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Not sure about this model. I write open source software because of the inherent human desire to create. Benefits from admiration I receive comes a distant second to the happiness of exploring a problem then crafting a nice solution, on my own time, in my own way. In a lot of ways, working without compensation then freely releasing the output is weirdly selfish. It is appealing because you are so free from the obligations to others brought by getting paid.

Users might invest time in using your software, and it is this time they feel robbed of when things go awry. I have been on both sides of this. I used to become very angry when something doesn't work right out of the box after quickly skimming a setup tutorial. At the time I was working for salary. Any free time I had was very valuable and couldn't be sucked up doing the same thing I do at work - debugging config issues, retrying with different options or environmental changes, etc. It was only after becoming a part time independent contractor that I developed the patience to really deal with open source software. To feel I had enough mental energy to really read the documentation or look inside the source code and debug what's going on - totally different from the customer service experience of dealing with proprietary software.

People become frustrated when the effort needed to understand or deal with something is beyond what they are willing to put in. I don't think open source can escape its problems until a substantial portion of users have the time and energy to really engage with it. We should be working far fewer hours than we actually do.

I agree, the work comes from desire to create but I think the public github repo and the promises you give to the potential users comes from the desire to receive praise and cred for your work.

From the users perspective, the joy and the pain is the same as with the paid product. If you promised them something and underdeliver, they feel scammed.

I'm not sure about others but when I publish a piece of software or script it's because I needed it for something and I'm done working on it for my needs. If someone has different needs than mine they can DIY or pay someone to do it.

If anyone else needs it, they are free to copy and use it. If they find a problem that I think needs fixing or my stuff will cause me problems, I'll fix it. Otherwise, they are free to fix it and(if kind enough) submit it.

I have 0 obligation to fix anything that I don't personally need and anyone that copies it has 0 obligation to give me anything in return. I only published it to save someone else the time for the bulk of the work. I'm not doing it for money or cred. I do it because it's something I already finished(more or less) and it won't cost me anything to share. Anyone elses needs(family and friends exempt) are not my problem unless It's my (paid) job to make them my problem.

But why upload it to Github or somewhere similar, do the marketing(a README that often promises something like enterprise ready Atomic transactions) and licensing?

If the work was to fulfil your own needs it would have been a private repo or a folder in your drive.

The moment you publish it, a social contract is established similar to creators of other free work like youtube videos etc. You receive cudos and fame, they receive a tool, entertainment, knowledge etc. When you fail your part of the contract, people can be very mean as the are mean on a Youtube vide that they don't like.

No. No. No.

There is no such thing as this "social contract".

I publish software on github with MIT or (A)GPL licenses for various reasons:

* In case someone else has the same issue I did

* In case someone is working on something similar and wants to learn from my code

* As an external backup in addition to my hard drive / private git repo / etc.

* Because I can. (deal with it.)

There is NO expectation or "contract" or anything. People can open issues or politely request things, but getting upset or pushy over F/OSS released on someone else's own terms is just entitlement.

I'm sorry but there's a social contract. It's implicit, the moment you participate in a society the expectations from you and obligations towards you begin.

Even if someone asks you the directions to the gas station, you are expected not to deceive them and give them the best instructions to you your ability and they are expected to show some appreciation for helping out the society. You will face backslash if you don't help a fellow human or deceive them despite the fact that you are not receiving direct payment for your act.

Imagine you put a sign that says "The mall is in this way" and the sign is not entirely correct. It was a free sign, no one contracted you to put that sign but if it happens that your sign wastes someones time you will receive negative feedback and probably requests to correct your sign.

I'm not talking about society in general. I'm talking about random F/OSS projects on github. There is zero expectation when looking at someone's project from afar.

> There is zero expectation when looking at someone's project from afar.

Let's say I release some code that is isn't fit for purpose. For example, it corrupts user data 5% of the time.

The code has a README that doesn't mention the issue, and I close all issues that refer to the problem. I also reject any PRs that try to fix it, and so on. I don't, however, disable issues or say the code is unmaintained, so there is a steady stream of people whose data gets corrupted when they download and use my code.

Since you don't seem to like the term "social contract", would you at least admit that I am violating a few norms and acting like an asshole?

You are free to fork it, fix the corruption issue and uphold the social contract of your fork.

> You are free to fork it, fix the corruption issue and uphold the social contract of your fork.

The freedom to fork (for any reason) is orthogonal to the question of whether the maintainer is being an asshole or not.

Of course, people are also free to be assholes (for any reason). But it shouldn't be controversial to say "don't be an asshole".

You sure are reaching really far to claim that someone giving you something for free owes you even more.

Maybe I am misreading them but I don't quite think that's what they're saying so much as "you can't market your free product to other people as something they can and should be using, and then turn around and tell them to fuck off when they come back with complaints that it doesn't live up to those claims".

A lot of open source projects seem to do this. If you make it clear your project is just something you found useful and others might too, then I don't think anyone really has a complaint about that.

There is an assumption not to be an asshole. But that's where it ends. If an endless stream if cars likes your directions, they can't expect you to keep standing where you are, giving each of them directions.

In the same way, if someone posts some code you can file a bug or give a patch, but that doesn't entitle you to anything from the original author. Maybe you helped him making the code better and you're scratching each other's back. Maybe the author is just extra nice to you. But just because you've received a gift, you're not entitled to more gifts.

