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[return to "Open source is neither a community nor a democracy"]
1. Grimet+ad[view] [source] 2024-06-29 10:37:35
>>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.

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2. swatco+4N1[view] [source] 2024-06-30 05:23:01
>>Grimet+ad
> 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.

As noted in VERY LARGE PRINT at the top of almost every open source license for the last thirty years or so, the person taking the free stuff is responsible for whatever happens when they do. That's why it's free!

If you can support it yourself, great. If you can't, then you might need to hire someone to do so. If those options don't appeal to you, then you should probably buy an alternative that does not explicitly tell you that you're on your own.

Open source software exists so that the community of reasonable, responsible people can share work with each other without being caught in a rats nest of finger pointing, liability, and defensive practices like hiding source code or preventing alteration.

It is a two-sided contract, and the user's side of the contract is very explicitly to take responsiblity for what they choose to do with what they take.

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