Hacker News Reader

Comment by neoromantique | Hacker News Reader

>Freedom cuts both ways, both for the user and the developer.

Author is free to call people "zealots", others are free to see it as being a dick.

It was simply uncalled for, if author does not want to deal with this he could've stopped replying after closing the issue as "Won't Fix", instead he decided to insult people that care about the free software.

View on HN

> Author is free to call people "zealots", others are free to see it as being a dick.

He didn't initially, his reply was

> I'm not a lawyer and I'm not interested in this kind of issues.

> If you think the app, as it is with its terms, should be removed from F-Droid, feel free to reach out to them.

which I find completely reasonable. After that wasn't enough and people kept pestering him, he said that he doesn't want to deal with zealots.

>After that wasn't enough and people kept pestering him

That's false? https://i.imgur.com/EFIfxRF.jpg

There was another issue that I believed to have come after the first, from the same user, complaining that he had some tracking/telemetry/whatever in there, which the author then closed, saying that the language clearly stated it was voluntary and with consent only. He additionally asked him to not bother him with issues about these kinds of technicalities.

If the order was reversed, you're right.

Said issue is indeed in the screenshot I provided, and it still is not "After that wasn't enough and people kept pestering him" as it was indeed a separate issue and not "a technicality".

Some people take their freedoms seriously and "Libre" version of the app mentioning tracking in ToS is a big no-no.

From what I can see the author just dismissed two valid (and separate) issues on the matter that he does not care about it, it's his right, but in no way it was "pestering" or "harassing".

I wouldn't call it harassment either, but it felt annoying to me (much like some other comments on that issue). People can and should take their freedoms seriously, they have the freedom to fork and make changes and publish those changes themselves and that's about it.

Beyond that, I think they should respect that no means no and not bother authors because they take themselves or their freedoms (too) seriously.

It's fine to be a zealot about FOSS, and to think the letter of the license is important. If you were personally insulted by someone calling people who complain about morality clauses being added to FOSS licenses zealots, you don't have to accept that as a description of yourself.

The person writing you free (as in beer) software is not hurting you, they are trying to help you in a way you don't completely approve of.

I am a zealot for FOSS licensing.

>If you were personally insulted

I'm fine, reason why I posted reply is because top comment called creating an issue on a public issue tracker "show[ing] up and harass[ing] the developer". Hence my reply that the only harassment(however mild) I saw was from the developer himself, as per his right, but it still goes against the comment I was replying to.

The people who care about the free software should take the free software and make binaries and change the name or whatever they feel useful to get it into F-Droid.

The moment they show up in his issue tracker complaining about it, they're being zealous.

Author took his time to get this into F-Droid in the first place and references the F-Droid link on their repo, what is so zealous about creating the issue to make sure it stays there?

The behavior of users on that thread makes me want to never publish anything in F-Droid.

Why the entitlement to have the project do the work for you?

>Why the entitlement to have the project do the work for you?

Because I for example consider a good tone at least giving upstream a heads up before forking and cutting out pieces of it.

There's nothing entitled about creating an issue on a public issue tracker that author can disable or limit at any time.

Why are you making things harder for the author? Once they marked it as something they don't want to fix, nobody else should be commenting or posting it on HN.

I am not making it harder for the author, nor have I posted it on HN. And person that has posted it on HN has linked to FDroid issue tracker, not projects GitHub link.

You as in the people commenting on GitHub aka "you lot", not you personally... :)

People are allowed to disapprove of the actions of FOSS devs and maintainers, and to post their disagreement online in places such as HN.

Feels like it's not okay to brigade someone's issue tracker.

Okay, but that's not what you said, nor what I commented about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com