It would be nice to have some context on this. I assume there was some drama regarding this "Cognitect" organisation named. As someone not involved with Clojure at, it's difficult to understand the context for why this post was created.
Lately I'm seeing more and more value in writing down expectations explicitly, especially when people's implicit assumptions about those expectations diverge.
The linked gist seems to mostly be describing a misalignment between the expectations of the project owners and its users. I don't know the context, but it seems to have been written in frustration. It does articulate a set of expectations, but it is written in a defensive and exasperated tone.
If I found myself in a situation like that today, I would write a CONTRIBUTING.md file in the project root that describes my expectations (eg. PRs are / are not welcome, decisions about the project are made in X fashion, etc.) in a dispassionate way. If users expressed expectations that were misaligned with my intentions, I would simply point them to CONTRIBUTING.md and close off the discussion. I would try to take this step long before I had the level of frustration that is expressed in the gist.
I don't say this to criticize the linked post; I've only recently come to this understanding. But it seems like a healthier approach than to let frustration and resentment grow over time.
I think community development with repos out in the open and all that is increasingly a too high cost. I will migrate my little open source projects from GitHub as soon as I can decide on what site to post source code releases (tar.gz). Happy to share my code, but no need for everything to be out in the open.
I feel much better after reading this because our organizations are:
- funding OSS developers
- engaging with OSS developers to determine potential funding priorities
- providing project hardware at the project level
- providing hardware to the individual OSS developer
While we are not to the point of hosting events in Hawaii yet, I’m hoping we can see this as a teaming arrangement to accomplish great things together!
It's funny how a hobby project becomes "a burden" when you have to consider making it friendly/easy to consume by everyone eg. writing docs from the basics like how to make a venv in python, get your env setup...
I can't say whether it accomplished its original intent, but my experience is that it's held up in really disappointing situations which sit counter to my collectivist values
I have a ton of experience with community-building, and what's espoused in this essay is an attack on the values of that world imho.
My take-home is that there are many conceptions of what "open source" is about, and from where its value flows
> As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all
I understand what the author means, but I think that in any human-2-human interaction, we are all entitled to at least basic courtesy. For example, if you show courtesy by contributing to an open source project and following all the guidelines they have, I think it's fair to assume that courtesy will be shown in return. I know that may be difficult to achieve (e.g., a high volume of noise preventing project authors from giving courtesy to those who deserve it), but that doesn'tt mean we are entitled to nothing. And this has nothing to do with open source or software; it's just common sense when dealing with people.
But yeah, if you contribute something of very poor quality (you didn't give it the attention it needed, it's full of bugs, or shows no attention to detail; or these days, it's packed with AI-generated content that makes it 10x harder to digest, even if the intention is good), then perhaps you are not entitled to anything
So, probably a dumb question from me, but why are we "all entitled to at least basic courtesy"? What is the "basic courtesy" that everyone has agreed to follow?
> this has nothing to do with open source or software; it's just common sense when dealing with people
Common sense is very different than entitlement. Back to the open source software point of view, your entitlement is described by the license. Basic courtesy, or even the opportunity to interact with anyone, is not included as a part of any open source license I remember. It isn't even a consideration for most [0].
- You are entitled to human decency. Maintainers don't get to be rude just because they run a project. This is a common thing in a lot of projects; maintainers have power, and this allows them to be rude without concern. Not ok.
- As a maintainer, if you publish your work as open source, you already acknowledge you are engaging with an entire community, culture, and ethos. We all know how it works: you put a license on your work that (often, but not always) says people need to share their changes. So those people may share their changes back to you, assuming you might want to integrate them. So you know this is going to happen... so you need to be prepared for that. That is a skill to learn.
- Since maintainers do owe basic human politeness, and they know people will be interacting with them, maintainers do owe this culture some form of communication of their intentions. If they don't want to take any changes, put that in CONTRIBUTING and turn off GH PRs. If they want to take changes, but no AI changes, put that in CONTRIBUTING. If they don't want to do support, turn off GH Issues. If they require a specific 10-point series of steps before they look at a PR or Issue, put that in CONTRIBUTING. It's on the user to read this document and follow it - but it's on you to create it, so they know how to interface with you.
