[EpicEng]

Once you have a product, free or not, which is used and relied upon by a large group of people, you do owe them something. if you don't want that responsibility then don't release your code or get out when things become serious. I get the OSS philosophy, and I like many things about it, but I also understand why some won't touch it with a ten foot pole.

"Oh, I made a boneheaded error and now your code is 100x slower than it should be? Tough sh*t, fix it yourself. I owe you nothing!"

That's not a reasonable mentality to have if you want adoption. Obviously the Ruby devs don't feel this way, but you seem to. That sort of attitude is nonsense and short sighted.

[coldtea]

>Once you have a product, free or not, which is used and relied upon by a large group of people, you do owe them something.

No, you really don't. The fact is: they owe you something, but it's OK, since you give it away for free.

>If you don't want that responsibility then don't release your code or get out when things become serious.

Or else?

>That's not a reasonable mentality to have if you want adoption.

What if you DON'T want adoption? Or you want just the smart kids that can contribute back to adopt your code?

[EpicEng]

And philosophical OSS people wonder why so many people chose closed alternatives. If you don't want adoption, fine, but don't pretend like that's true for every OSS project out there. I have no problem with that mentality until it comes into stark contrast with the goals of those pushing OSS (see: EFF.) You're not going to be taken seriously by people if you don't support the code you put out there.

>Or else?

Or else people just don't use your software and don't buy into your ideology. If you don't care, fine, but obviously many OSS proponents do.

[coldtea]

>. I have no problem with that mentality until it comes into stark contrast with the goals of those pushing OSS (see: EFF.)

Actually EFF has little to do with OSS.

Perhaps you meant FSF. In any case, most OSS software that isn't GNU has very little if anything to do with FSF. Some OSS authors, especially those MIT-licence inclined, even hate its guts.

[EpicEng]

...Yes, FSF. I think I made that typo twice today. I know that not all OSS proponents agree on everything, but I do think that they all agree on the overall benefits of OSS and would like more people to stick with OSS. That's what I'm talking about here.

[wukerplank]

> Tough sh*t, fix it yourself.

I never said that, but most projects welcome pull requests.

> I owe you nothing!

True, it's the short version of the MIT license.

> That's not a reasonable mentality to have if you want adoption.

Yes, maintainers should always try to take care of their projects and to accommodate the needs of their communities.

> Obviously the Ruby devs don't feel this way, but you seem to.

You are over-interpreting. But I hate seeing more and more OSS contributors getting burnt out and steamrolled by a self-entitled rout.

[EpicEng]

Sorry of I misinterpreted your position, I thought that was exactly what you meant.

[chowyuncat]

Please describe why you believe the product owners owe the userbase something.

[EpicEng]

Because, for those projects who want a thriving userbase, the developers said "come, use our software to solve your problems." Once you do that you are making a promise to your users, whether explicit or implicit, that you'll be there when things go wrong.

If you release some script or small program which was useful to you thinking that it may help someone else down the road, I agree, you don't owe your users anything. However, when you position your solution as something people should adopt (e.g. RoR, etc) then you do owe a level of quality and support to your users (not saying RoR doesn't, just a random example.)

I love OSS, but every time it bites a user in the behind it loses mindshare.