Comment by deanCommie
2 days ago
Look, I get where you're coming from, I do.
In the last decade, we've seen rampant abuses and exploitation of open source projects and of maintainers. So much individual good will and generous efforts wasted because of corporate malfeasanse.
AND YET. If you "open source" a project, if you actually invest in BUILDING a community, you then become a PART Of that community - with the benefits and obligations that come with it.
You don't want the obligations? Fine. But then you don't really get to keep participating in the community. And if you act like "This is MY community, I get to do whatever I want", people are free to shrug, and say "maybe i'll go find a different community".
Which is exactly how I see people reacting to Zig right now. They're seeing that an active member of this community (which, as you said, keeps insisting "he owes them nothing because the community wouldn't exist without them") treats people he doesn't like, and they think "Oof i don't want that to one day be me."
Yeah I'm not defending the blog post as a great way to build the biggest bestest community. Clearly it isn't. But it's also pretty clear that's not the poster's priority. And that is defensible! They don't owe anyone perfection in community building or any other thing.
If they want to write a maybe slightly unhinged blog post excoriating someone they had an unpleasant time with... that's a choice! It's their choice. I don't think we get to demand a different one. We can agree or disagree with what they said, but we can't demand they say something else.
If you want that kind of power over someone you need to ensnare them in a binding contract. No such contract exists here.
> I'm not defending the blog post as a great way to build the biggest bestest community. Clearly it isn't.
This has been everyone's point the entire time. You agree with everyone here. No one is suggesting a binding contract exists, but a _social_ contract does exist -- and you concede that with the above recognition of how clearly this post violates it.