No, there is no obligation. But there’s a thing called courtesy. And as humans there are certain social norms.
If someone spams me, I will ignore or retaliate by reporting as spam. If someone sends a low effort question, I might politely tell them to rtfm. If someone makes an effort to articulate a problem, even if I disagree, I’ll try to give them a reasoned response.
And if I genuinely have no interest in any interaction I’ll make sure to disable issues/comments or otherwise communicate this intent.
I’m not saying this to be pedantic. And I’m not denying that there is some social expectations when living in society.
If you say that there is no obligations, but also that you should follow some social expectations, then you’re contradicting yourself. It’s just a nicer way to say that people should behave according to what you consider to be acceptable.
Btw, which society rules do you mean? Because you have a lot of differences in different places regarding politeness and other social obligations.
Ok, so the problem here is that “obligation” has two meanings, and they’re being conflated here. One is pretty close to “being courteous to others” and the other is “you must do this”. When people say “maintainers have no obligation to anyone”, the point to the license where it usually says something like “THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS-IS WITH NO WARRANTY” and you can tell that it’s the legal “must” definition because it’s in all caps and written in a way that nobody actually would write. So that means that nobody can sue the maintainer when they don’t do something or the other. All good, right? Well, now the question being posed above is “does this mean that the maintainer can also be rid of their obligations in the sense of courtesy, not legality?” And now since there is a difference in the definitions it is not contradictory to want to say “yes” to the second question. And yes, you are correct to say that these differ based on circumstances and location: that’s OK, we don’t judge them in a court of law. We do, however, judge people for their failings to meet societal obligations, based on our personal judgements.
> No, there is no obligation. But there’s a thing called courtesy. And as humans there are certain social norms.
In my experience, there are no objective social norms or definition of "courtesy". What's polite in one culture might not be in another. Projecting your own values onto others isn't helpful.
Most cultures share some general social norms, such as courtesy to others. I would say it’s actually more unhelpful to dismiss norms entirely just because they have variance.
If someone spams me, I will ignore or retaliate by reporting as spam. If someone sends a low effort question, I might politely tell them to rtfm. If someone makes an effort to articulate a problem, even if I disagree, I’ll try to give them a reasoned response.
And if I genuinely have no interest in any interaction I’ll make sure to disable issues/comments or otherwise communicate this intent.