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Comment by asa400 | Hacker News Reader

Nah, this is absurd. This guy or anybody else can write whatever they want, whenever they want, on their own blog. They are under zero obligation to create bug reports, file issues, check in on a chat channel, or contribute in any other way to an open source software project that does not employ them. Writing blog posts is a perfectly reasonable and normal community behavior.

The members of the Zig project are free to reach out to the author!

When you create a project in public people will write about it, tweet about it, complain about it, etc (if you’re lucky!).

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It seems we have a different definition of collaboration. I assumed that it meant communication between the parties. Publishing blog posts has many purposes, but dirrect communication isn't one of them.

"They are under zero obligation to create bug reports, file issues, check in on a chat channel, or contribute in any other way to an open source software project that does not employ them." Correct, and absolutely fine, but not collaboration.

"Writing blog posts is a perfectly reasonable and normal community behavior." Correct, and absolutely fine, but not collaboration either.

"The members of the Zig project are free to reach out to the author!" Yes, but it's much easier, more efficient and direct for the author to have reached out to the Zig team.

"When you create a project in public people will write about it, tweet about it, complain about it, etc (if you’re lucky!)." Yes, but, once again, this isn't collaboration.

Intermernet said, "Posting critical blog posts [...] is counter-productive."

You said, "anybody [...] can write whatever they want". "They are under zero obligation ...". "Members of the Zig project are free to reach out ..."

Do you not realize that you have not at all addressed the point about what is the most productive way to criticize?

All you have done is go off about people's rights, freedoms, and lack of obligations. But nobody actually said "People shouldn't be able to post critical blog posts" or "People are obligated to participate by filing issues or contributing code to open source". So what was the point in saying this? Do you think people believe anything contrary to what you said?

The parent quite literally made a normative statement and I disagreed with it:

  > Collaborating would be contacting the Zig team through one of the many channels available and asking questions, offering suggestions etc.

If nothing else, this is attempting to define what counts as valid collaboration, and it's a definition I reject, so I disagreed with it. Good-faith experience reports are valid, useful, pro-social collaboration. Doing so is a perfectly productive way to criticize.

  > So what was the point in saying this? Do you think people believe anything contrary to what you said?

Apparently they do. The parent even made a veiled accusation that the author writing a good-faith blog post on their own blog about their own experiences "can even be seen as self promotion". Since when is sharing your good-faith critique about the design of a tool you've used something underhanded or nefarious?

Setting the bounds of valid community collaboration to "people can post on their own blog as long as I like it otherwise they're being mean" is not a set of values I subscribe to, so I felt it was worth it to articulate that.

"Good-faith experience reports are valid, useful, pro-social collaboration." Good-faith reports would be made directly to the Zig team.

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