Comment by KingOfCoders
2 months ago
When a project is up, open source developers are keen to promote it, put it on their CV, give conference talks. There is no obligation for companies to sponsor anything, this is not the reason behind open source.
Yes open source has changed, from when the early 90s. There are more users, companies use projects and make millions with other peoples work.
I feel with the maintainer, with how ungrateful people are. And demanding without giving.
Open Source licenses fall short.
Open Source projects should clearly state what they think about fixing security, taking on external contributions or if they consider the project feature complete. Just like standard licenses, we should have a standard, parseable maintenance "contract".
"I fix whatever you pay for, I fix nothing, I fix how I see fit. Including disclosure, etc."
So everyone is clear about what to expect.
That's in the license already, and quite clear.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/blob/63f98ee8a3a11f...
It's not, license just says "Nothing guaranteed", it's not saying what to expect. A "I can do whatever I want" doesn't tell you anything about my behavior.
"The viewpoint expressed by Wellnhofer's is understandable, though one might argue about the assertion that libxml2 was not of sufficient quality for mainstream use. It was certainly promoted on the project web site as a capable and portable toolkit for the purpose of parsing XML. Open-source proponents spent much of the late 1990s and early 2000s trying to entice companies to trust the quality of projects like libxml2, so it is hard to blame those companies now for believing it was suitable for mainstream use at the time."
If the license says one thing, and you say and promote something else, you can't say "But it's in the license" and "I said so at a conference" just as it fits you.
So what should I believe? What you write in the license? What you say at a conference? Nothing you say?
You should believe that at best you can get a refund for the price you paid.
I think the software I wrote is pretty great, but I sure don't want to be liable for the things you do with it.
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