[shaunpersad]

AITA for thinking that if you develop open-source software and your license permits anyone to use it for free, then complaining about no compensation is not a valid complaint?

I totally understand that billionaire corporations use software like this for free. But the software maintainer has explicitly allowed _anyone_ to use it for free. If you don't want them to use it for free, license it as such.

What am I not seeing here?

[foxfluff]

> But the software maintainer has explicitly allowed _anyone_ to use it for free. If you don't want them to use it for free, license it as such.

I support freedom of speech too; I explicitly allow you (or anyone) to be an asshole, but if everyone is an asshole all the time, I might pick up my toys and leave.

That's right, I prefer a world where people are nice and do nice things voluntarily and out of respect / compassion / desire to suppport / etc. instead of doing things a certain way because a law or contract requires it.

And so is largely my stance on free software (and more.. music, games, etc.). I would not expect most people to pay or donate, and it would be impossible to write a license that requires it without discriminating against those who can't or just don't find it worthwhile. Free software works best when it comes with no strings attached.

However, if something I made got really popular and thousands of companies started relying on it, I'd expect to see at least some support. And if everyone just kept taking but never showed any support, it's quite possible I'd get burned out on it, especially if popularity also came with a lot of demands and entitlement. And if everyone felt entitled to just take and never give, I would also feel totally entitled to replace my own project with "thanks for all the fish" when I'm done with it.

[melony]

That's fine, but then the downstream shouldn't complain either when the code breaks, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The contract on paper disclaims all liability after all. There is a social contract and then there is the literal contract. A lot of commenters here seem to be willfully obtuse or simply ignoring the former.

[stjohnswarts]

It still doesn't mean you can't call the guy out for being an asshole. However, that's the only relief you'll get in matters such as these. Other avenues would be to tweet about it and make it known that this is what you can expect from the same guy in the future so avoid him for future work as he won't be acting like an adult.

[syshum]

That also does not mean you cant call out the corporations that are leaching off open source...

I find it ironic that people are more upset at this guy for complaining about corporations, than they are about the corporations leaching...

the dev and hacker communities have really gone full on #HailCorporate haven't they. Where did my anti-establishment Libre community of the 90's go... I long for the good old days

[lolinder]

We're not upset at the guy for complaining about corporations. We're upset at him for pulling a stunt that may have hurt some large corporations, but mostly just caught a lot of small projects in the crossfire.

[NotVerstappen]

Watching people piss into the wind is fun until you get some on your shoes.

[lenkite]

He is leeching off a "corpo" by hosting his library on a "corpo" site.

[Sebb767]

There's a difference between stopping to give away your stuff for free and acting maliciously.

If I give away donuts for free and stop at some point, you have no right to complain. If I poison the donuts because you should've really thrown money at me for those donuts that I explicitly marked as free, I think you could complain after all.

[CJefferson]

If someone was offering free donuts with a sign that looked anything like the MIT license, you would be a fool to eat them.

[Sebb767]

If you don't take food as an example, see it like this: If I gift you a hammer, MIT disclaimer and all, you should not complain if it does not work or falls apart on the first few uses. Totally fine.

If I rig the hammer with a grenade in the head, so that it will violently explode the first time you use it - do you still think this is covered under the terms of the MIT license?

[CJefferson]

I agree with you, but I think this case is more like one day you go to borrow the hammer and it "falls apart" (the library is useless as it enters an infinite loop). A grenade would be an 'rm -rf', or trying to steal your user's data, which they could have done, and would have crossed a line.

[sertraline]

My parents always taught me not to take donuts from unknown people, especially when they're free. It's common sense and corpos take all fault for taking an easy fix to save their own developer hours at someone's else expense. Now, when it turns out there are consequences to this, corpos aren't that happy.

[Dracophoenix]

With that argument, you might as well say that open-source/free software shouldn't exist.

[sertraline]

My argument is that you shouldn't automatically trust it just because it's free. You shouldn't rely your entire infrastructure, and, perhaps, life, on it. If you do, there is no one at fault but you, because you passed all the responsibility to someone you have no control over. You are not entitled to protection and safety from the side of developer just because you said you rely on them - they are not going to carry your burden when it's not their job to do so.

Either you stay cautious, in which case you maintain your own forks for your own business or reinvent the wheel, so you don't rely on others that much, or you admit that you can't just reject this dependency - in which case it becomes either a public infrastructure, or a "donut business" on its own, and both should be financed as such. Take Linux as example, Linux is backed up by corporations and financing because everyone understands how crucial Linux is for our living. People took all the necessary steps to guarantee that kernel dev team is not going to disappear at any moment.

This is not the first and not the last time this happened. For some reason people think that open-source devs owe them something just because they had the right to bring their projects into existence. Javascript environment especially suffers from it because of unknown obsession of people to depend on packages which contain 1-2 lines of code at best, packages that can disappear at any moment.

Faker dev acted maliciously, but no one could guarantee that he wouldn't. No one was there to care about his mental state, or his wallet contents, and only relatively small companies and few people donated to his project, something he worked on for over a decade.

Sure, you can blame him all the way you want, but that won't undo the damage. If you rely on something maintained by an individual, you have to take into account that this individual is an actual human, this human actually exists and like any other human he is a subject of free will and uncertain futures, and whatever risks come with it. If you don't, this is what happens to you.

[Dracophoenix]

I have no contention with the argument for due diligence and self-preservation. It's your comparison of OSS with potentially poisoned donuts that strikes me as the same facile arguments made by the Not Invented Here types. It's one thing say your infrastructure is your problem. It's another to suggest that anything free as in free beer is ipso facto too good to be true. That's an unsubstantiated reductionist take.

