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Comment by hasenj | Hacker News Reader

That's a strange view of open source that borders on communism.

You don't have any duties or obligation towards any individual to assist them with their issues.

The only obligations you have is to be honest about the project. For example, if you know that the project is not written with security in mind, you must announce the fact, so that people don't go using the project assuming you took care of all potential exploits.

Beyond that, you have no obligations towards anyone. Quite the opposite. You've already done your part. You donated the product of your effort for free. The obligation is on people who use your product. If they want you to care of their issues, they are obliged to give something back in return. At the very least, appreciation.

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I don’t get where communism comes from. This is my view on personal responsibility and nothing more, and I naively expect people to have similar dedication to open source software as me. I understand this is not always the case, but I have described the perfect world as I see it in my comment above.

Don't know about duty but I think everyone has a right to expect help and a right to give help. It makes for a better world where these rights are regularly exercised.

> I think everyone has a right to expect help

Of the people with whom you have formed strong social bonds, yes.

Of random strangers? .. I don't think so.

Unless they are bound by some sort of a contract (employees, servants, etc).

> everyone has a right to expect help and a right to give help

This might make sense when asking a stranger for directions or for someone to help with your car problem, because the relationship is 1:1.

But this breaks down in contexts where scale is a factor.

When assisting users of your project, the relationship is 1:many. And if the project is popular, it is unfair to expect the author to be helping so many people.

I don't really see how 1:to many makes any difference in principle. Perhaps you were thinking of the amount of effort to help the many? As in 1:1 case it is up to the helper to decide how many resources, if any, to spend on helping. A society where the default position is that people deserve help is different from one that is based on the survival of the fittest.

Even if the default position is to help, it can't be unconditional, there are limits. You don't have a right to expect help when it places an unreasonable burden on the helper.

I upvoted you because I think it's an interesting position, but you should realize that adding duties will discourage people from doing any contributions at all. It starts to feel like a case of "no good deed going unpunished".

I wasn't thinking of legal rights and obligations but rather of a moral ethos.

The alternative brought to it's logical conclusion is Shkreli and rasing medicine prices by thousand percent.

The alternative to giving away your personal time for free to an open-source project is gouging people on vital medication? That doesn't seem true in any sense.

A right to "expect" is a right to control your own though, unless you mean something else?

I really like and appreciate the notion that a project could/should state what the assumptions are, where applicable. And, perhaps point out weak spots that could be important to users. If nothing else, it sets the expectations right.

The perfect example is yours, "this project does not take security into consideration. Use at your own responsibility. You should probably start with securing this_X, that_Y, and that_Z.".

Another example could be "this is a POC and does not go kindly on system resources. You might want to scale back the number of simultaneously opened sockets for any real use."

I'd like to second this:

> to be honest about the project

Sometimes you see the attitude "You get what you pay for", but putting code in the ecosystem without property explaining what it is is like littering.

In the same way I want to be able to walk in the park without constantly checking the ground for dog shit, I want to be able to use software without having to audit every part personally because the author didn't care for it, or communicate that fact.

* I mean didn't care for security

edit: This down-voted too? The clarification?

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