[HN Gopher] Polite Technology
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Polite Technology
Author : pella
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-11-26 12:59 UTC (3 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (polite.technology)
| quanticle wrote:
| _All in all, open sourcing a thing means taking responsibility
| for it. You 're making a statement that the thing will be
| available, updated, and real._
|
| I don't think it has to be this way. I think it's perfectly fine
| to say, "Sorry, I don't have time to maintain this project, if
| you want to fork it, be my guest." That is the beauty of open-
| source. Unlike proprietary code, I at least have the possibility
| of diagnosing and fixing the problem myself, with or without the
| maintainer's cooperation.
| detaro wrote:
| Very much agreed. Such a responsibility can come, e.g. when you
| push other people to use your project over alternatives, but
| the pure act of open-sourcing does not. Something to be said
| for clearly communicating intentions though, e.g. if you don't
| intend on spending time on contributions it doesn't hurt to
| just explicitly note that.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Agreed: anyone who releases closed-source software has some
| level of moral obligation to maintain it because the users
| can't do so.
|
| Open-source removes this limitation, and anyone could (in
| theory) maintain it to suit their needs.
| Zababa wrote:
| As said in the 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.
|
| In the GPL V2 license:
|
| > There is no warranty for the program, to the extent permitted
| by applicable law. Except when otherwise stated in writing the
| copyright holders and/or other parties provide the program "as
| is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied,
| including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of
| merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The
| entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program is
| with you. Should the program prove defective, you assume the
| cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction.
|
| It's usually in full uppercase too.
| dangoor wrote:
| +1
|
| At Khan Academy, we adopted a policy around open sourcing
| projects that talks about the _communication_ of the project 's
| status. We want to open source stuff (we're a non-profit
| learning organization, after all!), but we don't want to have
| to spend a lot of time maintaining non-core open source. As
| long as we tell people the maintenance status of a project, I
| think we're fine.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > I at least have the possibility of diagnosing and fixing the
| problem myself, with or without the maintainer's cooperation.
|
| In reality people do this with closed source software all the
| time, most especially visible in gaming where unofficial
| patches are often the only reason an older game will run on a
| modern OS.
| mbg721 wrote:
| There's a certain "buyer beware" quality to open-source stuff,
| and I think that's okay. You can see the sausage, after all.
| Maybe I just have low expectations, but I don't think there's a
| perpetual obligation on the part of creators to maintain the
| thing they released into the wild.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > There's a certain "buyer beware" quality to open-source
| stuff
|
| It's not a quality of open source. It's a quality of specific
| things, and not of other things. Just like with proprietary
| software.
|
| The only difference is that you need to beware a little less
| with open source, so more people are willing to.
| domador wrote:
| While I greatly appreciate open source, I don't think I can
| generally "beware a little less" with open source. On the
| plus side, I can generally be confident that an open-source
| program will not disappear and become completely
| unavailable to society. On the minus side, for less popular
| open-source projects, the usual lack of a reliable
| software-development business model makes me wary of the
| likelihood that a the project will keep being reliably
| maintained in the near term and will stay alive in the long
| term. Personally, I place greater trust and hope in
| specialized, usually-closed-source programs sold by small
| companies that are financially invested in maintaining and
| improving those programs.
|
| I doubt that it'd be easy for an abandoned, mildly popular
| open-source project to be revived by someone other than its
| creators. Whenever such a project is abandoned by its
| creators, I tend to lose hope that it will ever be revived,
| that new features will ever be added, or that existing bugs
| will ever be removed.
| ksec wrote:
| >I don't think it has to be this way.
|
| There are significant / very vocal people demand open source to
| be about the _community_. And Community Driven. And dumping
| code out isn 't very "open source" by their standards.
| sneak wrote:
| Shoutout to someone using the term "emotional labor" correctly!
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