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It's not "public domain work". The "drama" is that the community abused the author, so the author quit providing free labor to the community.
Would he still be “abused” if he refrained from opening his inbox? Or were there protesters outside his door?
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I don't think asking the author to comply with the license, or at least enable others to comply with the license, is being a "complete ass".
Aside from whether or not he was being an ass, he was incorrect. The license are rights the author grants other people. The author can release binaries without sources or under any license they desire; just because they also release it under the LGPL does not compel them to provide sources when they distribute it.
If you are releasing work on a (A/L)GPL project you started, but others contributed to without giving you other rights, you can't distribute their contributions without releasing the source.
Not trying to excuse this demand, just pointing out the technicalities. The most important point in my eyes is that with no evidence of intent to keep the source concealed for a significant amount of time, the idea that anyone would pursue a complaint under the GPL in this situation is nonsense.
It should have been "When will a source release for this be available", but the user decided to be an asshole instead and make a demand by invoking the license—even if this was required, it was stupid in context.
The author owes nobody anything. He's already done enough. If you've given away something for free, don't expect support or anything free in the future. It's literally like taking a gift from someone and then complaining that it doesn't have enough for you to act indignant to people who give things away for free. Don't like it? Don't use it or improve it and contribute back. Want more? Pay them to build it and add it…
I remember reading about an indie games developer who looked at his proposed user base and decided not to make his game freeware. He wrote there was an attitude of entitlement among people who get the free stuff. People who were prepared to pay, even a very small amount, behaved better.
I saw that happen on the centos forums once or twice. It could attract spectacularly selfish individuals.
As for people not RTFM'ing, I recall a small internal project I did for which I wrote up comprehensive intro, docs etc. I handed it over to the user who told me to explain it to them. I said "I wrote it all up, help and everything, there it is!". She smiled and said "but who reads those?". I came very close to blowing up at her just then.
But here's a contrarian view - I'm not sure why someone offering a project for free in the educational space would expect users to act like paid professional customers. Or expect them to be non-noob experts who can modify and build the project without hand-holding.
Or assume that email would be a viable line of support for a project with literally tens (hundreds?) of thousands of users.
Or even expect them to be adults.
So while I sympathise with the rage quit, I don't think it's realistic to release code and just expect users to understand - never mind accept - the terms you set for its use.
All open source projects comes with politics included. You have to have an understanding of the space you're working in, the kinds of users who inhabit it, and the kinds of relationships they're likely to have with them.
You need to know what your support boundaries and support technologies are. And if you work in a space where some of your users are likely to be assholes, you need to have a plan for that - even if it's just knowing that it's fine to ignore them.
Edit: to be clear, I think this is more of a general open licence problem than the failing of this one specific author. Open licences don't encourage authors to define boundaries, or even to understand that boundaries are necessary and terms need to be defined. So it's not quite a surprise that things like this happen.
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Ah, sorry. I didn't realize that something you said less than half an hour ago, in the same thread, in the same context, has no business being quoted. Apologies. Who would of thought things you said previously about a subject might be brought up later in the conversation?
Don't feel bad. I've learned a lesson; never enter an open source discussion with GPL developers.
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It's not just free/libre/open source software that has this issue. I run an email security SaaS business. It's closed source, but the suite is free of charge to use for personal, non-commercial domains. We get numerous support requests each day of users on the free tier (who are obviously commercial users btw) that DEMAND us to fix all sorts of email problems for them. They regularly threaten that they will write a b…
So, the people that pay nothing, consider your time worth nothing? Can you eliminate the free tier, or is that part of funneling to paid users?
But, due to the group of over-demanding free tier users we are considering to switch to a limited time free trial.
I also make free software. It's a battle dealing with folks who want both free code AND free work! Making code GPL is both a blessing a curse. Tales lakie this make me stop and double-check my choices
It's not just free/libre/open source software that has this issue. I run an email security SaaS business. It's closed source, but the suite is free of charge to use for personal, non-commercial domains. We get numerous support requests each day of users on the free tier (who are obviously commercial users btw) that DEMAND us to fix all sorts of email problems for them. They regularly threaten that they will write a b…
I don’t like this dog whistle and the rest of your comment was perfectly fine without it.
That said, there are entitled assholes everywhere. I got an email one time asking me for source code for a university project because the guy had found I graduated that course 2 years before him, and he didn’t want to do the work.
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I can't help but be reminded of the feud between xscreensaver's author and Debian maintainers. For the curious, the post: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop... And the instigatory thread: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=819703
Because jwz appears to have a very short fuse and at one point in time one or a group of users on HN didn't agree with him (as best as I can remember), referrals from HN are redirected to an image of a testicle. Here is a wayback machine link to avoid the image: http://web.archive.org/web/20190810115358/https://www.jwz.or...
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Because jwz appears to have a very short fuse and at one point in time one or a group of users on HN didn't agree with him (as best as I can remember), referrals from HN are redirected to an image of a testicle. Here is a wayback machine link to avoid the image: http://web.archive.org/web/20190810115358/https://www.jwz.or...
Wow, if you pull shit like that that immediately is 1 point for the other team in whatever beef he had
I don't blame him for having a redirect.
I haven't used this library but I maintain a couple moderately well-used python libraries and completely sympathize with these frustrations. The absolute worst was a guy who asked for all sorts of changes then, when I had made it clear I was going a different direction, he tried to start a public shaming on Twitter, this site, Reddit, and even the Wikipedia page (since removed at my own request). It was un-believable…