[dharmab]

I make an open source, MIT licensed piece of software. I don't accept unsolicited contributions, but I document that people are free to fork the code and provide instructions on how to develop, test and build on your machine.

Am I "fake open source"?

[Alupis]

In my opinion, the spirit of open source goes beyond just tossing code over a wall for people to look at. In my opinion, it means accepting engagement from your users, their inputs and their contributions when/where warranted.

In my opinion, for something to be truly open source, I should be able to fix a bug I ran into, or implement a feature from the backlog and contribute it back upstream. If upstream is just going to ignore my contribution, pretend it doesn't exist, or reject it just because - then that codebase is just pretending to be open source.

That's not to say you are required to accept all contributions - I'm saying you should be open to contributions that A) save you time B) enhance the codebase or C) fix confirmed bugs.

In Microsoft's case - I don't see a lot of that going on. I see lots of Issues (bug reports), some PR's, but mostly opaque decision making, and complete silence on things the Corporate side of Microsoft doesn't want to comment on yet. Which is the beef - it's a corporate project run like it's proprietary but you can go look at the code. Again, better than nothing, but it's not really what I consider true open source.

[thewebguyd]

> In my opinion, the spirit of open source goes beyond just tossing code over a wall for people to look at. In my opinion, it means accepting engagement from your users, their inputs and their contributions when/where warranted.

I disagree. There's nothing about open source or the various open source licenses that require accepting engagement from the community and/or contributions.

Open source means allowing modifications, and sharing those modifications. It's in most licenses that the software is provided as is and without warranty.

> In my opinion, for something to be truly open source, I should be able to fix a bug I ran into, or implement a feature from the backlog and contribute it back upstream. If upstream is just going to ignore my contribution, pretend it doesn't exist, or reject it just because - then that codebase is just pretending to be open source.

A project not accepting outside contributions is still open source, not pretending to be, and the beauty of it is - if you want it to accept outside contributions, you are able to fork it and accept contributions on your own fork, or otherwise share your modifications. But there's absolutely no obligation of the original dev/owner to accept or engage with anything from the community. It's in the license, the software is provided as is and without warranty of any kind.

Maybe it's worthwhile to coin a new term, community software, to specifically make a distinction between projects that are community developed (accept contributions) vs those that don't.

[krab]

Wow, that's stretching it a bit, isn't it?

I'd say the spirit of open source is that others are free to modify the code and that's it. This requires a good license, the possibility to fork, some documentation and a way to build the project yourself.

But why would accepting contributions be required?

[NewsaHackO]

A lot of people are very entitled. They think that an open-source project gives the right to make request/demand of the project. Even if they are willing to write the contribution themselves, they still think they have the right to have their pull request accepted. They forget that 1) it may be outside the scope of the project, and 2) the project owners are going to be the ones that have to actually maintain the code they commit. Crazy stuff.

[throwaway2037]

I am 100% in agreement with your sentiment.

This blog post is legendary (in my mind): "Open Source Maintainers Owe You Nothing" -> https://mikemcquaid.com/open-source-maintainers-owe-you-noth...

It perfectly sums up how this conversation is going.

[hn_acc1]

What if you want implement a feature, but they don't have time to look at it and make sure it's secure, or support future bugs? Look at the xz (IIRC) hack - not everyone has tons of free time.

How long after they release their code are the required to keep this up? Do they need to respond to your requests within 5 business days?

If they retire / move on to another project, does the source code stop being open source?

[neongreen]

I have the same feeling. I got used to infrastructure being run as a democracy, not merely “source available under GPL/BSD/MIT”. (It’s a big thing to want, sure, but I don’t mind wanting big things.)

[thewebguyd]

IMO, no. The open source definition says nothing about requiring outside contributions, and IMO the spirit of it in the beginning was never about that.

It was about being able to have access to, fork/modify, and redistribute the software. That's the important thing - that the software I use can be modified by me, and if I wish to do so, the license allows me to then redistribute those changes vs. proprietary software, which cannot be modified nor redistributed.

I'm not sure why the zeitgeist went from the above and turned into "all open source must be community software and engage with users and accept contributions" because that was never what it was about. It was a benefit of some projects, sure, but at the end of the day the important thing isn't whether or not the project accepts contributions but whether I have the power and license to modify something to my liking, fork it if I wash, and/or redistribute my changes.

[cess11]

No, but you've deliberately chosen to not make it free software.