Comment by Latty
5 years ago
It seems to me he states pretty clearly that his issue is the support burden, not some paternalism over users:
> If users experiencing issues with the ambee library in this package, they will knock on my door. And I'm not willing to support that or accept that burden. Especially as I don't see a good repacking reason in this case.
I absolutely agree that there is a legitimate reason to say "look, I can't handle the support burden from this", but users aren't going to track down the original project to make support requests if you fork it, rename it and point everything to the new one.
(Obviously you might get one or two, but anyone that motivated would probably be making their own package and run into the exact same issue anyway, at some point you can't really blame the package).
The solution is to fork the project and give it a new name & URL so users don't knock on his door - he refused that option too! Kudos to the maintainers for their curtesy - they didn't have to ask him for additional permissions over and above the current licensing agreement - they have the rights to redistribute or fork the project, Frenck is against them exercising either right.
From the profile https://github.com/frenck He describes himself as "Slightly assholic at first sight. Actually a nice guy that just likes to get stuff done." Very fitting description actually, I wouldn't argue with such a nice guy.
I don’t think there’s any obligation for support. One can even disable GitHub issues. Or let community support itself by appointing comaints.