> no donations = no expectations
No donations should result in no expectations, but unfortunately all sorts of people will have all sorts of expectations from you when you release an open-source project, donations or not.
No donations should result in no expectations, but unfortunately all sorts of people will have all sorts of expectations from you when you release an open-source project, donations or not.
Let's not take to a literal extreme the OP's simplified expression. It's a matter of degree, like almost everything in life.
Money is not the only source of responsibility. Most responsibilities in life are not a consequence of payment - from one perspective, payment-for-services exists to fill gaps in other responsibilities, to create artificial responsibility.
In gorhill's situation, speaking generally from my perspective (and not for gorhill), payment would seem to increase responsibility but it would not be absolute: People shut down for-profit businesses all the time. Users could be paying for gorhill's expenses in creating the existing software, which would imply no future obligation. And lack of payment doesn't eliminate responsibility: If you tell people you are going to do something, and they depend on you, you have some responsibility. Did gorhill promise to maintain it forever? No, but they aren't providing software for use today only; it's not like watching a TikTok video; software assumes longer-term use.
You are free to decline this work.
Most employment contracts have stipulations about working for competitors. They're rarely enforced, but you can sometimes get caught out if something goes pear-shaped.
If you haven't taken any money, it's a lot harder to hang this on you.
If I'm helping then I refuse any kind of money. I don't give guarantees or service like a business does, I don't want money like a business does. I do often ask that they try to learn from the experience, I'll gladly explain everything I'm doing.
The other option is I refuse, for whatever reason that is.
This keeps my choices those of a friend and my responsibilities those of a friend. I like keeping them that way.
And if it's something where I'm not confident, or its not replaceable / way too expensive, that's when I'll decline. But typical computer repair or building is really easy and safe. Need help delidding your CPU or some other uncommon thing? I'll give advice but I'm not handling it.
Anyone else I am happy to sit right next to them, happy chat and advise, be a pair of extra hands as required.
But I won't sit there while they walk away and do anything else.
If it isn't worth THEIR time to fix it, it isn't worth mine.
If you charge people for something, it kicks their perception of the act into a different category. That in turn effects how they think about the interaction and what their sense of entitlement and expectations are in ways that can be counter-intuitive.
A famous related study is: https://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-wha...
They found that when daycares fined parents for picking up their kids late, the result was parents picking them up even later. Because, without the fine, parents treated the pick-up time as a moral/social obligation that they did not want to uphold. Once the fine was introduced, they treated this as a simple financial transaction where if it's worth it to pay the extra to pick them up later, why not?
What I do know is that I completely respect snarf21's choice to either charge or not as they see fit.
- Israel has the highest fertility rate in the developed world (3.1 children per mother on average)
- The average gross monthly salary at the time of the study was NIS 5,595
- If the average parent comes late 4 times a month, that's 4 * 3.1 * 10 = NIS 124 = 2.2% of their monthly salary, or the majority of an entire day's pay (!) - that's not nothing.
That said, there are two interesting conclusions from the paper. Firstly, the well known one:
> Parents may have interpreted the action of the teachers in the first period as a generous, nonmarket activity. They may have thought: "The contract with the day-care center only covers the period until four in the afternoon. After that time, the teacher is just a nice and generous person. I should not take advantage of her patience." The introduction of the fine changes the perception into the following: "The teacher is taking care of the child in much the same way as she did earlier in the day. In fact this activity has a price (which is called a ‘fine’). Therefore, I can buy this service as much as needed."
But there's also this:
> The behavior in the third period, however, is still difficult to explain. Now the first social norm would predict a low level of delay. We may think that a period of 4 weeks is not sufficient to bring the behavior back to the appropriate level. But considering that 2 or 3 weeks had been enough to double the level of delays after the introduction of the fine, we should estimate that the learning rate of the parents is too fast to justify so much inertia. Perhaps a third social norm is needed: "Once a commodity, always a commodity." This norm and second clause of the first norm explain the behavior in the final period: a commodity at zero price is bought in large quantities. Overall, three norms seem necessary to explain three facts.
And I end up taking all the money and spending it a 2-month trip to Canada,I've sort of done something wrong. No matter what Kickstarter says, you can definitely be sued if you take someone's money and don't deliver what you promised.
I absolutely loved Kickstarter when it came out, but I don't think I've donated any money to any Kickstarter just because it's more stressful to try and keep track of whenever the hell I'm supposed to get my product.
Amazon and eBay are full of useless things I can get delivered tomorrow, why go on Kickstarter and wait 3 months or even a year?
Their is a ton of pressure to over promise, take Code Hero.
I checked out the free demo and loved it enough to back it. Then the creator promised a bunch of infeasible things, like teaching you how to make an online game. The original goal , show off basic programming, was solid.
Right after the campaign ended, the project disappeared.
I'm working on my own game now. And while I might let people pay what they want for a demo of it, I'm not going to promise a bunch of stuff I can't realistically do in order to fundraise.
Hell, look at all of the expectations that come with receiving a gift from a relative.
double blind charity
No donations = no obligations