Hacker News Reader

Comment by jckahn | Hacker News Reader

Nobody has any right to expect labor from an unpaid person. I get feature requests from people who make money with my OSS work (which I don’t begrudge), but unless I find the work inherently interesting to prioritize then I respectfully ask them to compensate me, make a PR, or file a GitHub feature request so that someone else can. I fix legitimate bug reports for free ASAP because I care about the quality of my work. Nobody has ever offered my compensation, despite the fact that my work has been used by millions of people. That’s fine with me though, OSS is just a hobby for me. :)

Anyone can choose this strategy, and I don’t quite understand why more OSS maintainers don’t.

View on HN

There's no such thing as "production ready". Everyone's production scenario is completely different and you project is only offered as-is.

> Nobody has any right to expect labor from an unpaid person.

I'm very grateful for OSS projects and maintainers but this is an interesting question: is doing something for free a free pass for false promises (advertising)? If I commit to help someone for free I then have a responsibility to show up. If an OSS developer advertise their projects as production ready then they have a responsibility to honor what is promised. Otherwise it should be stated plainly that the project should not be used in production ("This is a hobby project, use it at your own risks"). Sure it's less attractive and can be incompatible with success and resume building, but it's not possible to have it both way.

This is why we have licenses:

… PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE

I think it’s particularly clear, and that part is even in all capitals.

This is the only response necessary for those demanding free support. You can even shorten it:

"AS IS"

Sure, but it’s for legal responsibility. I’m talking about marketing, i.e. lies/false promises and/or error inducing landing pages regarding the reality of the project. It was not general point about all OSS projects, but to point a difference between projects that are part of a dishonest business strategy (company or personal) and “classic” OSS.

Yes, it is possible to have it both ways. Your reliance on something isn't material when trying to get support from someone you're not paying. Full stop.

Maybe it's important to you and maybe people you support -- but that has nothing to do with your right to make demands against someone who put their work out there for free.

If you need a guaranteed support model, you either do it yourself or hire a company to provide that for you. I've used _supported_ commercial software that's garbage, and I've used FOSS software which has been absolutely rock solid. Also, commercial or not, just because it's supported doesn't mean the problem will be fixed or a feature added.

If you aren't directly paying someone to be there for you, then you're trusting goodwill and/or the community at large to fill that role for you. If you need that assurance, pony up to one of the consultancies like IBM which will support "X" for price "$Y". That support you're referring to is available, at a price -- but doesn't necessarily involve the original contributors.

I've had far better luck with FreeBSD on servers for the past 20 years than I have with Microsoft Windows, but I also understood the deal: "Fix it yourself, or submit a bug report and see if anyone else wants to work on it."

The corporate software method: "Pay us lots of money to look into the bug report, and maybe we'll fix it, maybe we won't -- but you'll need to pay hourly until we determine if its a bug. Then MAYBE we'll refund your money."

The primary difference is that OSS gives you the source and the ability to fix problems on your own, without any involvement from the original contributors/projects. You can also hire any number of other companies to provide support. With a traditional commercial model, you're entirely at the mercy of the company which originated the software, and you likely have no rights to the source or tools which would enable you to fix the problem yourself.

Sure I don’t disagree, I think I was too broad. I’m talking about only a subset of projects that are not just free work put out there, but actively promoted as some serious building block with a business agenda behind like personal brand building. There is OSS and OSS, I’m not talking about FreeBSD, Linux or PostgreSQL types, but projects that are part of a company marketing strategy or resume building and kind of white lie about their seriousness. My issue is with marketing, promises and expectations, and not OSS as it is to its roots. Edit: for a concrete example, I agree with you in the case of say curl, but not for React.

Also tangentially I don’t buy into the binary distinction “it’s free it can be poison I can’t complain / I paid it’s my right to be an entitled asshole”. The cost is irrelevant with the promise for me, the first cent doesn’t have magical entitlement, and its absence is not a free pass to (white) lie.

> Also tangentially I don’t buy into the binary distinction “it’s free it can be poison I can’t complain / I paid it’s my right to be an entitled asshole”. The cost is irrelevant with the promise for me, the first cent doesn’t have magical entitlement, and its absence is not a free pass to (white) lie.

There is no binary distinction and it isn't about the amount of money per se.

What you're missing is that full extent of what you can expect is spelled out in the license.

Whether it's an open source license or a commercial one, a common one or a custom one. If you don't prefer the terms of the default license, attempt to negotiate a different one. You can always negotiate. If you expect more, expect to pay more.

There is no clause in any license (that I've ever seen) that says if this project is more popular or shows up more often in search results then the license grants the recipients more support. That's not how it works. Read the license, that's what you get, nothing more.

Who has the right to make demands against FOSS developers? Have any FOSS developers been successfully sued and forced to implement something?

Obviously they should be careful when picking the license, but with any of the standard licenses, they should be fine?

You have no leverage. What are you going to do stop buying their products causing them to go out of business?

Majority of OSS has clear disclaimer that project is provided as is. It is right there, in the license.

Take it or leave it. Which works for the other side complainers too. The worm is available to be used for free by companies, because license said so.

> is doing something for free a free pass for false promises (advertising)?

If you have a specific project in mind, have you read the license under which that project has been made available to you?

If it is under most of the common open source licenses, you will find that it already states very clearly what applicability and support you can expect (none).

You are free to pay for a support contract if you need anything beyond what the free license guarantees you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com