Comment by marssaxman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by marssaxman | Hacker News Reader

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> The moment a group says “use our stuff for critical projects” they take on some baseline level of responsibility for making things secure

Every popular open-source license explicitly states that exactly the opposite is true:

Apache license: "Licensor provides the Work (and each Contributor provides its Contributions) on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND"

GPL v2: "THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND"

Mozilla license: "Under no circumstances and under no legal theory, whether tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, shall any Contributor, or anyone who distributes Covered Software as permitted above, be liable to You for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character"

BSD license (both 2 and 3 clause versions): "THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES"

MIT license: "THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND"

You are and have always been on your own when using open-source software. Nobody owes you anything.

For one, there is a limit to how much licenses absolve you from responsibility — like, you can’t say “eat my food, by doing so you accept responsibility” and turns out it’s poisoned. It’s still possible to go after the food producer.

I know that doesn’t apply 1:1 to software, but the point is less about individual OSS projects and more about the hosted service of package registries, which do have people & money behind them.

Npm, for example, is owned by Microsoft (through GitHub). MS has huge amounts of money. They could be scanning for malware on upload and adding so many more security mechanisms. But they don’t.

Didn’t Disney famously use an EULA contract for dodging responsibility after a deadly food poisoning?

That’s a slightly different thing in my opinion but I’m glad that you’ve raised it.

Developers have an ethical responsibility but that doesn’t mean they should be legally accountable for genuine mistakes.

This is rather insulting.

If I open source something, I am not your parent, if you decide to wing it just because it is open source that is your problem not mine.

You are not obligated to use anything anyone open sources. If you can't take responsibility for your own actions that's on you, not the person who open sourced it - that is what generally all the licenses state to begin with.

As an open source maintainer myself, I don’t think it’s an insulting position at all.

I think you’re being overly simplistic with your position because there is a sane middle ground where maintainers are honest about their projects (eg so often pet projects have readme’s that describe POC code as if it’s production ready, and that’s not ok)

I’m not suggesting that users of open source packages don’t also have responsibility to vet the packages they import. But so often I’ve wasted time vetting a package that has made bold claims in the README only to discover it’s basically beta software. And that can be hours of my free time wasted just because the author wanted their CV to sound more impressive.

On my open source projects, I very clearly list when things are going to be beta quality, where experimental code lives, and where stuff is tested and considered safe for production use. I do that because I value people’s time. Just like I value my own time. And it only takes me 2 minutes to add that detail to the readme.

No one has an ethical responsibility to provide free security auditing to trillion dollar companies.

That’s a strawman argument because we aren’t talking about security auditing for trillion dollar companies.

We are talking about developers having ethical ownership for communicating their project responsibly.

That means being honest about when a pet project is just a pet project rather than talking about every POC as if it’s production ready.

And it’s disingenuous to spin this as “only trillion dollar companies use open source” because we all know that isn’t even remotely true.

> That means being honest about when a pet project is just a pet project rather than talking about every POC as if it’s production ready.

And who isn't honest about it? Read the contract you have with the provider.

There is a way to legitimately expect production-ready libraries: You sign a purchase order for the right to use that code for a year (typically, or multi-year) and pay a quite substantial amount of money for that. Then you have purchased the right to expect a certain level of quality (details can be in the contract and reflected in the price).

If you're using something for free without having agreed to such a contract and paid the vendor accordingly, then you can expect exactly as much as you paid for it.

You’re twisting my argument. I’m not saying maintainers are obligated to make their code production ready. I said their READMEs should accurately represent the state of the project.

If you, or anyone else, thinks that is an unfair assessment or that I should have to pay for a README not to claim to be production ready when it’s a POC, then you had a very weird view on how much effort it takes to write the line “this is an untested beta”

> I said their READMEs should accurately represent the state of the project.

The state of expectations is usually in the LICENSE file, not in the README. But it's there in the repository, in most cases.

I do agree that some maintainers forget to include the LICENSE file (or equivalent), which is a mistake. The terms of use are quite important.

> The state of expectations is usually in the LICENSE file, not in the README.

No it’s not. LICENSE tells you what you can do with the code. It doesn’t tell you the state of code.