The linux kernel was not always as well-financed as it has become. Before it's recent about-face, Microsoft financed attempts to stifle Linux. Linux's continued existence has rested always on the merit of its utility, whether to hobbyists or to corporations.

The Faker dev may not owe the rest of the world anything, just as the world doesn't owe anything to him. But what about those who have payed or contributed to his work? Are you of the view the anyone who sincerely their money, time, and intellectual output into Faker deserved to be suckered? Those people are human beings too. They deserve something for their investments rather than being used as unwitting pawns for someone's mental breakdown-induced prank.

Taking your view of security to its natural conclusion, no person should use a computer if he/she didn't bake the silicon wafer himself/herself. Otherwise he/she shouldn't complain if he/she becomes a victim of fraud or misrepresentation.

[shukantpal]

> That's fine, but then the downstream shouldn't complain either when the code breaks, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

There's no contract that says complaining is banned.

[Dylan16807]

That's the point. If the dev complaints are invalid because the contract doesn't say so, then the downstream complaints should also be invalid.

[dariusj18]

Except the license does say so

[Dylan16807]

The license does say what?

The license doesn't say any payment is necessary.

The license doesn't say new versions will still work.

The license doesn't say anything about complaints.

If it's valid to complain about code breaking, it should also be valid to complain about lack of payment. These complaints are outside of the legal mandates of the license.

[shaunpersad]

It isn't valid to complain about the code breaking. At least not with any consequences. Because the license explicitly says that the software is provided without warranty.

Likewise, the license explicitly says that the software is provided for free, therefore it isn't valid to complain about people not paying for it.

Nobody's on the side of the big corps here, but "why aren't you paying for this thing that I've given to everyone explicitly for free" seems nonsensical.

[saati]

The license says the code is "AS IS".

[contravariant]

Not sure if calling their complaints 'invalid' is really the most productive avenue here. They've maintained it for free, and have stopped doing so. I'd say their complaint they're not getting paid enough is about equally valid as the complaint that the software you've been using for free stops being maintained.

[Sophistifunk]

You are not TA here, and most people feel the same way. But it seems this particular author of OSS has.... "issues" of which this is really the least.

[IceDane]

Sure. But that works both ways.

If you're not going to support the development in any way, then you don't get to have an opinion on what should be done or complain about bugs.

Honestly, even then, I think we're stretching it. Maybe at the surface it seems like it should be that way, but this isn't just some tiny package that a few companies are using. We're talking about tens of millions of downloads every week. This package has essentially gone and become public infrastructure, much like log4j.

The companies relying on it should realize as much and understand that it's in their best interest to ensure that the package keeps on being maintained.

[supperburg]

So nobody should write OSS because you can’t complain about the fact that you chose to make it free. And nobody should use OSS because they can’t complain when the software is broken. I think this says a lot about open source software.

[stjohnswarts]

It's all freedom of speech. You can express yourself. It doesn't mean you aren't shouting into an uncaring void though… which is what I imagine most of the HN audience is when you're asking for sympathy when you released your software in a libre manner.

[the_gipsy]

Yea it sounds like baiting with something free to get users, then switching to solicitor mode.

[etchalon]

There are people who think its reasonable to take all the pennies from the "take a penny leave a penny" plate because "that's what it's there for."

[ineedasername]

OSS licenses generally don't have a "leave a penny" type of clause in them.

Writing software under some variety of a free license is essentially a donation. Authors shouldn't expect to get back anything: Imagine a person donated a ventilator machine to a hospital and it saved a few dozen lives and helped out hundreds more. It would seem strange to me if that person was later ranting that the combined net worth of the people helped by that machine was in the $millions and yet they never got any of that money.

That's how it sounds to me when when foss authors complain about not getting paid. It sounds like the subtext is, "If I had known how useful and popular this would be I would have charged for it." Which seems like a strange attitude to have when making something you give away for free in the hope that others found it useful.

[lolinder]

The difference is that there aren't a finite number of pennies on this plate. Software can, by definition, be copied an infinite number of times.

[etchalon]

I think you've missed the point.

[shaunpersad]

I assume you mean "take a penny" = "use the software for free" and "leave a penny" = "contribute back" (money or time).

With the plate there's a sign that says both "take" and "leave". In this case there is also a sign (the license) which only says "take". The intent is clear in both.

It's further not comparable because taking a literal penny deprives the next person of it, whereas here using the software for free costs the other users nothing.

But I'm not trying to nitpick the analogy, I only want to point out the the obligations (both social and contractual) are not the same, neither are the consequences.

Again, if he wanted to make money from his software, he should've put it in the license and charged the big users for it.

[Dylan16807]

It's very normal for packages to have donation requests, and for developer pages to have donation links.

The metaphorical sign does say take and leave, and the take vastly outweighs the leave.

> Again, if he wanted to make money from his software, he should've put it in the license and charged the big users for it.

A developer shouldn't have to ruin the open-source nature of the software to get there.

Maybe if we could invent some standardized almost-open-source license that doesn't terrify companies we could get there, but we can't even seem to define "commercial" in a way that doesn't break everything. Better still it would be nice if we could use social pressure to get companies to donate a small fraction of the money open source saves them.

[strken]

This is how I feel about people who create small but popular libraries and then complain about the workload. They're squatting on a valuable and finite resource, attention, that they don't like or appreciate. If you don't want it, sunset your library and let me write a replacement. I'll happily rewrite faker or left-pad for free, and so will hundreds of other developers.