[wat10000]

Now imagine I make a weird cake and I think it's interesting. I put up a poster with a photo and a recipe and say "thought this was cool, try it if you want." And then some nonce comes along and tells me off for a reckless disregard of other people's time and nerves. Compares it to an open manhole cover that could get somebody killed.

Throwing some interesting code onto a web site isn't like setting up a booth at a community event. Its not even really like putting up a poster, since posters get seen by whoever happens to come nearby whereas web sites only get seen by people who seek them out, but it's about the closest you'll get to a real-world analogy.

[M95D]

Probably won't get anyone killed, but I've seen loss of data. Valuable data. And now you're going to point to the disclaimer and 321 backups...

Websites are seen by everyone seeking not a site, but a feature, via search engines. Same as a poster if you look in that direction.

[wat10000]

Why are you trusting data to some random open-source project with no documentation?

The search engine is only going to direct you to my open source repo if you're searching for whatever it does. It's as if you'd only see my cake recipe if you were searching for cake recipes. And just like cake recipes, your search results will contain everything from superb production-tested projects (if there are any) to random stuff people have put up that isn't really used.

If you're searching for software and you find some random project that isn't very well tested or maintained, and you put that project to use in a place where it can cause data loss, that again sounds like a you problem.

[M95D]

Let me change the perspective:

Are you in any way no matter how small responsible for what you create, what you post online, and what effects those actions have on other people?

[wat10000]

Sometimes!

If I post an article about how drinking bleach makes your skin softer, I share responsibility when someone does it.

If I post an article about how to make your own bleach, and a reader says “that sounds tasty” and drinks some, that’s not my responsibility in any way.

If I put up some trash code with a README that says “this is solid, reliable code that you should use for storing all of your financial data and family photos,” I have responsibility for what happens when people do that. If I just put up some trash code and say, I thought this was interesting and wanted to share it, and some numbskull decided to use it for something critical without thoroughly evaluating it first, not my responsibility.

[M95D]

> README that says “this is solid, reliable code that you should use for storing all of your financial data and family photos,”

Show me a readme like that! I'll wait.

Everybody writes a legalese disclaimer that basically say it's trash software and the author has no resposibility, but here's the thing: everybody ignores it. This is the reality of FOSS software.

Nobody has the time to audit the code of every FOSS they use. We all assume some basic quality such as not deleteting /var/db and the responsibility is yours to not do that or not publish it, no matter what you wrote in the readme/disclaimer.

[wat10000]

“ SQLite is a C-language library that implements a small, fast, self-contained, high-reliability, full-featured, SQL database engine. SQLite is the most used database engine in the world. SQLite is built into all mobile phones and most computers and comes bundled inside countless other applications that people use every day.”

You don’t have to fully audit what you use, but you’d better do some basic vetting. If there’s no web site, no documentation, no activity on the issue tracker, then maybe when you put all your precious data into the thing and lose it, that’s your problem.