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Comment by 0des | Hacker News Reader

Hang on, this exact situation is like if I make a cake, and as people walk by and see it, they want a slice too. So I say "sure have a slice, its free cake, I made it for myself but it's also free for you".

The person who decides that their steakhouse is going to make my free cake the centerpoint of their dessert cart and then expresses dismay that I like cream cheese icing on my free cake can fuck right off and bake their own cake.

In this case the author is saying that they don't do easter eggs because it would cause an erosion of trust, and that's fine, that's their prerogative and I get it. HOWEVER, let us not be fooled that there isn't an outrage contingent waiting to pounce every time someone dares to make free software the way it is most useful/accurate/fulfilling for themselves. This causes a chilling effect for a portion of us who write free software.

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That’s not an Easter egg. But also I would expect the baker to warn me that it had cream cheese if just to set my expectations.

I have a tea jar in the kitchen and it’s full of Earl Grey instead of builders tea (eg Darjeeling). If anyone makes their own tea I warn them that the tea jar is Earl Grey and I have builders tea in one of the cupboards above the kettle.

I don’t do this because the Earl Grey is an Easter egg. I do this because I’m not a dick and actually want people to enjoy their cup of tea.

> expect the baker to warn me

Your expectations of someone's free cake are too high, or you didn't understand the analogy. I don't think we will find a resolution between us, but I'll leave you with a bit of wisdom my father once gave me as I made a similar complaint about a free donut: "You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."

Good day

You’re conflating disagreement with misunderstanding. I understood your point fine, I gave a counterpoint on why I disagreed.

Also calling your cake story an “analogy” is giving it far too much credit given it had nothing to do with Easter eggs; let alone my original rebuttal regarding critical systems.

> I'll leave you with a bit of wisdom my father once gave me as I made a similar complaint about a free donut: "You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."

That’s both crass and irrelevant.

I'm only now noticing you've replied to almost everything I've said, and quite negatively, so I think some apology is in order as it seems I've maybe touched a nerve I was not aware of. I want to be the bigger person and wholeheartedly apologize to my esteemed colleague.

I'm sorry.

Original comment [1] made me aware that I've inspired some emotions in you about this particular topic, which was not my intent, bless your heart. Take care, have a great day, and hopefully we can both enjoy our own cake respectively.

> Your expectations of someone's free cake are too high, or you didn't understand the analogy

You’re conflating disagreement with misunderstanding.

Also calling your bullshit cake story an “analogy” is giving it far too much credit.

That’s both crass and irrelevant.

> I'm only now noticing you've replied to almost everything I've said, and quite negatively, so I think some apology is in order as it seems I've maybe touched a nerve I was not aware of.

I’ve only replied to my thread and one other post. Hardly everywhere. And you’ve not hit a nerve nor am I being unduly negative. This is a discourse and in conversations it’s not unusual for people to take opposing stances.

What I do dislike is people taking conversations to a meta level and arguing about the argument rather than discussing the topic directly. I’m obviously happy to agree to disagree if an impasse has been reached but please don’t deflect the discussion with assumptions about one’s emotional well being

Quoting the article,

>curl is installed in some ten billion installations to date and we are doing everything we can to be responsible and professional to make sure curl can and will be installed in many more places going forward.

If you want to sell ten billion cakes and beyond, you better do your market research and listen to customer feedback

> sell

curl isn't sold.

It is used by millions and in secure systems.

Sure, it’s free and the author can manage it however they want. But the reason they choose not to is because it’s still falls into the enterprise software envelope even if it doesn’t command an enterprise level price tag.

Just because something is released for free it doesn’t mean the developers don’t take their own software seriously. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them doing so either (even if you personally would like your software to have all sorts of unexpected behaviours and side effects).

Open-source projects still have to sell themselves to get users (marketing/"devrel"). curl's author definitely makes money from curl: https://curl.se/support.html

I'm not 100% sure why you're being downvoted. While the choice of the word "sell" kind of feels at odds with FOSS, it's honestly not an inaccurate verb.

Everything is an attention game, if people stopped using curl, then it would stop getting donations, and the author(s) would probably have to stop working on it as much. They aren't being "greedy" or anything, but they do have some level of incentive just to have a reasonable living working on curl.

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