that they're entitled to a fix right now (or ever), or that they're entitled to new features or design consideration for their minority use case. In summary, strawmanning someone else's argument is bad, and you should feel bad.
> [W]hy bother with this angsty rant?
Managing large OSS projects is about doing things at scale, like answering a question exhaustively once, in one place, so you can refer back to it instead of having to explain variations of it repeatedly, ad infinitum. As far as 'angsty', maybe start with a little humility: check your own biases before reading an attitude into someone else's message.
> This is completely wrong.
Nope, you are. Both in the technical/legal sense and the historical sense. Recommended reading: The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
> you should feel bad
Please keep nasty internet tropes like that one way, far away from Hacker News. If you'd review the guidelines and follow them from now on, we'd appreciate it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
My apologies. The intent was humor, but I realize that doesn't always translate.
> you should feel bad
> start with a little humility
> Recommended reading
Good god. I just remember why I stopped participating in this place.
Please read that book you yourself first before name dropping it.