Comment by gwerbret
15 hours ago
There's an important discussion in the sub-thread by @teddyh that has unfortunately been voted dead, so I thought I would comment on it here instead. I suspect teddyh is being criticized for use of the word "obligation", so maybe I can clarify.
People can create and operate channels on YouTube for free. Yet we frequently see reports of Google acting unreasonably towards people who come to depend on YouTube, often for their livelihood. We expect Google to act morally by providing the bare minimum of human oversight when a person's channel has been banned by an AI mistake. But there is no legal or ethical obligation, because YouTube is "free", and Google just doesn't care enough about morals.
We also see lots of examples of FOSS authors getting burned out when their sense of morality is used and abused by users. That's also not okay. But perhaps we can aim for a happy medium where the "norm" assumes people can be reasonable, mature adults. No one wins when we optimize for the outliers.
Exactly, yes. Thank you. I have explicitly, every time I mentioned the word, been referring to a social obligation, i.e. specifically not a legal one.
> But perhaps we can aim for a happy medium
Unfortunately, there is a vicious cycle leading to extreme attitudes from both sides, which I described in the second half of this comment: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38301710#38310514>
> ... in the sub-thread by @teddyh that has unfortunately been voted dead ...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
> Dead posts aren't displayed by default, but you can see them all by turning on 'showdead' in your profile.
> If you see a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you can vouch for it. Click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch' at the top. When enough users do this, the post is restored. There's a small karma threshold before vouch links appear.
I'm not sure if your karma is sufficient for that action, but it's not a dead comment anymore.
Yes I see that now, thanks!
Youtube the relationship is largely bidirectional where both sides are profiting
FOSS often times consumers are profiting and maintainers are not (and many times maintainers are investing/spending instead)