[tunesmith]

If you make your project public, does it by definition mean you are open to other people using your release? I think there's a difference between "Hey, use this project of mine," and "If you use this project, you're on your own..." I think a lot of these debates come down to this confusion. Some people assume the former (and expect some level of response), some the latter (and say it's as simple as forking if you have a problem). Therefore I think anyone who releases should - morally/ethically, not legally/license - state what which philosophy they are following.

It'd be interesting if people could release their projects "abstract" fork-only. So they could publish releases that would be vetted and merged into the downstream forks, but would never be released as a deployable itself.

[kelnos]

It's really hard, though, because you'll always get people who will feel entitled. In the distant past I've released things and explicitly put in the readme something like "This is provided in the hope that it will be useful; I do not have time to support it and will not accept requests for help, but will consider merging patches that fix bugs or add useful functionality".

And yet I still got people who would ask for help with it, or file bugs without patches and then get angry when I wouldn't help them.