zlacker

>>levlaz+(OP)
On the one side: Yes, truer words have never been spoken. You want a new feature added? Want to talk about how the project should change directions? Want to impose new rules? Do a little power play? Yeah, start working on the project, implementing changes/features you want to see.

On the other side: No. When you provide software that is widely used and that people rely on, you automatically created a community where fixing bugs is an obligation. Your software has become a corner stone in other people’s software stack/life and so those people and their issues with your software have become your problem, too. If you want it or not.

Hiding behind open source and not fixing bugs has become a deal breaker so many times over the last few decades, that I stopped counting. Not everybody knows the language needed to fix a bug and not everybody understands the dependencies within a project to being able to fix a bug. So “fixing” one bug can create ten new ones and make things much worse.

Not to mention what happens when you attempt to fix the bug but the source is not accepted upstream because it’s bad, which is understandable, but still leaves you with an upstream version of the software and your patched version that fixes said bug.

>>Grimet+ad
Well, never use a dependency that you couldn't write or maintain yourself. It's really quite simple. As soon as you use a dependency, you take ownership of that code within your project. If you need changes made that the dependency owner isn't willing to do then fork the dependency. If you can't do that, don't use that dependency.

The actual advantage of open source is that you actually have access to the code, create a fork and maintain it yourself if things go south.

>>flohof+je
> Well, never use a dependency that you couldn't write or maintain yourself.

I must ask, do you use Linux?

(Linus, notably: can be hard on maintainers, very respectful of userspace)

>>msteff+mK1
> (Linus, notably: can be hard on maintainers, very respectful of userspace)

Yes, he is. But that's not because he has a duty to do so. It's because he chooses to, and because he can afford to so choose. If he stops doing it tomorrow, sure, a lot of people will have to scramble, but it's still up to him.