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Open source is a thankless job and I think we've lost the plot on how we treat maintainers (github.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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I saw an issue today on a fairly popular project (better-auth, see the link to the issue attached). No repro, no context, just a wall of caps and profanity ending in "fuck you". The maintainers ship this for free. People run production businesses on top of it, for free. And the thanks is someone raging into a text box because a minor bump cost them an afternoon.

I maintain and contribute to a few projects myself, so this hits a nerve a bit. Something people don't see from the outside: it's not enough to know how to build the thing. You also have to know how to defuse a thread where someone's insulting you and not fire back, even though most of us aren't paid for any of it, let alone the work of staying civil while being told to get fucked.

I'm not pretending breaking changes don't cause real pain (that's what the issue is about). But I keep coming back to a boundary question: if you're not paying for it, do you actually get to demand anything? (Obviously yes, but we still need some boundaries)

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[–] 1 point 4 months ago (7 children)

From the license:

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

An open source dev is owed nothing and owes nothing.

By stating otherwise, you are trying to say that the person who releases something, on their own time and expense for free and probably fun, has an obligation to conduct themselves in a manner you think is best.

But... They don't. This isn't even really a debate worth having, because there's nothing to debate. You're just wrong.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (6 children)

    I said morally, not legally.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (5 children)

    And you're still wrong. They don't owe anything to anyone, legally or morally.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (4 children)

    I disagree. If you make a project, put it out there for.people to use, and it becomes popular, you have some moral obligation not to dick over people who have come to depend on you. I'm not saying you have a moral obligation to e.g. provide free support forever or work weekends or whatever.

    You can think otherwise but IMO that makes you a bit of a dick.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    What arbitrary line of popularity suddenly requires me to support every use-case, by never breaking something in a project nobody is paying me to build?

    10 people? 100? 100,000?

    The answer is: none because the premise is false.

    FOSS maintainers owe you NOTHING. Nada. Zip. That includes a working copy of the software, and you agreed to that stipulation in the license. That's what "no warranty of fitness any purpose" means.

    That includes not owing you any specific method of project "governance" or versioning scheme, it includes not owing you releases, ever.

    Also, what counts as "dicking over" a user? That sounds arbitrary too.

    • Refusing to answer their questions?
    • Removing a feature they liked because it was a nightmare to maintain?
    • Leaving a bug in place because trying to fix it sounds unfun?
    • Introducing a bug because you didn't realize there was an interaction between two features?
    • Deciding that tests are no fun, and deleting all of them, increasing the likelihood of bugs?
    • Deciding that documentation is out of date, too much of a pain to keep updating, and removing it wholesale to avoid confusion because it's inaccurate anyway?

    FOSS maintainers have no obligations to you. None. No arbitrary line of popularity changes that.

    I build my open source projects for fun and for free. Your decision to use what my fun produces doesn't suddenly require me to have my fun in a specific way. It doesn't obligate me to ensure the output of my fun never breaks your production environment.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    What arbitrary line of popularity suddenly requires me to support every use-case, by never breaking something in a project nobody is paying me to build?

    Not what I said at all.

    FOSS maintainers owe you NOTHING. Nada. Zip.

    Oh so it's either "nothing. Nada. Zip." or "support every use-case". Nice false dichotomy you've got there.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    I may have been hyperbolic, but my point is that the dichotomy is between:

    • Any obligations
    • No obligations

    FOSS maintainers have no obligations at all. Moral or otherwise.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Well I disagree. If you create a popular project, and then are a complete dick about reasonable requests, then that seems like an immoral thing to do to me.

    Of course you're allowed to say "sorry I don't have time to work on this any more", or "I don't think this feature belongs in this project" or whatever. Totally fine. But there are still behaviours that IMO are not ok. For example if Homebrew decided to inject donation request code into every package it installs. Or if ffmpeg added code that detected porn and refused to decode it.

    "BuT iTs FrEe! They can legally do what they like!" Sure, but it still makes them a dick.

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