Comment by capableweb
5 years ago
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
This is part of the MIT license. Many other open source and free software licenses contain the same thing. It's simple, people provide software they write in their free time or "sponsored" by their company, in return they get nothing and you should expect nothing more than the piece of code that gets published.
People have started assuming that free and open source software is not "true" open source if you don't build a community around your project, gain a following and can take advantage in it professionally somehow.
It's a shame, as it puts a lot of pressure on people, instead of all of us just sharing code because we love coding and want to share it with everyone who also loves it.
The MIT license isn't the only thing Actix wrote. They also wrote this:
https://actix.rs/community/
> Community: The best things in life are to be shared
> Join us - Want to talk to others about questions? The actix gitter channel or reddit community are your best starting point.
> If you think you found a bug it's best to go to the github directly. There are two repositories that you might want to report against. actix for issues with the actor framework or actix-web for the high level web framework.
> We're a welcoming community so don't be afraid to engage. Interactions are governed by our code of conduct.
I agree with you that projects aren't required to do this. (And I also agree that developers often feel pressured to build up a community for their project.) But still - that's what they wrote.
True, they did write that. But taking into consideration the license open source and free software is usually licensed under, they are free that change those opinions at any time, and you cannot blame them for it.
If you had a contract with the project, I would understand the frustration. But since it's published on a "NO-WARRANTY" and no promises basis, the persons opinion can change at any time, and that's perfectly fine.
So maybe today I feel like, yeah, my open source project should have a community! So I publicly write that. But then 6 months later I change my mind and stop trying. This is also perfectly fine. Annoying, sure, but if you want to avoid that, start making contracts with the libraries that you include in your projects.
I'd like to live in a world where, if I tell you something, you can take my word for it and you don't demand a contract for it.
Also, those words are still on the website. If the author is no longer interested in bug reports - which is absolutely the author's right, to be clear, and does not make them a bad person - they ought to at least change the language on the website to make it clear. Otherwise the language encourages people to waste their time, which is pretty rude.
I'm on board with your general message, however, the larger actix isn't some independent project. It is clearly endeavored to build and serve a community. And maybe that wasn't the intent of the author/maintainer? I don't know. But I'm going to tell you right now that if you don't want to be part of a community (for better and worse) the best plan is to not join one, especially not one that proselytizes itself in a way similar to many commercial/oss hybrid outfits.
I don't mean to condone people being jerks or the typical reddit brigading that is being talked about. It's just, it doesn't really matter what your license says. If you act like you're going to serve customers, you just might get some customers and if you can't deal with customers then you probably shouldn't act like you want to serve customers.
It's perfectly fine to build a project in the open and license it openly and not accept open participation.
> But I'm going to tell you right now that if you don't want to be part of a community (for better and worse) the best plan is to not join one
Well, you can want to be a part of a community one month, and not the other month, which is fine. We have other stuff going on in our lives too.
> It's perfectly fine to build a project in the open and license it openly and not accept open participation.
It's also perfectly fine to build a project in the open, license it openly and try to push for open participation, but later change your mind and not do that anymore. As mentioned, open source comes with no guarantees, what so ever. Let's keep it that way.