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> All people who make public announcements are in effect holding a conversation with the public

No, they're not. Unlike a conversation, a public announcement is a one-way, one-to-many communication.

> A person in a conversation is socially obligated to make reasonable attempts to speak and respond to other people’s questions, comments, and concerns.

In a social setting, with a limited number of participants, sure. But in an internet forum, with an unlimited number of participants, people fail to make reasonable attempts to respond to the entirety of others' comments on a fairly regular basis. And there is absolutely no widespread social obligation otherwise.

But this is all entirely irrelevant anyway, because a software project is not the same thing as a conversation in the first place:

> the quite reasonable expectations of the public who was led into a conversation with somebody who did not, or ceased to, respect the social rules.

Using someone's free software is quite clearly not even remotely the same thing as being "led into a conversation", so there's no reason to expect the same social obligations.

> respond to the entirety of others' comments

You are mischaracterizing what I wrote. I did not say the entirety of others’s comments; I explicitly wrote only “make reasonable attempts”.

> Using someone's free software is quite clearly not even remotely the same thing as being "led into a conversation", so there's no reason to expect the same social obligations.

Users are still completely reasonable in expecting something. Consider my hypothetical situation I described in the second paragraph here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38310060>.

> I did not say the entirety of others’s comments; I explicitly wrote only “make reasonable attempts”.

OK, but that's still clearly not the widespread social norm in internet forums. For better or worse, it's quite common for commenters to not make any reasonable attempt to respond to sub-threads.

> Users are still completely reasonable in expecting something. Consider my hypothetical situation

I completely disagree. Your hypothetical situation sounds absolutely like entitlement to me.

> I completely disagree. Your hypothetical situation sounds absolutely like entitlement to me.

Do you mean to say that you think that it would be completely socially acceptable for a maintainer to act as in my hypothetical exaggerated hyperbolic situation? Would you respect anyone who actually did that? Would you remain friends with anyone who did that? Really?

Assuming it's FOSS, then yes, a maintainer is entirely in their rights to stop maintaining their software for any reason or for no reason at all. If you as a user don't like that, you can fork it, that's the norm for FOSS.

As for respecting someone who responded in that specific wording, no, it's unprofessional. But that's orthogonal to whether or not it's entitlement to expect a regular release cadence from a FOSS project that you have no commercial relationship with.

As for remaining friends, likewise, that's orthogonal to the topic being discussed.

> a maintainer is entirely in their rights [but] it's unprofessional

It is entirely reasonable for users to expect maintainers to behave respectably. Users may not have any legal rights to be treated professionally, but it does not change the reasonableness of the expectation.

> But that's orthogonal

It is not orthogonal. We are not discussing any legal rights; we are only discussing what is socially acceptable behavior from maintainers.

You keep moving the goalposts. We're discussing whether it is entitlement to expect a consistent release schedule and ongoing maintenance from a FOSS project, not about respect and professional wording.

Nor have I mentioned legal rights in my responses. By entirely in their rights, I meant in terms of social norms and expectations, not legally. (That should be obvious, since the maintainer is not a slave, and free society always legally permits people to stop doing unpaid work and hobbies.)

Between multiple subthreads here, several commenters are telling you that your expectations are tantamount to entitlement, and you just don't want to hear it. I'm not going to continue replying to you.

The tax you’re describing is exactly why maintainers burn out and why open source projects die, or worse - they’re never born. The only way to win is not to play.

It is very similar to club activities and volunteer work. People burn out fast when they stop finding value in the work. It is exceptional common with instructors where say parents pay to a club for their children membership, where the parents might not be fully aware that the cost of operation would be significant higher if the people involved were paid employees rather than people volunteering their time. One has to regularly remind people about the social aspects that are the foundation of such activity, and that the activity can only exist when enough people join in and help. When that fails you get very high burnout rates which quickly can cause a death spiral of the whole activity.

Normally such activity comes with one year commitments. Leaving in the middle of things unannounced and without warning would be breaking the social etiquette. No one is forced to work but there are social expectations and obligations in social activities. How much open source project is similar to such activity, and how much social expectation there are will depend on the context. For example, if you are volunteering as treasurer to a large open source project, the expectations are going to be very similar to that of a club, as will the burn out if the person doing the work don't get value from it.

The social etiquette is set by the license the code is distributed under, which says things like "THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES 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" in all caps.

That social etiquette indicates that maintainers don't owe you shit.

That’s the legal warranty disclaimer. It has nothing to do with support, security fixes, or future development, and certainly does not speak about simply being reasonably responsive when being contacted by users.

Also, and this might be hard for overly rules-obsessed people to understand, this is not a legal matter. It is a matter of social etiquette. I of course agree that nobody is legally owed anything. But this is not about legality.

> It has nothing to do with support, security fixes, or future development, and certainly does not speak about simply being reasonably responsive when being contacted by users.

Actually, if you re-read the GP, all of those points are covered. You just don't like the answer.

They are covered in a legal sense. But that was not what we were discussing.

Funnily enough, if you re-read it, everything you mentioned is covered. You just don't like the sentiment.

