Comment by dpark
3 days ago
A threat can be violence but it’s not necessarily so. A threat is an expression of a negative result if something is not done. The negative could be violence, monetary loss, embarrassment, end of a relationship, or any other negative.
Definitely not delving into legal definitions of coercion because I am not a lawyer and it is not relevant here.
> and it’s very common for the usage to cause conflict, the exchange of “are you threatening me?” “no, i’m just telling you what I’ll do” is very common.
I think you mean that threats are a common cause of conflict. “Are you threatening me?” “No, I’m merely posing a negative outcome that I will inflict if you don’t do what I want. Totally not a threat. Definitely not.”
>a negative outcome that I will inflict
So if you're a developer of OSS and released something that _already has inflicted_ a measurable negative outcome for me -- that's okay.
But if I in response say "I don't like, I'm going to fork and use that software without that feature" -- that's a threat to the dev?
I'd say it's very much double standards, especially since in that case the negative action in the original software has already happened and is already negatively impacting the people considering the fork.
And you're saying that them, by wanting to cease it, are the bad guys.
I didn’t say any of that. I did not defend the dev’s stance nor did I say that the statement from the commenter (“change it or we’ll fork”) was unreasonable. In fact my very first comment said it was not an inappropriate statement.
Maybe read the thread before knee-jerk responding.
Maybe engage with the argument instead of knee-jerk rejecting them.
I did read all the comments in this branch and I disagreed with the way you put something.
You didn't "defend" the dev stance but you called someone considering a fork due to the unwanted features "threatening the dev", probably due to the fact it's a negative outcome to them, but somehow you are okay with the dev making the arbitrary decisions that are negatively impacting some users.
You cannot have both. They're either allowed to walk away branching out, or he's not allowed to make "threats" to them.
And you cannot pretend you're engaging with my arguments in the good faith while ignoring clou of my comment and calling it "knee-jerk response" instead, LOL.
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>a negative outcome that I will inflict
And what exactly is the negative outcome being inflicted by someone not using the software? What is the injury or harm, and to who?
That was pretty clear from the comment, no?
1. The software will have one less user. (Implication was potentially many fewer given “we” would uninstall.)
2. The software will have one more competing product (forked from their own work).
Most people willing to put their time and energy into building software for others would consider losing users to be a moderate negative and having their work potentially forked and having to compete with a derivative a strong negative.
“We will fork” is a strong threat. It is basically a statement that “we” will fight the maintainer for the effective future of the project. Many open source projects have been eclipsed by their own forks.
>1. The software will have one less user. (Implication was potentially many fewer given “we” would uninstall.)
And what is the injury or harm of that? The developer said they wouldn't action the change and indirectly suggested the user to fork it - "it is open source after all".
>2. The software will have one more competing product (forked from their own work).
This is the very nature of open-source software. Labeling it a "competing product" makes many assumptions that aren't earned. We're talking about a user saying an opt-out feature should be opt-in. If I forked LibreOffice because it contained features I did not like, am I now making a competing product? Am I harming or injuring the repo I forked? Am I fighting the LibreOffice developers?
>Most people willing to put their time and energy into building software for others would consider losing users to be a moderate negative and having their work potentially forked and having to compete with a derivative a strong negative.
The developer didn't seem to consider it a moderate negative.
>“We will fork” is a strong threat. It is basically a statement that “we” will fight the maintainer for the effective future of the project.
You're expanding the scope of what was said. Saying "I will fork your open source software" [to make an opt-out feature, opt-in] is not "fighting" the maintainer for the "future of the project" - it's a core element of open-source software.
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