zlacker

I have long thought that what the broader zeitgeist considers "open source" has diverged significantly from the OSI definition. Many don't even really know it exists, much less consider it. This aspect is one of them. The author is absolutely right that it does not, but I think many people's expectation of a modern open source project is that it provides them.

>>stevek+(OP)
Agreed. I think most people think an open source project means there is also a public repository, a public issue/bug tracker which is generally open for anyone to participate, responsive developers handling those issues in a respectful and "professional" manner, and as mentioned, pre-compiled builds for the three main OS families, and likely more specialized builds as well.

I'm sure there's more I'm missing; these are the first I came up with. Do people expect good documentation these days? A Discord server or other chat forum?

>>eesmit+e6
I think you're right, but a lot of these things are dependent on how large of a project it is. The highest order bit is some sort of open, democratic-ish (at least nominally) governance and/or acceptance of patches from outside of the team, I think. It starts with "public issue tracker and responsive, professional developers" and then grows from there.

>>stevek+(OP)
I’m not disagreeing with you. I just think it’s amazing that people expect ANYTHING from stuff provided to them for free.

I will admit, I do have some expectations of the free software I use. I expect it won’t “rm -rf” my files, or mine Bitcoin.

But builds? Open governance? Maintenance? Good grief, what basis would I have to expect any of that from something for which I paid absolutely nothing?

>>stevek+(OP)
I hadn't thought about it in quite that way, but I think you're right. Posts like this (where we end up with discussions of what maintainers of open source projects are "obligated" to do or provide) seem to come up often enough on HN that I've definitely seen a shift over the past decade or more. People seem a lot more entitled than they used to about open source.

From my perspective users are owed nothing. Everything on top of that is a bonus. If the maintainer doesn't have a bug tracker or a way to provide feedback, or doesn't even want to have a public VCS, but just posts tarballs to a website every time there's a release, that's their prerogative. People are certainly free not to use it if they don't like the development process, but the developer doesn't owe anyone anything.

I do wonder what's responsible for this shift. A shitty part of me wants to blame Millennial/Zoomer shifts in attitude based on how they were raised to expect to be handled the world on a platter, but that feels like lazy, prejudicial thinking. But I'm at a loss for what the real cause might be.

Edit: Thinking about this a bit more while writing a different comment, I wonder if it's a result of influencer / social media culture. People in those spheres want likes/engagement, want to promote their brand and get recognition, etc. So your average person might think that any open source maintainer would want that too, and think that providing all these extra niceties and polish should be table stakes. I don't agree with any of that, but I kinda see how people could get there.

>>kelnos+mB
I think there's also a lack of acknowledgement over the difference in some people politely asking for something and believing that an open source piece of software isn't high quality or production ready if it doesn't provide those niceties and someone just saying "give me feature X or you're an asshole, work harder".

I think most people fall in the former camp, it's completely fine to politely ask for something, but you have to be okay if they refuse. The latter is just pure entitlement.

>>stevek+(OP)
I probably wouldn't want to use an open source project without builds (unless it was trivial to build, such as a node project with npm). Not saying anybody have to provide me with anything, just pointing out the obvious.