Again, I need to reiterate my point that I’m talking about whether the code is beta, tested, etc. It costs nothing for a maintainer to specify how complete a code base is.

It’s then up to the consumers of that package to decide if they want to use it, contribute back or just fork it.

All I’m saying is too many GitHub repos are written for CVs; as if they’re meant to be consumed by Google. If something is a weekend project then just be honest and say “this is a weekend project written to solve my specific use case but PRs are welcome”. Thats better than having long blurbs that refer to the solo developer as “we” and all the other BS people stick into their READMEs to try and make their project sound better than it actually is.

All I’m asking for is a little more pragmatism and honesty in READMEs. It’s no extra effort. It’s no extra cost. And I shouldn’t have to donate to projects just to ensure they don’t lie to me.

It is interesting how every time this topic comes up it ends up with people for the most part in one of two camps: either the license is meant to be taken literally, or those who believe otherwise.

Of all the files in a repo, the LICENSE file is the one most important to take literally since it is a legal document.

So when it says something like (this from MIT license):

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

That is actually exactly what it means. There is specifically not even an implied suggestion that the software is suitable for your use.

If you want any kind of guarantee of the code being of any use to you, sign a contract and pay for it.

Unless you pay for that contract, nobody owes you any kind of hint as to whether the code is useful for anything. It very clearly says so in the LICENSE file.

It really isn’t much to ask people not to bullshit in their own README. That’s literally all I’m asking for. If you don’t want to offer software guarantees then don’t write your README like you offer it. It’s really that simple.

And your comment that I should pay every…single…maintainer of every…single…project on GitHub, just for them to disclose whether or not their project is experimental… well that’s just insane and completely misses the point of open source.

If we are talking about businesses relying on open source libraries then that would be a different matter. But not ever fscking thing being built is a VC-backed startup.

I say all of this as an open source maintainer. Just be honest in your READMEs.

A little honesty in the README costs nothing and we should be expecting more of it. And suggesting we lock that honesty behind a paywall is possibly the worst idea for open source imaginable. That simply isn’t the right way to monetise open source.

Edit: just to add, even if we were talking about software quality (which we wasn’t) paying for software doesn’t guarantee to you a better product. I could name a multitude of commercial solutions that I gave up on because the open source alternative was at least equivalent. But often even superior. And that’s before we talk about then enshitification phenomena.

Edit 2: sorry for all the edits. I should have just waited until I had proper time to reply calmly rather than commenting while doing chores and stuff around the house. My bad.

I'm not suggesting honesty should be behind a paywayll. Honesty should be upfront and it already is, in the license.

The license (most, anyway) clearly state the software is not necessarily suitable for any purpose and that's all you get.

If you require a higher level of confidence than none, then you should be paying for a support contract.

All I can say without being repetitive is that if you expect more than nothing when the license specifically says all you can expect is nothing, you might be disappointed more often than not.

This mind set of yours is a relatively recent development. Open source never used to be like that. And in fact, if it did operate the way you claimed, the open source ecosystem would never have grown into even remotely the size it is today.

And why you describe absolutely is not how any of more reputable libraries nor maintainers approach open source software.

So you might feel like you are legally correct. But you’re still completely missing the point.

> This mind set of yours is a relatively recent development.

I published my first open source (we didn't call it that) program in the 1980s.

I didn't know anything about licenses back then (and the open source licenses we use today didn't yet exist), so I just put a header comment on it saying something along the lines of "This code is public domain, feel free to try it but I can't guarantee it'll work for you." (although I can't remember exact wording). This is how it's always been.

> But you’re still completely missing the point.

I suggest considering the fact that you're disappointed that open source libraries aren't providing the guarantees you feel they owe you (which they don't) is an indicator that perhaps your expectations are not in line with what open source is all about.

Anyone who is making money off my open source work can PAY ME if they want signed, reproducible builds.

Anyone who is not paying me can use what I generously give away for free without THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Concerned about security? Good for you, build it yourself.

You’re missing the point again, but let’s just agree to disagree because it sounds like your more concerned about money than the topic being discussed. Which is fine. It’s an opinion. I just don’t agree that it’s relevant

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