Comment by telmo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by telmo | Hacker News Reader

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> If you offer code to the public – and present it as an active, dependable project – professional behavior is exactly what you implicitly promise and signed up for. If you can’t offer that (at any time, and for any reason), then you should immediately make that clear, front-and-center, to any current and future users.

As far as I can tell, this project was released under the Apache License 2.0.

https://github.com/actix/examples/blob/master/LICENSE

Clause 7 of said license says the following:

"7. Disclaimer of Warranty. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, Licensor provides the Work (and each Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using or redistributing the Work and assume any risks associated with Your exercise of permissions under this License."

Other popular free software licenses (namely the GLP) have very similar clauses.

> It isn’t “entitlement” on part of the users – the users are making reasonable expectations based on promises implicitly made by the the project as it is presented.

Expecting labour from someone without paying them is the very definition of entitlement.

Lets compare it to an other type of volunteer based work, after school activity for kids. Some of those are going to be free, run by people who volunteer (usually other parents), with disclaimer policy that say that any responsibility is on the parent and no liability may be put on any of the volunteers.

Is there a social contract that put some expectations on the volunteers who are organizing the activity/event, and is that the definition of entitlement?

I would say there is such social contract, and when people expect too much of it there is also entitlement going on. Where the exact line goes is gray zone.

> Other popular free software licenses (namely the GLP) have very similar clauses.

What the license says and what image the project presents can be very different. Pointing to the license and reasoning that nobody has legally promised anything contractually is not very useful.

> Expecting labour from someone without paying them is the very definition of entitlement.

That’s a very mercenary view of the world. What about volunteer charity workers? Is it OK for them to just not show up whenever, just because they aren’t paid?

> What about volunteer charity workers? Is it OK for them to just not show up whenever, just because they aren’t paid?

I have some friends whose profession is running charities (i.e. they actually get paid). Volunteers not showing up is exactly what happens, all the time. And my friends expect it, plan for it, because the volunteer is not getting paid to be there. Without that tangible incentive, a volunteer time competes for all the other intangibles competing for time (e.g. "I'm tired", "the kids need something", "friends are going to do something fun at the same time"). They build it into planning: some percent of the people who signed up aren't going to show up...if the weather bad, a bigger percent aren't going to show up. And so on.

They don't get all ranty or judgmental about it, they're just smart enough accept that reality and to plan for that eventuality. Just like anyone using an open source project without paying for it should be.

> What the license says and what image the project presents can be very different. Pointing to the license and reasoning that nobody has legally promised anything contractually is not very useful.

It is quite useful, because the license is the legal document that comes included with the software, and that specifies what things you agree to if you use the software. And it explicitly specifies that you cannot assume any contractual obligations from the "image the project presents", or anything of the sort.

> That’s a very mercenary view of the world. What about volunteer charity workers? Is it OK for them to just not show up whenever, just because they aren’t paid?

I would say that if someone promises to do some charity work and doesn't show up without a good reason is breaking a promise, and is thus being a shitty person. People should keep to their word. Open source authors promised us nothing and owe us nothing. More often than not, we owe them.

> Open source authors promised us nothing and owe us nothing

There is such a thing as an implicit promise. A project which presents itself as active and maintained by a community does implicitly promise a certain level of attention by its maintainers.

> either express or implied

Did you miss this part?

There is such a thing as an implicit promise, but it does not trump an an explicit disclaimer of such attention. Which there is in this case. Once again, thanks for demonstrating the entitled attitude that brought this on.

Would you please edit out personal swipes and/or snark and/or name-calling from your posts to HN? Between this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22080698, you'd done this more than once in the thread. We're trying for curious conversation here, not flamewar rhetoric.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting, we'd be grateful. I appreciate how much your HN posts have improved, but it's necessary not to break the guidelines.

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