Comment by palata
11 days ago
> By taking over stewardship of something that people depend on you should have some obligation
No. If it's free and open source, all it says is what you can do with the code. There is no obligation towards the users whatsoever.
If you choose to depend on something, it's your problem. The professional way to do it is either to contractually make sure that the project doesn't "fuck you over" (using your words), or to make sure that you are able to fork the project if necessary.
If you base your business on the fact that someone will be working for you, for free, forever, then it's your problem.
The problem is that open source projects are not just code but also communities and some authority over what ends up getting packaged in distros. The obligation is not to make people's experiences worse than what they would be had you not contributed and doing it for free doesn't absolve you of that.
> open source projects are not just code but also communities
No. Open source projects are open source projects. Open sourcing my code does not mean at all that I have to build a community.
> The obligation is
There is no obligation. Again I don't say that authors should be jerks (obviously they shouldn't), but what seems very unclear to too many people is that users are not entitled to anything at all.
Because you choose to depend on something that someone provided for free does not mean they now owe you anything. Just like if I donate 20 dollars to a charity, it doesn't mean that I must now volunteer for that charity.