My boundaries as an open source developer • Hacker News Board

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#31

Post by cweagans » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

GoToRO wrote: post #29

Quoted post unavailable.

I would imagine that much of the software that you download from Github doesn't claim to be production ready. Many open source licenses include language like this:

> THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.

What you choose to put into your production environment is on you. Full stop.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#32

Post by cweagans » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

henryfjordan wrote: post #30

GoToRO wrote: post #29

Quoted post unavailable.

The license very clearly tells you that you should not assume that the software is "production ready" and that if you do, that's on you. > 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 ...

You beat me to it :)

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#33

Post by GoToRO » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 6:59 PM UTC

No post body was provided.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#34

Post by woah » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 7:01 PM UTC

I totally get where they are coming from but it does make it sound like unsupported software. After reading that, I would not use it without completely understanding the code as if I had written it myself (and maybe that's what you should do for every dependency anyway). I would probably look for another open source project to use instead.

There seems to be a constant supply of people starting open source projects who are willing to support them, and I'm guessing that an alternative to this project will supersede it, resulting in people not bugging the author any more.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#35

Post by GoToRO » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 7:02 PM UTC

cweagans wrote: post #31

GoToRO wrote: post #29

Quoted post unavailable.

I would imagine that much of the software that you download from Github doesn't claim to be production ready. Many open source licenses include language like this: > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. What you choo…

why do they hide what the real state is under "as is". "as is" can mean that it is great or that it is shit. So "as is" is not enough if you really want to be honest with people. But they don't want to be honest, they want to be famous and a little bit of "hide the garbage under the rug" doesn't hurt right? Well it does.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#36

Post by GoToRO » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

henryfjordan wrote: post #30

GoToRO wrote: post #29

Quoted post unavailable.

The license very clearly tells you that you should not assume that the software is "production ready" and that if you do, that's on you. > 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 ...

You quote doesn't mean what you think it means. It just means "we will hide the real state of our software because we can, so you can choose to loose valuable time evaluating it now or else more time fixing it later. We could tell exactly how production ready it is, but we choose not to."

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#37

Post by cweagans » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 7:07 PM UTC

GoToRO wrote: post #35

cweagans wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine that much of the software that you download from Github doesn't claim to be production ready. Many open source licenses include language like this: > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. What you choo…

why do they hide what the real state is under "as is". "as is" can mean that it is great or that it is shit. So "as is" is not enough if you really want to be honest with people. But they don't want to be honest, they want to be famous and a little bit of "hide the garbage under the rug" doesn't hurt right? Well it does.

It's not about honesty or fame. The author does not and can not know if the code is going to be good for your use case. Only you can know that. Evaluate it yourself and see if it works for you. If it doesn't, don't use it. It's really that simple.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#38

Post by GoToRO » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 7:12 PM UTC

cweagans wrote: post #37

GoToRO wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do they hide what the real state is under "as is". "as is" can mean that it is great or that it is shit. So "as is" is not enough if you really want to be honest with people. But they don't want to be honest, they want to be famous and a little bit of "hide the garbage under the rug" doesn't hurt right? Well it does.

It's not about honesty or fame. The author does not and can not know if the code is going to be good for your use case. Only you can know that. Evaluate it yourself and see if it works for you. If it doesn't, don't use it. It's really that simple.

If they can not know their software is good or bad just please choose another profession.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#39

Post by henryfjordan » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

GoToRO wrote: post #36

henryfjordan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license very clearly tells you that you should not assume that the software is "production ready" and that if you do, that's on you. > 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 ...

You quote doesn't mean what you think it means. It just means "we will hide the real state of our software because we can, so you can choose to loose valuable time evaluating it now or else more time fixing it later. We could tell exactly how production ready it is, but we choose not to."

The code is open-source, nobody is hiding the "real state of the software".

"Production-ready" means different things to different people. For many, "production-ready" means "we have a support contract with the software vendor". In that case, the project would never be usable in production. To others with higher risk tolerance, a 1.0.0 release is all you need! You'd have to consider each user before making a recommendation about production-readiness.

Instead the author offers the software AS-IS and you can decide for yourself. The author doesn't owe anyone anything, least of all a personal consultation about whether using the software is prudent.

Re: My boundaries as an open source developer

#40

Post by travisjungroth » Wed, Mar 16, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #26

I had a very similar experience with running open source projects. I was getting frustrated with people not contributing in any significant way. Functionally useless bug reports. Coding bootcamp students submitting PRs that did nothing but change some grammar in the README (and never actually changing it correctly). Feature requests for things I had explained in several other issues that I would never do. Requests fo…

You’re saying no one uses your software whether it’s open or closed, you just got annoying “contributions”. How did you know no one was using it? How would you know if someone was?