It is more like you went around your neighborhood and turned peoples lights on in the evening, then stopped.
Sure, it’s a lost convenience, but people can easily choose to just… push the button themselves. Or pay somebody to continue doing it for them. Or get a timer.
It’s really not a big deal, and there are plenty of alternatives.
Then Minio decided to disable the feature to upgrade the lightbulb automatically, the code to update it is still there, they just don't want to do it anymore. Conveniently there is a Minio+ enterprise plan that has this feature. But hey! they tell you that you can easily set up your own server to update your lightbulb automatically. And most enterprise clients or people who have Minio lightbulbs in their office will do that.
But for single enthusiasts who don't have a server because they are just running a Minio lightbulb in their shed it's a bad situation, because if they knew this from the beginning they would have gone with another free lightbulb that updated automatically.
In short: Minio has the legal right to do whatever they want, people using minio have the right to be pissed. It's an all around bad publicity stunt and if I was a Minio investor I would really wonder why they are trying to piss off their loyal user base for a quick buck.
What keeps those enthusiasts from setting up a scheduled GitHub Action (or whatever system they prefer to use) to build the image for themselves?
How much (amortized) effort are we actually talking about here? One minute per release?
There are a lot of paragraphs in this thread laying the groundwork for this subtle strawman, but neither you nor DannyBee are addressing the real opposing position. That's the one that says there is no legal obligation and there is no social obligation. You're both treating the latter as if agreement about its existence is a forgone conclusion not in dispute. But of course it's in dispute. It's the basis of the dispute.
The point is, there is a community project, and Minio has revealed they are leaving the community. It's not illegal that they do so, any more than divorce is illegal, but it's concerning to anyone who views themselves as part of that community.
It raises a point that is it smart to join a new community that depends on the same people or organization.
Your persistent inability to comprehend this makes you look like a poor candidate for future professional collaboration. Maybe you are autistic, maybe just a shill, but it's not helping you.
A feeling of a community is not a contract. Complaining about losing that community changes nothing; and I believe that's the point GP is making.
Then I decide to stop. It doesn't really matter why, I wasn't getting paid or had not made any sort of formal agreement or promise, I just don't want to do it anymore. Now I shovel my sidewalk to the property line exactly and that's it. Hey, that's my legal obligation; I don't need to do any more! Mr. Johnson now has a lot more trouble getting out of his house; we see him a lot less. The baby is crying while new mom slips around trying to load up strollers and diaper bags and a car seat. The snowbirds just got fined by city bylaw for not clearing their walk. That dad's school trip is just a little longer, colder and unpleasant.
Hey, this isn't my fault! All those people took my effort for granted; I never promised to shovel their walks! They have no basis to judge me! But you better believe that this decision reduced their assessment that I'm a "good neighbour". Community is built mostly on implicit agreements, norms and conventions that are established through practice & conduct over time. You're arguing the right/wrong of this in the face of legal formalizations, while others are just saying it is a fact, not weighing the benefits and obligations.
I see GGP's comment attitude all too frequently on the internet ("nobody is entitled to anything") as the default. Which is such a nasty connotative strawman, it's kind of absurd. But hey, that's the internet for you.
This is the tragedy of the commons but not just for a field of grass, instead its for all human altruism. You really need to think about the consequences of this attitude because it doesn't lead where you seem to think it leads. In fact, it leads to exactly the opposite set of human behaviors.
PS The neighbors could easily just contract someone else to do the shoveling in the future and instead of being salty about having to pay, looking at it as how much money they saved in the past.
They didn’t do it last year. I was disappointed, but I’m not angry at them. I realize that they were spending a lot of time and energy and maybe they are just burned out.
I’m sure there are people who are angry and judge them. But those people are spoiled, entitled brats.
The distinction is that it is entirely fine to be disappointed. It’s not fine to get angry.
And, reminder, they keep encouraging people to use the party as an important foundation for their own efforts.
Does that help explain why a sudden stop is causing harm to people that weren't being greedy? At which point anger is not an inherently bratty behavior.
This analogy has been tortured to within an inch of its life though.
People could keep using the old docker images while they trivially build their own.
If you want to make the example fit it’s more like “hey we’re still having the party but we aren’t gonna to put up any new decorations. If you want to put up the new decorations we left our garage open, but you have to do it yourself“.
That level of promise is what you get with 95% or more of products and services. It's not like you can avoid it.
I understand the impulse to say that these expectations are unreasonable so nobody should get mad. But when companies cultivate those expectations on purpose, it stops being unreasonable to get mad.
What do they do when a server is down?
>But when companies cultivate those expectations on purpose, it stops being unreasonable to get mad.
On the one hand I get that. But on the other hand, I see the exact same anger when it’s just some guy or a 2 person company that decides to stop doing some work for free.
If you limit your argument to it’s scummy for a company to offer something for free with the goal of creating a dependency that they can exploit by removing the free version and then offering a paid version, then I agree.
They can delay getting new versions for a few hours with no issue. But when they stop entirely it's a problem.
> On the one hand I get that. But on the other hand, I see the exact same anger when it’s just some guy or a 2 person company that decides to stop doing some work for free.
Well I'm not defending the anger in all cases. If it's that small they deserve a lot more slack. But they should still give a warning period and/or put in some effort to finding a new person from the community to put in charge.
> If you limit your argument to it’s scummy for a company to offer something for free with the goal of creating a dependency that they can exploit by removing the free version and then offering a paid version, then I agree.
Once the dependency exists, it's bad to cut it off without warning, even without an exploitative goal.
If they can delay getting a new version for a few hours they can delay getting a new version for a few months.
> Once the dependency exists, it's bad to cut it off without warning, even without an exploitative goal.
It would be nice for them to do that, and it’s fine to be disappointed if they don’t, but anger is uncalled for unless it was malicious.
But ignoring that, it isn’t like they are shutting of a live service without warning. They’re just no longer offering an image. You can keep using the images that you had saved indefinitely. A warning wasn’t necessary.