Be polite, and tell people what you will and won't accept in CONTRIBUTING (and/or SUPPORT). Even if it's just "No contributing", "No support". (My personal issue: I spend hours working on preparing an Issue or PR to fix someone's project, and they ignore or close it without a word. Now I don't want to contribute to anything. This is bad for the open source community.)
I think the issue is answering the question whats the business model ? If the team makes money consulting on clojure, then thats likely a bad model since I have not seen a single example of people paying for advice on coding. Usually the answer is to hire a coder who knows thier stuff and increasingly to use AI.
Open source for infrastructure products work just fine. It simplifies distribution by eliminating the need for procurement, builds some kind of attachment since people love using their own tinkered products and hedges risk for the customer since if the devs stop working on the product someone else will pick up.
But having to fill out forms, doing compliance work are great money making levers for which you just charge through the nose. Ultimately, open soircing is a distribution strategy and whether you should adopt it or not is dependent on the context. Most infra products do and it works out fine. Case in point: Clickhouse, Kafka, Grafana, Sentry, RedHat, Gitlab.
Its an interesting situation when an asset (like an open source project) is run by a team of volunteers (community)... but due to licensing, it kind of belongs to the whole world (community)
As a user of a project, I DO have a voice... but unless I am actively contributing (money, time, resources), then my voice has a different weight.
On the one hand, I don't like the idea that anyone should get more influence simply because they pay money... or that anyone should have more power just because they are active in the project. Both of those situations are possible paths for corruption or abuse of power.
On the other hand, the tragedy of the commons is a real thing. People who take, never give back, and then have the audacity to not only ask but demand things... well, that makes me angry.
I've moved from being an idealist to a realist, when it comes to open source. I think the evolving models we are seeing that restrict commercial competition are sometimes pretty good (overall), and the rise in COSS is a positive sign. We need to ensure that good projects have a way to sustain themselves.
The best projects have people (or even teams) who are focused on bringing new people in and helping them contribute. Not everyone can do that, but I think finding ways to enable people to contribute (money, time, etc) is an important part of building the community.
> As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all
As a user of Hackernews you're not thereby entitled to anything at all.
As a member of the thing(forums, discord channels, facebook groups, any online community and real life community) you're not necessarily thereby entitled to anything at all.
Even as a user of some proprietary software, you're still not entitled to anything except perhaps critical bugfixes and security updates. Software is sold on shrinkwrap basis. You got what you bought.
It doesn't mean expressing your opinions about Hackernews, the thing or some proprietary software, even negative ones, is inherently wrong.
Humans who want to use the software, and humans who author (or control dependencies of) the software.
Commenting as if this was a comment on yesterday's clawdbot-thread; I know it isn't, and it has previously been submitted here and is a good text.
It's about entitlement and using free OSS vs paying for a software product, I know.
But I think the gist of this gist can be generalized from "why you should not feel entitled to anything as a FOSS user" to "why software is about humans".
Especially because the commercial aspect is not as direct as in paid closed-source software for FOSS, but pressure (including commercial and/or social pressure) still exists.
Edit: "still" is not even a fitting word here, because the reliance of commercial software on FOSS is the societal change that causes this change in issue reporting, I'd say.
Crowd dynamics / psychological aspects cannot be ignored anywhere.
Open source has many altruistic and smart people that like to learn and build while benefiting others.
But then you also have high ego people motivated by building a personal brand, prestige and status... and open source is just means to that end. While their contributions are valuable, conflicts of interest arise.
For those who maintain FOSS projects: How often when a user requests/demands your attention to support/fix/enhance the project to suit their particular needs, do they actually pay you something once you explain that what they are asking for, comes with a price?
You are not entitled to that food or land over there, neither am I. What are we gonna do about it?
You're naive if you think your immune to social exploitation just cause you write some words. Your entire being is defined by social exploitation. You adopt our language, our roles etc but you believe you can transcend them when it's convenient. Developers aren't entitled to make people reliant on software and ghost them.
I'm sure teachers, firefighters and congress (lol) would all love to stay home and wait out the collapse of society, but they go to work because people rely on them. It's an odd thing for me to build a firetruck, go around pretending to be a firefighter (out compete and make the firefighters lose funding) and then snap back at people expecting me to work for free even though governments do fund open source.
