The Realities of Being a FOSS Maintainer

Re:The Realities of Being a FOSS Maintainer by rmrfrmrf on Saturday September 16, 2017 @02:21AM (#15263217)

I think the main problem is that the original announcement read more like a ransom note than a press release.

IMO the author doesn't realize how much price factors into tech stack decisions, or how the majority of his users are developers who now have the new responsibility of creating business cases for a piece of software (or scramble to find a replacement) that need to go through approval, or the projects that now have to be delayed to switch around one framework on the back end (I can just see the looks of manager/PM faces everywhere when they get the news from one of their devs).

The tone is another big issue. Flippant phrases like "what's new for personal edition users? Not much" isn't going to get any laughs after talking about mandatory payment. Other times, the disdain for users seeps from the wording (like the passive-aggressive "reminder" that internal apps constitute commercial use).

I'd really encourage the author to go back and re-read that announcement as a user who has taken a gamble on your software and is now invested in it. Yes, this might be a completely necessary move for the survival of Caddy. The necessity, though, doesn't mean you can skip the formalities. Users still need to be sold on the idea.

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Re:The Realities of Being a FOSS Maintainer by avaer on Saturday September 16, 2017 @02:29AM (#15263242)

Users don't need to be sold on the idea. They already bought. This is like buying something with your credit card, happily using it, and then getting upset by the charge on the corporate card at the end of the month. As a competent software professional you know the stakes of using free software.

The professional users will pay for the software they're using, or accept the consequences of the tech decisions they made. Maybe the release wording sucked, but software vendors shouldn't be on the hook to sell you the thing you already bought.

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Re:The Realities of Being a FOSS Maintainer by rmrfrmrf on Saturday September 16, 2017 @03:17AM (#15263379)

That's an interesting thought process. How, though, does paying $0 up-front for something that costs $0 put you on the hook to later be charged any price the vendor wishes? And what makes this different from a $5 purchase? If I buy a hot dog from a street vendor, I certainly wouldn't expect to see another $10 charge from him 6 months later just because he felt like he should have charged more at the time.

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Re:The Realities of Being a FOSS Maintainer by ponow on Saturday September 16, 2017 @06:16AM (#15263926)

Because in life, all prices are subject to change. Maybe you wouldn't expect the hot dog to double in price to $10, and conversely the vendor wouldn't expect you to become bored with hot dogs and now are only willing to pay half at $2.50. The only right each party has here is to say no.

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Re:The Realities of Being a FOSS Maintainer by rmrfrmrf on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:18AM (#15264748)

You misunderstand. In the analogy, I never bought a second hot dog. Likewise, all "commercial" users of Caddy had the EULA switched out from underneath them to force them into non-compliance.

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Re:The Realities of Being a FOSS Maintainer by detaro on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:27AM (#15264773)

Which shows how bad the analogy is.

You weren't "forced into non-compliance", you could keep your hot dog (=caddy executable you downloaded before) just fine.

The difference between hot dogs and software is that hot dogs don't get (and don't require) updates after the fact, while for software they are important.

EDIT: also, you don't accidentally install new hot dogs through dockerfiles or something - it's quite possible people ran into non-compliance that way, given there was no prior warning.

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Re:The Realities of Being a FOSS Maintainer by rmrfrmrf on Saturday September 16, 2017 @10:45AM (#15264839)

Again, this stresses the need for clear communication.

> Beginning today, all official Caddy binaries come with an End User License Agreement (EULA) that designates them either for Personal (non-commercial) or Commercial use.

They probably could have clarified this by saying "Beginning with version 0.10.9" instead of "all binaries".

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