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Comment by teddyh

2 years ago

A maintainer position for a software project is like any position or role, in say, a charity. You aren’t technically forced to do the work, but the charity announces publicly (on its web site, for instance) that the work will be done, and people expect it to be done. If you do not feel up to doing it anymore, you owe it to other people (who expect the work to be done) to announce your retirement and hand the position over to new people.

Any project which is not a going concern should:

A: Not, IMHO, be called a ”project”

B: Be clearly labelled, in its public-facing information, as being offered as-is, without any implied updates or future development.

29 comments

teddyh

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growse  2 years ago

> B: Be clearly labelled, in its public-facing information, as being offered as-is, without any implied updates or future development.

So if I had a text file in the root of my repo that said:

  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.

Would that be sufficient?

  • teddyh  2 years ago

    That text does not disclaim support, security bugfixes, and future development. On the contrary, all three of those things are probably either heavlily implied or outright stated to be available on the project web site.

    • growse  2 years ago

      You and I are reading "SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION." very differently.

      4 replies →

    • infamouscow  2 years ago

      It also doesn't disclaim the author from writing you a check out of the good will of their heart.

      I genuinely don't understand what's so difficult to grasp here.

      4 replies →

candiddevmike  2 years ago

> B: Be clearly labelled, in its public-facing information, as being offered as-is, without any implied updates or future development.

Pretty sure every open source license includes this in the warranty line...

jjav  2 years ago

> Be clearly labelled, in its public-facing information, as being offered as-is

If you read the license (for most licenses anyway), that info is clearly right there.

sublimefire  2 years ago

This is ridiculous because there is no legal or moral obligation from the creator to say anything except maybe adding the license. You as a user can use the given software and probably modify yourself at will due to the permissive license which is the main advantage of OSS. When I get stuff from the charity I do not expect them to provide a return policy and customer service, your analogy is moronic because the thing was done already and you can come back and get a newer thing if it is ready.

The problem is that the barrier to use any software is so low that it attracts people who have no clue and demand support. I am not talking about you, even the larger companies always mention a wish to force smaller developers to patch security issues for free, this is an issue in supply chain security at the moment.

The gist is that you can fix it yourself.

  • teddyh  2 years ago

    To use any software in these modern times, it’s not enough to simply get a snapshot and use that forever. That time has long gone. Users need updates for whenever the inevitable incompatibilities arise, and since switching to some other software is a lot of work, users need to be able to depend on regular, timely updates. Indeed, many people choose what software they use solely on that basis. Therefore, any software project which presents itself as usable is implying that the project will provide these things.

    (This is a bit like how a stable economy depends on there being a crucial threshold number of long-term, high-trust relationships. You cannot have a functioning economy when everybody is always backstabbing everybody else. Similarly, you arguably cannot have a functioning Open Source ecosystem if everybody is just throwing code over the wall all the time.)

    > The problem is that the barrier to use any software is so low that it attracts people who have no clue and demand support.

    I think this phenomenon is caused by:

    1. Some users being a bit whiny and entitled, just like some people are rude to waiters. Some have been taught and brought up to behave this way, and others have just gotten into bad habits.

    2. Many developers being overly defensive when presented with legitimate complaints from users. This is just human nature, harmful as it may be.

    3. Due to 2., users exaggerate and act rudely when reporting complaints, because they expect pushback from developers. This then exacerbates 2. again, leading to a vicious cycle.

    Some developers who are burnt out by 1., and are not realizing what is going on, are, as a way of psychological self-defense, adopting an attitude of “I don’t care about you users, you’ll get nothing and you’ll ******* like it.” This then necessitates the same developers to argue that all users who expect anything are merely “entitled”, because if any user’s expectations would be reasonable, then the developer’s attitude would be unwarranted, and the developers feel that they need that attitude for their own well-being.

    None of this is new; the old jargon word “lusers” was frequently used in ages past with contempt and disdain for users.