If you volunteer as a crossing guard, even if you aren't paid, you have a duty of care. There aren't currently laws against your behavior, but if there is a pattern of such behavior it may be illegal. The EU through the CRA is doing good work in this regard.
Of course governments shouldn't compel people to work (>.o). But nobody wants to live in a world of abandoned core infrastructure projects. You aren't an exception, but you thought yourself special when you decided to work for free. Now instead of understanding why people work for money you scrawl against human nature.
40 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 49.9 ms ] threadThe linked gist seems to mostly be describing a misalignment between the expectations of the project owners and its users. I don't know the context, but it seems to have been written in frustration. It does articulate a set of expectations, but it is written in a defensive and exasperated tone.
If I found myself in a situation like that today, I would write a CONTRIBUTING.md file in the project root that describes my expectations (eg. PRs are / are not welcome, decisions about the project are made in X fashion, etc.) in a dispassionate way. If users expressed expectations that were misaligned with my intentions, I would simply point them to CONTRIBUTING.md and close off the discussion. I would try to take this step long before I had the level of frustration that is expressed in the gist.
I don't say this to criticize the linked post; I've only recently come to this understanding. But it seems like a healthier approach than to let frustration and resentment grow over time.
While we are not to the point of hosting events in Hawaii yet, I’m hoping we can see this as a teaming arrangement to accomplish great things together!
It's funny how a hobby project becomes "a burden" when you have to consider making it friendly/easy to consume by everyone eg. writing docs from the basics like how to make a venv in python, get your env setup...
I can't say whether it accomplished its original intent, but my experience is that it's held up in really disappointing situations which sit counter to my collectivist values
I have a ton of experience with community-building, and what's espoused in this essay is an attack on the values of that world imho.
My take-home is that there are many conceptions of what "open source" is about, and from where its value flows
That's new
Edit: https://web.archive.org/web/20260213161600/https://gist.gith...
That you are entitled to have say too.
That such & such says should be followed, nope.
But one could say it's even less about you with close source.
Just look at clojure's stats and understand what this "wisdom" brings
I understand what the author means, but I think that in any human-2-human interaction, we are all entitled to at least basic courtesy. For example, if you show courtesy by contributing to an open source project and following all the guidelines they have, I think it's fair to assume that courtesy will be shown in return. I know that may be difficult to achieve (e.g., a high volume of noise preventing project authors from giving courtesy to those who deserve it), but that doesn'tt mean we are entitled to nothing. And this has nothing to do with open source or software; it's just common sense when dealing with people.
But yeah, if you contribute something of very poor quality (you didn't give it the attention it needed, it's full of bugs, or shows no attention to detail; or these days, it's packed with AI-generated content that makes it 10x harder to digest, even if the intention is good), then perhaps you are not entitled to anything
> this has nothing to do with open source or software; it's just common sense when dealing with people
Common sense is very different than entitlement. Back to the open source software point of view, your entitlement is described by the license. Basic courtesy, or even the opportunity to interact with anyone, is not included as a part of any open source license I remember. It isn't even a consideration for most [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-so...
- You are entitled to human decency. Maintainers don't get to be rude just because they run a project. This is a common thing in a lot of projects; maintainers have power, and this allows them to be rude without concern. Not ok.
- As a maintainer, if you publish your work as open source, you already acknowledge you are engaging with an entire community, culture, and ethos. We all know how it works: you put a license on your work that (often, but not always) says people need to share their changes. So those people may share their changes back to you, assuming you might want to integrate them. So you know this is going to happen... so you need to be prepared for that. That is a skill to learn.
- Since maintainers do owe basic human politeness, and they know people will be interacting with them, maintainers do owe this culture some form of communication of their intentions. If they don't want to take any changes, put that in CONTRIBUTING and turn off GH PRs. If they want to take changes, but no AI changes, put that in CONTRIBUTING. If they don't want to do support, turn off GH Issues. If they require a specific 10-point series of steps before they look at a PR or Issue, put that in CONTRIBUTING. It's on the user to read this document and follow it - but it's on you to create it, so they know how to interface with you.
