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Actix project postmortem

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71–80 of 408 posts

Re: Actix project postmortem

#71
post #23

"Ok... So that was unprofessional. If you don't want to maintain a project anymore, you give it to someone else and link to that repo in your README. This just screwed me over big time." https://github.com/actix/actix-web/issues/1#issuecomment-575... These kind of entitled attitude is probably exactly why the guy just removed everything. More details / discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/ac…

> These kind of entitled attitude If you offer code to the public – and present it as an active, dependable project – professional behavior is exactly what you implicitly promise and signed up for . If you can’t offer that (at any time, and for any reason), then you should immediately make that clear, front-and-center, to any current and future users. It isn’t “entitlement” on part of the users – the users are making…

To assume certain conditions that are not explicitly laid out without even talking to the person providing you the service is literally entitlement. It seems like you've made assumptions that turned out wrong. I've fallen for it too in the past. Not everyone thinks the same thing so people's assumptions are always different. The key thing is, when your assumptions don't turn out true, to learn from it.

In the case of open source, it's worth asking the maintainer what the terms are if you're unsure. The LICENSE always says that authors and contributors are not liable for any outcome, either as an ALL CAPS paragraph or a clearly defined section.

Everything is provided as-is so you can't expect anything. It's on you to pick up after them if you still need the project.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#72
post #61

"Ok... So that was unprofessional. If you don't want to maintain a project anymore, you give it to someone else and link to that repo in your README. This just screwed me over big time." https://github.com/actix/actix-web/issues/1#issuecomment-575... These kind of entitled attitude is probably exactly why the guy just removed everything. More details / discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/ac…

Once it's public and people depend on it you can't retract it like that. His goal was to make his work public, not private.

Why?

Re: Actix project postmortem

#73
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These kind of entitled attitude If you offer code to the public – and present it as an active, dependable project – professional behavior is exactly what you implicitly promise and signed up for . If you can’t offer that (at any time, and for any reason), then you should immediately make that clear, front-and-center, to any current and future users. It isn’t “entitlement” on part of the users – the users are making…

Strongly disagree. For me, what's implicit is that any software, commercial or F/OSS, can be abandoned at any time - because that's just the way it is. A remedy would be to use software coded to a specification with mulitple implementations such that in case a project folds, you might be able to switch over to a different implementation. The Java EE ecosystem used to be like that until around 2012 or so.

> what's implicit is that any software, commercial or F/OSS, can be abandoned at any time

This is particularly true when you look at what licenses say:

... 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.

... THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU.

... IN NO EVENT SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

The onus is always on yourself to insure against everything.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#74
post #23

"Ok... So that was unprofessional. If you don't want to maintain a project anymore, you give it to someone else and link to that repo in your README. This just screwed me over big time." https://github.com/actix/actix-web/issues/1#issuecomment-575... These kind of entitled attitude is probably exactly why the guy just removed everything. More details / discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/epszt7/ac…

> These kind of entitled attitude If you offer code to the public – and present it as an active, dependable project – professional behavior is exactly what you implicitly promise and signed up for . If you can’t offer that (at any time, and for any reason), then you should immediately make that clear, front-and-center, to any current and future users. It isn’t “entitlement” on part of the users – the users are making…

No you don’t. You aren’t alone in assuming that, but it’s an entirely unreasonable expectation. And as evidenced by this exact thread, people like you cause good developers to stop maintaining their projects. Your attitude harms our community.

Practically speaking, if I give you some work I did for free yesterday, and give you some work I do for free today, that does not entitle you to free work from me tomorrow. It does not entitle you to free support on the code I’ve published already. I owe you my time when you’re paying for it. Until then, if I have made something you found valuable you are in my debt for its use. Not the other way around.

As a user of my software I generally give you two rights - you have the right to use the code in your project, and the right to fork the project. And as the maintainer, I have the right to spend my time however I want for the rest of my short life on earth. If the beach looks like more fun than putting up with entitled complaints on github and HN, that is my right.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#75

People should really learn to ignore the emotional channel of the comments they receive. Just try to figure out if the message contains any useful information with a quick glance, extract it if it does and ignore the rest. People have to shit - that's physiologically inevitable, and there are people who do it in the streets and there are people who shit in comments/messages. Why take them serious?

> People have to shit - that's physiologically inevitable

I don't think that's universally true. In fact, I think there's a handful of people who don't know how to treat others like human beings and a lack of accountability for their behavior online.

The fact that there is a thing true of open source---it's a harbor for toxic cultures where people aren't held accountable for talking to each other like garbage---doesn't mean we need to just accept that or look the other way. As this situation demonstrates, toxic culture has costs.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly disagree. For me, what's implicit is that any software, commercial or F/OSS, can be abandoned at any time - because that's just the way it is. A remedy would be to use software coded to a specification with mulitple implementations such that in case a project folds, you might be able to switch over to a different implementation. The Java EE ecosystem used to be like that until around 2012 or so.

Abandon is different from deleting everything. Ofc, git is distributed, so someone should have a copy of the repo, even if it's not updated. Edit: disregard post, apparently it's just moved to the personal account.

Not deleted.

> I moved actix-net and actix-web project to my personal github account. I will make decision during next couple days what to do. I don’t want to see the project becomes ghost of what it was. Maintainers must understand how everything work, but don’t anyone who does and those who could are busy with other projects. At the moment I am planing to make repos private and then delete them (will remove benchmarks as well), unless others suggest better ideas.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#77
post #64
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's refusing to investigate use-after-free vulnerabilities Please investigate yourself, don't ask others to do the work you consider important for you for free.

People did investigate for him and write a patch for him and he dismissed the patch with it being "boring".

Well, maybe people didn't provide detailed enough explanation for the author to understand and merge the patch, so he didn't bother.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#78
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These kind of entitled attitude If you offer code to the public – and present it as an active, dependable project – professional behavior is exactly what you implicitly promise and signed up for . If you can’t offer that (at any time, and for any reason), then you should immediately make that clear, front-and-center, to any current and future users. It isn’t “entitlement” on part of the users – the users are making…

I think that's made pretty clear in pretty much every open source license: "Licensor provides the Work (and each Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND".

That’s a legal, not a social statement. Following the letter of the document that governs your work doesn’t mean you still can’t do something that would be inconsiderate.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#79
post #35

Whatever drawbacks Actix may have had, this entitlement has gone too far. There is no defensible reason to tell someone "never write Rust again" because you don't like the code they're making available to you. We need something to remind us that we should be civil and grateful for FOSS contributions. I recently saw a talk by Atwood about good discourse and how you should remind people of your values before they write…

"We need something to remind us that we should be civil and grateful for FOSS contributions."

You mean like having the legitimate risk that maintainers will take their ball and go home when people are cruel and others stand around and let it happen?

This is everyone's fault who didn't dogpile the people who were being terrible. We all need to be calling out people being horrible, and provide a little emotional support to maintainers. We worry too much about the feelings of people who contribute nothing, and not enough about the people who build the things upon which we rely.

Re: Actix project postmortem

#80
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easy way to tell is to remember if you're paying them or not.

That's not true at all. You can pay for amateur bullshit, and you can get professional software and support for free (and free as in freedom).

You only have a right to complain about the amateur bullshit you paid for, though.
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