Open source does not imply open community • Hacker News Board

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#21

Post by pickaxepeter » Sun, May 03, 2026, 4:48 AM UTC

ValdikSS wrote: post #16

- FOSS applications don't have to be distributed publicly — that's only the common social expectation - FOSS does not imply that the code should be available for non-customers. The developer decides who is the customer. - FOSS is *encouraged* to be sold for money, *you can sell others' software, even if it's originally free of charge* (see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html) - Open-source licensed with no…

> TL;DR: we invented LICENSE.md and stick to it a lot, but nobody thought of making SOCIAL.md.

I wonder if this always used to be the case, or is all this harassment the product of the past ~decade or so high exposure of open source software? As in no more sketchy websites or weird build pipelines to access them, they're basically slapped on github with an executable for anyone to use.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#22

Post by ValdikSS » Sun, May 03, 2026, 5:01 AM UTC

pickaxepeter wrote: post #21

ValdikSS wrote: post #16

- FOSS applications don't have to be distributed publicly — that's only the common social expectation - FOSS does not imply that the code should be available for non-customers. The developer decides who is the customer. - FOSS is *encouraged* to be sold for money, *you can sell others' software, even if it's originally free of charge* (see https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html) - Open-source licensed with no…

> TL;DR: we invented LICENSE.md and stick to it a lot, but nobody thought of making SOCIAL.md. I wonder if this always used to be the case, or is all this harassment the product of the past ~decade or so high exposure of open source software? As in no more sketchy websites or weird build pipelines to access them, they're basically slapped on github with an executable for anyone to use.

The only instance of social contract I know is Debian's, initially from 1997.

https://www.debian.org/social_contract

>I wonder if this always used to be the case

As written in the article of discussion, it used to be, well, quite a mess. There wasn't an established social expectation that you can ask author to do something, and they will do that. The whole software ecosystem was 100x smaller, and most of the users were tech-savvy. The author released the software somehow, this v1.0 got updated my "many" people (back than many meant 3-4-5), and then, after quite a while, it made a roundtrip back to the author, for which they "officially" released v1.1.

That's it, more or less. If no more bugs found, the software was considered as finished.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#23

Post by jauntywundrkind » Sun, May 03, 2026, 5:03 AM UTC

cwillu wrote: post #6

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #2

Isolating up is the opposite of interesting to me. What's clear is they mediating all selection choice and interest through pressure points of a single fixed trust board is of limited use going forward. I don't think the vouches and other web of trusts tackle the actual root need to disaggregate, decentralize. You can anti-social open source, reject, flee to nihil and going away, solo-ing. I think that's mad bad and…

I care about what my best friend finds interesting. I care about what the people I willingly interact with daily find interesting. I categorically do not care what jauntywundrkind finds interesting, and if that bothers them, they're welcome to not use the little knickknacks I make for my friends; the license permits that. This is not antisocial .

Then our interests align! Great, fantastic, glad you are on board.

You didn't talk about being interested in what maintainers were up to. You talked about what your friends are interested in! That's the thing! We need to decentralize the decision making. If your friend is juggling some patches, some feature branches atop code you use, that is interesting. We seem to both agree that we do want to have interest & awareness.

We've only had one model for social ness ever and it's created enormous pinch-points, enormous thin-waist problems for getting stuff done. The maintainers themselves keep saying they can't handle the loads, don't enjoy it, don't want to. I think the submission is kind of a bad spirited loser but I'm sympathetic! I just think it's worth exploring pro social options before we all default to shutting down turning off all the exterior signals and going dark, like suggested. That sounds a lot like being a loser to me. Fine, do you! It sucks though, it really does. Everyone should hope aspire to & work for better. Let's discuss what that might look like.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#24

Post by ValdikSS » Sun, May 03, 2026, 5:10 AM UTC

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #2

Isolating up is the opposite of interesting to me. What's clear is they mediating all selection choice and interest through pressure points of a single fixed trust board is of limited use going forward. I don't think the vouches and other web of trusts tackle the actual root need to disaggregate, decentralize. You can anti-social open source, reject, flee to nihil and going away, solo-ing. I think that's mad bad and…

[dead]

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#25

Post by JimDabell » Sun, May 03, 2026, 5:14 AM UTC

Open source is not merely a license choice. It is a reformulation of free software to make it more attractive to businesses. The entire point behind open source is that it is more effective for businesses to develop software collaboratively with the public than it is to do it in private. So yes, open source does imply open community.

If you want to dump code onto the public with a permissive license but not develop that software collaboratively, then sure, you can do that, and the code will be open source code. Opening the code is a good thing and there’s no obligation for you to do anything more. But it isn’t doing what open source was designed to do; it’s ignoring a key part of it.

The people that see open source code and assume that it is being developed collaboratively are not being unreasonable – that’s the purpose of the open source movement. If that’s an inaccurate assumption for your software, then that’s fine – but it’s you that is breaking social norms, not them.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#26

Post by _ZeD_ » Sun, May 03, 2026, 5:15 AM UTC

mitchellh wrote: post #8

Yep! To be more specific, Open Source only promises the four fundamental freedoms ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition ). It promises literally NOTHING else, including zero cost. Free and open source software can and should cost money! (The "free" in "free and open source" is not about money, people!) I'm actually very enthusiastic about these OSS "supply chain" attacks that have been happenin…

>>> To be more specific, Open Source only promises the four fundamental freedoms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition).

no, that is FSF's free software.

I'm sick of coming here and see "open source" as something with "moral values" - stealing it from the free software with "the magic" of conflating the two concepts.

Open source is just big software companies stealing from innumerable volunteers

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#27

Post by emj » Sun, May 03, 2026, 5:20 AM UTC

bakugo wrote: post #20

wisty wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every political group has bad faith actors who care more about winning the argument than the truth. And worse faith actors who are just there to trash talk people. Just look at the red button / blue button argument (where the vitriol in the debate would only make sense if the buttons were real, or if people like being jerks). Better faith CoC people talk about freedom of association vs freedom of speech - if a platfo…

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This is not my view the only bad stories I have seen here are instances that should be taken care of even with out code of conducts. The reason why I see no problems with code of conducts is that it gets really tiresome to interact with people who are abrasive.

It is not a political thing in my view. I get more tired by the metadrama. Things did change when open source became a business. It is impossible to compare a voluntary based project with a big one. I think the issue is that most people have no experience in doing large scale self organization.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#28

Post by ekianjo » Sun, May 03, 2026, 5:45 AM UTC

> There's now a chat group. People with no patience are angry and now you have to babysit them, have your own one-on-ones. There's a "community" now that you're responsible for. You never signed up for this

of course YOU signed up for this. There is no well kept secret that this is going on. It should be a surprise for no one.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#29

Post by BrandonM » Sun, May 03, 2026, 6:10 AM UTC

JimDabell wrote: post #25

Open source is not merely a license choice. It is a reformulation of free software to make it more attractive to businesses. The entire point behind open source is that it is more effective for businesses to develop software collaboratively with the public than it is to do it in private. So yes, open source does imply open community. If you want to dump code onto the public with a permissive license but not develop t…

When you talk about the point or purpose of open source, what are you referring to? I think of Stallman, print drivers, and users owning their work, so your assertions about the point of open source ring false to me.

Re: Open source does not imply open community

#30

Post by omnifischer » Sun, May 03, 2026, 6:13 AM UTC

Often people get emotional and try to baby sit (new and users that don't want to learn basics). Having a disjoint but strict, timely, disinterested connection with support forums is great. One of the great examples is coreboot or MrChromebox. He replies only when necessary.