Comment by sgarland
3 days ago
Yes, I understand that. My point was that’s not how it works; if you want to be able to control distribution, don’t use an OSS license, because it’s just weird to ask someone to not do something you implicitly granted them permission to do.
Its possible to believe both that what he asked for is not reasonable, but also that he has every right to ask for it.
Maintainers have to make decisions about how to handle support burden, and these decisions are completely outside the scope or purview of any license. People who have never been in that position may have a hard time understanding it, but the NixOS maintainers absolutely do understand and that is demonstrated in that thread.
> he has every right to ask for it
Who says so?
If it's not in legal text, it doesn't exist, or matters.
If you don't want to support it, make it clear in license or README. Lots of projects work like that. Companies put "source available" or "open source but no external contribution" projects on GitHub and make it very clear what's the expectation. Nobody has any issue about that.
Somehow this guy thinks he is special.
If someone doesn't understand how licenses work, they should keep their work close sourced.
I'm not talking about legal texts. I didn't say he had a right to demand it, or that he should be awarded it by a court. There is no involvement of the legal system in this GitHub issue that I can see.
He acknowledged from the very beginning that the usage is licensed. Licenses aren't involved in the ask.
If you want a legal basis for this right, I suppose it would be GitHub's terms of service, with which his comments appear to be in compliance.
In terms of what is on-topic in this thread, he can state his terms for providing free, unlicensed support wherever he wants. He made it clear he wants nothing to do with support of this library in NixOS, in the place where it was most relevant to mention that.
I get that, but I also feel like a much easier way to deal with it is to tell people you will not provide support, and if necessary, set up an auto-responder for the email address.