That's not the social etiquette, that's the legal situation.

Correct. The relevant social etiquette here is "don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

A person in a conversation is socially obligated to make reasonable attempts to speak and respond to other people’s questions, comments, and concerns.

Slaves and servants and subjects have the obligation you describe.

It is the nature of their bondage.

Asking questions and complaining and unsolicited opining are hallmarks privilege.

To the extent a social contract is a contract, it requires both parties to receive consideration.

Comparing mainainers being socially obligated to respond to questions to actual slavery, is unseemly.

If people don’t want the social burden of being a public person or even the relatively small burden of having a public project, they have the option of not being public.

Or -- stay with me -- they have the option of running their public project in the manner and with the level of effort they want. If you don't like that, you are free to run your own projects according to your own standards.

People “have the option” to say whatever they want – it’s called Free Speech, and it’s an important legal right. But that does not mean that I think that everything people do say is right and proper. I can, and will, criticize people for what they say, and I will also criticize maintainers who treat their users with less than reasonable respect.

You are conflating legal rights with what is socially or ethically right, and I think this is a dubious rhetorical trick.

I don't "keep" doing anything - this is the first and only time I've ever replied to one of your comments, nor have I said anything that a reasonable person could construe as conflating legal obligations and social etiquette.

I'm well aware of the difference between between the two concepts. What I, along with basically everyone else in this thread, is telling you is that this social obligation on the part of open source maintainers you seem the believe in is not a thing. People who give away their software for free do not owe any debt to anyone who might choose to use that software. As I said to the 1 (one) other person who seems to agree with you here, the relevant social etiquette is "don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

> I don't "keep" doing anything

Fair; I have edited.

> this social obligation on the part of open source maintainers you seem the believe in is not a thing.

Many people do think it’s a thing, though. See my links to past threads, where I am far from alone in my opinion. See also various Linux Distributions’ rules for maintainers.

Those rules are generally not put in place by users though, they're put in place by other maintainers right?

By other maintainers, yes, but for the benefit of users. Also, if these minimal levels of decency (which I suggest) are in fact so onerous to surely drive all maintainers to burnout (as frequently claimed, even in this thread), why, then, are they mandated by distributions?

> Many people do think it’s a thing, though. See my links to past threads, where I am far from alone in my opinion. See also various Linux Distributions’ rules for maintainers.

Against my better judgement, I read through the first thread you linked to.

If there are any substantial number of people writing there that agree with your position that open source maintainers have a "social obligation" -- or anything similar -- to the users of the software they give away for free, I missed it.

Most of the replies to your comments I saw there were people trying to explain the same things we are trying to convey here, followed by your steadfast refusal to deal with reality. I mean, at one point you responded to a quoted section of an MIT-style license and said:

> That text does not disclaim support, security bugfixes, and future development. On the contrary, all three of those things are probably either heavlily implied or outright stated to be available on the project web site.

... when the first two lines of the quoted license does exactly that. To wit:

> ... PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND ...

... which means the copyright holders disclaim support, bug fixes, and future development. That's literally what providing something "AS IS" means. It is provided as it currently is.

I don't think continuing to engage with you here on an even more nebulous concept ('social obligation') when you are unable or unwilling to objectively deal with written text is going to be a good use of my time. Have a nice day.

When Forest Gump said “I’m pretty tired, I think I’ll go home now” was he breaking an obligation to keep running just because others were following him?

Well in this case, imagine if he didn't say that, or say anything. It would be pretty rude.

Exactly. A modicum of respect is all I expect.

If I go for a jog, and a bunch of people start jogging behind me that I didn’t solicit in any way, then no… it is not rude of me to just stop jogging and go home without saying anything to them.

If you spent many hours, days, months with them it would be. Come on.

Why? Why does doing something in public for a long time create an obligation to people who see me do it.

They're doing it with you, so you should at least say goodbye.

I don't know what I can say for "why" other than go find a manners book and a philosophy book.

Why only two options? It seems limiting the options of engagement only serves to create a false dichotomy for the purposes of supporting your argument.

If the only two options are to become obligated to the public or not to engage at all, what a sad world this would be. Thankfully, there are many, many alternate options in the reality we share, even if not in your imagined reality.

I only mentioned two options to simplify. I agree that there are many levels, as I have written about previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19538256>

I could write a lot about this but you may be too dug in to hear it. The obvious rebuttals are "caveat emptor", don't judge a book by its cover, don't buy a product just because the box looks professional, etc.

But you are actually arguing for something different. You are insisting on an implication where the rest of us don't see one. If a project has nice documentation, an up-to-date license, etc. you believe that there is ethical/moral implication that the maintainer will fulfil some responsibility.

This isn't just about misrepresentation (which is almost a side-effect), it is about a proposed belief in duty, almost like a chivalry that goes beyond gentleman-ness.

I tend to think of Postel's law in those circumstances, liberal in what I accept and conservative in what I do. I've heard it said that the happiest cultures of the world have low expectations.

The degree to which you demand obligation is the degree to which you make equivalence.