Open source is not about you (2018)

I agree with you, but this is one of those things where if you haven't had the experience of being part of a popular open source project, you don't realize how bad the scaling effects are.

Let's say courtesy only requires five minutes of my time. There are millions of users of the programming language I work on. Let's say only 0.1% of them desire my courtesy. Even at that small fraction, I'm going to spend 83 hours out of every 24 hour day (including weekends and holidays) giving each of them that cheap courtesy.

A less generous response is one thing. Getting defensive about it and saying nobody is entitled to shit is something else entirely. And that's where the antisocial people of HN usually go.

if you publish something to the public, you are responsible for it to a degree.

You can't just say "i'm not responsible" and avoid responsibility.

"I put rat poison in candies and put it outside my door for halloween, but it had a sign that says 'The owner is not responsible for any harm or effects resulting from consuming these candies'" , see how silly that sounds?

If you advertise your software as intended to do a thing, licenses might protect you legally, but not morally or ethically, from people attempting to use it, and relying on it. Imagine if the maintainers of glibc decided to backdoor it, but since they're not responsible for it, and you're on your own for using it, it's not their fault right? If the maintainers of openssl decided to drop sha256 support, they're not responsible for the chaos that ensues right?

FFS! how clueless are devs sometimes. It's insane.

This right here is the worst part of open source. Don't use open source! that's the message here. If you're in the EU, and you're seeing all these efforts to rely on open source software to avoid American-made software, read this post! Don't use open source software because the authors of that software could sabotage their work or do anything they want with the software and they feel like they have no obligation to anyone. Does that sound familiar? At least American big-tech gets fined on a regular bases for doing nasty things, at least they have executives you can imprison if needed be. And they're not under any illusion that "i'm not responsible" is a get out of jail free card. Use only properly supported software.

I'm a bit salty, because I've relied on and supported Open Source software several times before. Every. Single. Time. Even when i'm creating PRs, they're dicks about it. Even when I create issues. Who cares, they're not even responsible enough to refuse support.

Here is what should be done, if most devs really agree with this take: You can write any software you want, but publishing it to the public should only be permitted after you pass tests, like your identity being verified, support process being established,etc... You can't just give away food, vehicles, houses, just about anything you can think of without some requirement of that sort. If devs are going out of their way like this to be irresponsible, then the chaos and damage they cause must be mitigated.

When you "Open" anything, it could be a door, software, a canister of nerve-gas; you're responsible for what comes out of it and how it affects others. you're also responsible for what happens when others enter it.

The only way around this I can think of is if perhaps in every way a person can download or access your software, publish a clear and unmistakable warning "Do not use this software for any reason at all. Do not read the source code. Do not attempt to build it, or run it." even then, you're not free from all responsibility.

It's like malware authors that put disclaimers like "for educational purposes only" on their malware publications. you'll still go to prison, it isn't a defense.

I'm not claiminng random people have entitlements to get their PRs approved, or issues resolved. But for developers to go so far as show hostility towards people who use their software, is not far from actually publishing harmful software.

A good and reasonable balance might be that software that's used by more than a certain threshold of people should be required to either support their software, or close-source it. You have free-speech, not the right to put the public in harm's way. Honestly, I think this sort of whining is what is driving all these verification laws and restrictions.

I think being glad people are using your software so much, and they're requesting support, creating PRs, and so on is the right attitude with open source software. If you get mad about all that, you're hurting the freedoms of open source devs all over by trying to make your software open for the sake of clout or whatever.

And really, don't publish a repository to the public if you expect no contribution. Just host tarball on your site. "Open source is not about you", yeah, sure, it isn't about irresponsible devs getting free advertisement and farming clout either.

> if you publish something to the public, you are responsible for it to a degree.

Have you read the open source licenses? They say the exact opposite.

My latest apps are

* Cardsphere (Magic card trading website) wishlist to inventory comparer * Scryfall (Magic card database) search result CSV Downloader * Cube Tagger, an app to easily tag cards with function tags for easy categorizing in cubes (boardgamified collection of Magic cards)

The vibe coding part is wonderful because I can "make" the software I want. However, it always takes hours of runs to get to where I need it to be because I'm unpracticed at project planning. I constantly hit critical edge cases and UX problems.