Be polite, and tell people what you will and won't accept in CONTRIBUTING (and/or SUPPORT). Even if it's just "No contributing", "No support". (My personal issue: I spend hours working on preparing an Issue or PR to fix someone's project, and they ignore or close it without a word. Now I don't want to contribute to anything. This is bad for the open source community.)
Open source for infrastructure products work just fine. It simplifies distribution by eliminating the need for procurement, builds some kind of attachment since people love using their own tinkered products and hedges risk for the customer since if the devs stop working on the product someone else will pick up.
But having to fill out forms, doing compliance work are great money making levers for which you just charge through the nose. Ultimately, open soircing is a distribution strategy and whether you should adopt it or not is dependent on the context. Most infra products do and it works out fine. Case in point: Clickhouse, Kafka, Grafana, Sentry, RedHat, Gitlab.
Nobody owes you a new release, or a signed binary, or a feature you care about.
As a user of a project, I DO have a voice... but unless I am actively contributing (money, time, resources), then my voice has a different weight.
On the one hand, I don't like the idea that anyone should get more influence simply because they pay money... or that anyone should have more power just because they are active in the project. Both of those situations are possible paths for corruption or abuse of power.
On the other hand, the tragedy of the commons is a real thing. People who take, never give back, and then have the audacity to not only ask but demand things... well, that makes me angry.
I've moved from being an idealist to a realist, when it comes to open source. I think the evolving models we are seeing that restrict commercial competition are sometimes pretty good (overall), and the rise in COSS is a positive sign. We need to ensure that good projects have a way to sustain themselves.
The best projects have people (or even teams) who are focused on bringing new people in and helping them contribute. Not everyone can do that, but I think finding ways to enable people to contribute (money, time, etc) is an important part of building the community.
As a user of Hackernews you're not thereby entitled to anything at all.
As a member of the thing(forums, discord channels, facebook groups, any online community and real life community) you're not necessarily thereby entitled to anything at all.
Even as a user of some proprietary software, you're still not entitled to anything except perhaps critical bugfixes and security updates. Software is sold on shrinkwrap basis. You got what you bought.
It doesn't mean expressing your opinions about Hackernews, the thing or some proprietary software, even negative ones, is inherently wrong.
Humans who want to use the software, and humans who author (or control dependencies of) the software.
Commenting as if this was a comment on yesterday's clawdbot-thread; I know it isn't, and it has previously been submitted here and is a good text.
It's about entitlement and using free OSS vs paying for a software product, I know.
But I think the gist of this gist can be generalized from "why you should not feel entitled to anything as a FOSS user" to "why software is about humans".
Especially because the commercial aspect is not as direct as in paid closed-source software for FOSS, but pressure (including commercial and/or social pressure) still exists.
Edit: "still" is not even a fitting word here, because the reliance of commercial software on FOSS is the societal change that causes this change in issue reporting, I'd say.
Crowd dynamics / psychological aspects cannot be ignored anywhere.
But then you also have high ego people motivated by building a personal brand, prestige and status... and open source is just means to that end. While their contributions are valuable, conflicts of interest arise.
You're naive if you think your immune to social exploitation just cause you write some words. Your entire being is defined by social exploitation. You adopt our language, our roles etc but you believe you can transcend them when it's convenient. Developers aren't entitled to make people reliant on software and ghost them. I'm sure teachers, firefighters and congress (lol) would all love to stay home and wait out the collapse of society, but they go to work because people rely on them. It's an odd thing for me to build a firetruck, go around pretending to be a firefighter (out compete and make the firefighters lose funding) and then snap back at people expecting me to work for free even though governments do fund open source.
If you volunteer as a crossing guard, even if you aren't paid, you have a duty of care. There aren't currently laws against your behavior, but if there is a pattern of such behavior it may be illegal. The EU through the CRA is doing good work in this regard.
Of course governments shouldn't compel people to work (>.o). But nobody wants to live in a world of abandoned core infrastructure projects. You aren't an exception, but you thought yourself special when you decided to work for free. Now instead of understanding why people work for money you scrawl against human nature.
Once again confusing the two and proving that “Open Source” was the worst thing to ever happen to “Free Software”