> There is an assumption not to be an asshole.

I think some of the disagreement in this thread is just over whether someone is being an asshole if they leave buggy code lying around with no warnings attached, and rejecting /ignoring requests to remedy the situation.

In my opinion, there is no expectation for someone to accept your requests or PRs. It's definitely not the norm, but I reserve the right to not do anything that I don't want to do. You don't know someone's life situation or current goals; that library or tool may work fine in their use case or they don't have the time/desire to implement a fix or review a PR.

That's why forking exists.

That's the risk of pulling in external libraries from random developers. Unless you're willing to put money where your mouth is, then all you reasonably can do is politely request a fix or for them to merge your PR.

No there isn't. The software is provided as is, without warranty, express or implied. This is critical to understand.

A social contract takes place when everyone contributes. If one does the work and others do the demands... it's not a "collaboration", which is a pre-requisite for a social contract.

You could argue there is a social contract between the repo maintainer and various submitters. Not so much between the repo owner and users/consumers.

I think this mindset is fundamentally wrong on multiple levels.

1. There is no contract, not even implicitly, that promises software maintenance in exchange for praise. The praise may be a motivating factor for the developer, but anyone who thinks they are entitled to anything just cuz they showed some appreciation has not read the Open source License, which almost always states the software is provided as is without warranties.

2. Genuine praise is not transactional. The only factor affecting praise or criticism should be merit. Any other quid pro quo makes praise into hollow lip service, meaningless fungible gibberish uttered for personal gain. Praise is more like a donation than a payment.

3. Even if praise/fame somehow could function as currency, then any individual is not providing enough of it to earn themselves any significant privileges. Maybe in aggregate the community would have a 'claim' (if the developer agreed to this contract), but even then the obligations incumbent on the developer would be limited and unclear, because no one person can speak on behalf of the community and for most projects their community does not organize itself in such a way as to permit concerted group action that can be recognized as the will of the community.

4. if you feel like you have been robbed of your praise, you simply withdraw it or voice criticism. Or you recognize that your praise was still applicable and valid to the parts of the project that you were aware of at the time of voicing your opinion, so therefore is still deserved. If you think you provided more praise than is merited by the project, then that's an error in judgment on your part. No one asked you to proclaim project [projectname] the best thing since sliced bread and the hope of humanity that is literally gonna change the world. Just be more careful with who you choose to praise.

See, no one is suing you when you don't help people or don't maintain your work. They simply say bad things about you and your work, the exact opposite of the "payment" your receive. It's practically a chargeback.

>fame and applause >Maybe they are rightfully so, since they paid with social capital

I'm sorry, but I think you're exaggerating a lot here about the worth of "fame" in something as niche as writing open source software. It's like when people try to pay artists with "exposure" -- flashy, but worthless in every imaginable way.

Case in point: The creator of Homebrew who famously failed to get a job at Google despite having all "street cred" imaginable.

> A developer creates a work, gives it for free(in writing) and receives fame and applause by the terms of the social contract.

There is no "the" social contract. There are many social contracts, and they are not all compatible with one another. The whole point of written, legal contracts is due to a recognition of this fact.

I don't abide by that (or any) social contract when I put something on Github, and nor should I. When I say that I can't guarantee this code won't cause harm (e.g. destroy HW or files on your HD), I mean that. If you want to labor under unspoken, unwritten contracts, be my guest.

> When I say that I can't guarantee this code won't cause harm (e.g. destroy HW or files on your HD), I mean that.

Okay, but imagine for a moment that you don't say that. The README is silent on the issue of potential problems. Are you violating any social contract then?

Or suppose an issue is reported to you. You don't feel like fixing it, close the issue, and even delete it, and don't add a mention of the problem to the README. Are you violating any social contract at that point?

If you don't like the term "social contract", would you agree that you would be violating some norms?

Of course I'm violating some contract/norm. I am also conforming to some contract/norm. That was the whole point of:

> There is no "the" social contract. There are many social contracts, and they are not all compatible with one another.

Similarly, those expecting my code won't cause damage are also violating certain social norms.

The code is there for anyone to do what they want with it. Do with it what you will, and own the consequences.

> Or suppose an issue is reported to you. You don't feel like fixing it, close the issue, and even delete it, and don't add a mention of the problem to the README.

My Github repositories are very low in importance on my list of important things in life. I reroute most notifications to a folder and will go through that folder only a few times a year, so I likely won't even know about any such issues for months.

Now personally, I do put a disclaimer in the README stating that people should view the code as unsupported and unmaintained (even though I do update the code from time to time), but I do it merely as a courtesy, not as an expectation. I do not at all endorse that people should put such disclaimers.

If you don't check the notifications, you aren't closing/deleting reported issues, so potential users have a chance of seeing the report.

I agree. There's a kind of social-transactional element to Open Source that people don't like to talk about. Like, chasing clout instead of dollars. If you're a committed maintainer who writes a lot of packages and sacrifices a lot of your free time, chances are you have some self-interest in the mix.

The illusion of universal altruism probably helps insulate people from thinking about the uncomfortable politics of Open Source.

I'd like to read an article covering your insights.