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Free software isn’t a gift to its recipients, it’s gift to the commons. It’s an open house, not an embossed invite. The other side has some agency in selecting and evaluating the gift they receive, not least because every package disclaims the lack of warranty, fitness for purpose, etc.

Does one have an obligation not to impose a bad party on their friends? Sure. Should one, seeing lights and music and sign saying ‘all are welcome’, feel a loss if they don’t enjoy what they find inside? I don’t think so.

I don’t think this analogy really holds. Whereas one person or a closed group usually organize a party, open source is, well, open!

We could re-imagine this as a potluck I suppose. If you decide to bring nothing, you can’t really complain if the food is awful.

I was in a club (full of adults) in high school that I only realized how amazing the leadership was after the then-president had passed away due to health issues. Which is a shame because adult me definitely would have found him and said thank you, and also fuck all those people who tried to vote you out, and then didn't do as well.

They ran a fund raiser event (not unlike a fun run) twice a year and it was eye opening how many hands it took to make a good idea into one people invited their friends to next year. I volunteered a couple years at a couple of events and I know I worked harder those two days than I did when I participated, and not on the tasks I expected to be challenging. High school movie parties fall apart because it's all anarchy, and no self control. There's a lot that goes into making a soiree a success instead of a disaster.

My partner years ago stopped hosting parties because we were both ragged by the time people arrived, and there was always something we worked hard on that went unnoticed. Sometimes necessary, other times just a bad call on our part. Now we farm out the work a bit more, but even a potluck has key dishes and can fail if everyone guesses wrong. But if you pay close enough attention to a potluck, for many families grandma's dishes are the keystone that holds it together. She's seen some shit. She knows what's what.

I used to bring an Igloo water dispenser to a volunteer group because the group I was in in high school worried a lot about people injuring themselves in the heat. They had meetings every year before the events to refresh people. Heat exhaustion is scary, even dangerous, but heat stroke is life-altering. For the volunteer group, I think maybe five of us cared enough to bring fluids, and while my extra didn't always get used, I'm absolutely sure that one of us saved somebody. And if one of the other five had been sick, or had a wedding, then mine wouldn't have been backup. It's not hard to bring water, but someone has to do it. Unfailingly.

The rest of the group would of course care if someone got sick, but only to prevent it happening a second time. When you do something right the first time, nobody appreciates how hard it was.

I think it does hold: the cost of learning to use an open source project is not zero. It's the same as not asking the party planner about every detail even when they're perfectly willing to answer.

Gift giving inherently involves trust from the recipient. And there's no transaction, so it's inherently consequentialist.

It doesn't hold at all. Open source licences usually clearly state that there are no guarantees. The contract is clear and log4j (or any other) authors don't owe anything to anyone. If you want guarantees, pay for it.

This is the same blame the victim line of thinking that cigarette companies perfected to get out of any responsibility for killing millions of people. It’s a Dark Pattern and we need to stop repeating it.

This notion that people don’t “have to use OSS” is demonstrably false. As is the “build a better mousetrap” aphorism that was so common during the dot com bubble. It can be true when there is one OSS tool in a space, but every tool eventually becomes a monopoly, or part of an oligarchy. There is not space in a grocery store for an infinite variety of soda (though by god do they try). There are many you will never have heard of because the noise ratio has climbed too high. Every. Single. Solution is an opportunity cost.

Same is if all of my friends try to throw a party in the same week. Nobody is going to all of them, and most people are only going to one. Some might not go to any for fear of picking wrong, and just opt out and do their own thing. If they go to the worst one then they missed out on a good time. That is partially on the host, yes. I don’t owe you an amazing time, but I owe you a not awful one.

I can’t sell a tool that minifies JavaScript files. That is a comoditized space. If all the tools suck? I’m entitled to be a little upset about it, and who are you to tell me otherwise? DevEx matters and many people still don’t try, at all.

No one in this thread mentioned licensing or legal issues.

As an edge case, consider a CLI that solves a trivial problem but also turns the computer into a space heater via an always-on service. It will rightfully damage the author's reputation with the users and they'll avoid using that person's code again, but they won't sue of course.

> The author completely glosses over the social contracts involved in gift giving.

First, social contracts with gift giving vary widely across the world. It's a good reason they should be ignored here.

Second, as made very clear in the book Influence by Cialdini, the common social contract with giving gifts is reciprocity - and it holds even when the gift is crappy and/or unwanted.

So if you're going to invoke social contracts, do address all aspects of that contract.

You will also find significant disagreement on what the actual gift here is. For many, the gift is the code, not the capability. I'm giving the world this code. I provide some information about it. Whoever chooses to take it is expected to evaluate it and see if it fits their purposes.

Finally, regarding the potluck/party scenario, a more comparable example is a community potluck where everyone in the city is invited and can bring dishes, with no constraints whatsoever. People will show up, and happily tell everyone what's in their dish and how they made it. Most of them will openly say "I really can't claim this won't harm you" and "I'm not sure what entails proper cooking." You listen to each one and decide if you want to eat it.

Obviously, no one would ever run a potluck that way. You are using that fact to bash the developers, when you're not realizing the obvious: Potlucks/parties are a very poor analogy! Indeed, if you want to stick to the potluck analogy, then as an organizer, you definitely would put some rules in place - rules that would (and should) preclude most open source SW from being used in your product.

You can refuse a puppy

I can yes, but if you think you have that much control over your environment, outside of a solo project, then you're in for some hard lessons ahead. Most of the time we end up living not just with our own bad decisions, but everyone else's too. Thinking you can stop everything bad from happening will just make you crazy, and cost you friends.

I can't refuse a puppy when I come home from work and find that my aunt dropped one off that morning and the kids have been playing with it all day and already named it. I have to get other things done. I can't wait by the door in case someone shows up with a box that is making noises.