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“Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

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Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#71

Post by setr »

steveklabnik wrote: post #17
arthurcolle wrote: post #11

Can someone elucidate why he is so against "his" code being used in this project?

He says early in the thread: > If users experiencing issues with the ambee library in this package, they will knock on my door. And I'm not willing to support that or accept that burden. Especially as I don't see a good repacking reason in this case.

But when suggested alternatives to resolve that issue, he simply ignores it and states “sorry, this is my wish” with no further clarification.

The whole chain is a guessing game trying to figure out what the real issue is (and in the end, it’s not even found — the author randomly finds an alternative he likes)

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#72

Post by mirthflat83 »

nailer wrote: post #43
elmerfud wrote: post #8

Seems like an author that doesn't understand the spirit of FOSS. The nixos team was clearly allowed to use it and include it when asking for some technical merits as to why, and even offering many alternative options to appease the author the author seemed to just childishly stamp their feet and say, "because I said so". Eventually the author took the position of "taking my ball and going home". Why is a person like…

He doesn’t understand the letter of OSS either. Limiting who can distribute a project means it no longer meets the Open Source Definition and is therefore not OSS.

?

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#73

Post by jandrese »

Hublium wrote: post #36
steveklabnik wrote: post #15

I am reminded of jwz, debian, and xscreensaver (Not linking to jwz's blog from HN because... he doesn't want it to be.)

What's the story here?

IIRC he had xscreensaver start spitting out error messages when it was old because Debian generally keeps package versions fixed per release, meaning if someone had a 2 year old but still updated version of Debian it would ship with a 2 year old version of xscreensaver. Jwz was tired of getting error reports for bugs fixed years ago because someone installed a the default "current" version on their Debian based OS.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#74

Post by Zancarius »

groby_b wrote: post #18
sneak wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author's wishes are formally and legally specified in the copyright license to the code he wrote, which is MIT and allows redistribution. Everything else is simply noise. Once you make your software free, it isn't yours any longer and your opinions about it (or what others do with it) aren't relevant.

As the author says, that can be fixed with a relicensing. Just because you're legally entitled to be a pain doesn't mean this leads to good things. If the source owner has a polite request, honoring that is usually the best course of action, independent of what the law says. (Ask people who thought image hotlinking was OK even against requests, and how goatse looked on their page) "It's legal" doesn't mean that it's…

He's complaining about a support burden, and near as I can tell, his repository has literally zero issues on his GitHub issue tracker as of this writing, so the corpus of nixos users who have submitted issues is exactly, well, zero.

I'm not exactly sure who's being a "pain" in this case outside of the potential future concern that someone might wrongly blame him for package failures via nixos which is packaging it as an upstream dependency of home-automation.

I think I'd be more concerned about the latter's users!

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#76

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

pfraze wrote: post #12
bitwize wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Open source is a contract with your audience that the code can be used freely. Not in common-law jurisdictions, where an open source license without consideration is a bare license and can be revoked at will by the licensor.

I shouldn’t have used the term “contract” there because I was thinking more about interpersonal obligation than legal obligation.

There is no obligation: legal, interpersonal, or otherwise.

Only the license terms that the software is released under matter.

Most FOSS licenses include disclaimers like: "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. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE."

If you did not pay the author for support, they do not owe you anything.

If they choose to provide support or fix reported bugs, that is their choice.

The NixOS team can use the code regardless of the developer's wishes if the license allows it.

If the developer chooses to not support the software on NixOS or change the license, that is their choice.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#77

Post by CJefferson »

elmerfud wrote: post #8

Seems like an author that doesn't understand the spirit of FOSS. The nixos team was clearly allowed to use it and include it when asking for some technical merits as to why, and even offering many alternative options to appease the author the author seemed to just childishly stamp their feet and say, "because I said so". Eventually the author took the position of "taking my ball and going home". Why is a person like…

None of the alternatives were something like "rename, so it isn't attached to them any more". I understand their issues, at present they can push new releases via pip, with this many nix users could have very out of date packages.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#78

Post by codezero »

barbazoo wrote: post #62
steveklabnik wrote: post #15

I am reminded of jwz, debian, and xscreensaver (Not linking to jwz's blog from HN because... he doesn't want it to be.)

> Not linking to jwz's blog from HN because... he doesn't want it to be I don't think ... that's how the internet works? (edit: I mean the "because... he doesn't want it to be" part)

if you follow an HN link to that site it detects the referrer and shows you something you don't want to see, so it's more than just because jwz doesn't want you to, he actively punishes people who unknowingly click a link that violates his preference.

Re: “Please don't add any of my stuff to this project”

#80

Post by nmstoker »

jefftk wrote: post #38
steveklabnik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says early in the thread: > If users experiencing issues with the ambee library in this package, they will knock on my door. And I'm not willing to support that or accept that burden. Especially as I don't see a good repacking reason in this case.

I mean, yes, but then when the NixOS folks offer something like: requiring users to explicitly set config.ambee.acceptThatThisPackageIsNotSupportedByUpstreamDevelopersAndIWillGoToNixpkgsToReportAnyIssues = true to be able to install the package, or they would get an error that would make it even clearer. Would that be enough for you? the author replies just: I feel like I'm starting to be on repeat now. Please don't…

The author may well have plausible reasons but it was obvious from the overly curt tone he wasn't going to treat the discussion constructively
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