[Senderman]

You open implying that the original commenter's grievance in untrue outside of "throwing up some code," but at the end you say the opposite, and agree that it's "no excuse for being rude to them." I think you agree the original comment basically represents the truth, but you want to offer an elaboration on the complexities -- that's great, but why present your comment as a rebuttal?

I like your point about 'payment' not being a magic excuse for switching from not-rude to rude.

I don't accept the food analogy. You need food to survive, and you might need it free if you get stuck in life. You don't need free software - it's a bonus.

You mentioned the food-poisoning suing example - IA(also)NAL but if you put free software online without everybody's favourite "AS IS" block at the top, I believe you're on the hook if your software doesn't behave properly, so it looks to me like the law agrees with your notions.

Personally, I find the expectations over people offering software for free to be, broadly speaking, obnoxious - I definitely have a chip on my shoulder about it and I know that's coming out in this comment, so, apologies for the out of the blue railroading; your comment is the one that got me to articulate all the above, so, thanks.

[dragonwriter]

> IA(also)NAL but if you put free software online without everybody's favourite "AS IS" block at the top, I believe you're on the hook if your software doesn't behave properly

That's a complex question about implied warranty that probably is affected by whether or not you are meet the legal standard to be considered a merchant of the type of good/service provided and other factors (and the AS IS block definitely discourages people to sue, but you may not actually be able to disclaim the warranty involved, so it may not get you off the hook.)