Everyone has their own frame of reference and their own opinion on what is right or wrong in a particular situation. There could also be a singular objective hierarchy of morality or righteousness - but each person is going to have to come to their own conclusion about if that exists or not.

I think the philosophy of engagement they outline there is internally consistent, but I don't think it supports where they go next:

> If you think Cognitect is not doing anything for the community, or is not listening to the community, you are simply wrong.

It's consistent to say that you do things for your own reasons and other people are not entitled to any engagement w/r/t their opinions on your work - but then also you are not entitled to anyone else agreeing to your opinions either. You can have all the opinions you want about your own work - but you're not entitled to anyone agreeing with them. The idea that doing the work should mean something for you is, after all, just another opinion.

Alternatively, you could proceed from an ethic of building a shared understanding of creative community. Then you get to say things like "you are wrong if you don't think we are helping" - because you have a definition of community that you're following and the work you are doing is structured to support that definition. But then complaints do have value and standing, because you're promoting a kind of social contract. Not all complaints have standing ofc - but certainly some will!

Are you able to shed some light on where the entitlement is coming from?

Asking as someone who has honestly never held such assumptions, I remember quite clearly my initial instinct towards various FOSS projects as "their castle their rules", I'm kinda puzzled why anyone would think otherwise... but this is a long time ago in internet years.

Perhaps this is a hot take, but Rich's headline is wrong. His argument hinges on the idea that software chooses to be open source out of altruism: someone created something of value, and rather than requiring payment they gifted it to the world. But if you have ever been at an organization that makes open source software, there is always a calculation that at least suggests that the company is better served by using an open source license. Part of that calculation is people filing bug reports, proposing improvements, and in general being satisfied with the library. Some requests are too niche, and some arguments too baseless, but if the people using open source don't participate at all we often say that something isn't really open source at all (see Apple's "Public Source"). When that happens, people tend to make forks, build competing libraries, or give up and move on.

Open Source isn't all about you, but it is a little bit about you.

> but if the people using open source don't participate at all we often say that something isn't really open source at all

i cannot say who the 'we' is, but i suspect in some circles this may hold true. i do challenge that this is a reasonably held belief because it is an expansion of the historical responsibilities generally held towards those who would wish to open up their source for others. it may even suppress how much code is openly shared (since most engineers don't enjoy being community managers)

It's an old debate, and I'm not familiar with the current usage.

   Stallman explains: "The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement."

Clojure is Open Source by this definition, since it is developed by a collective group, as opposed to a permissibly licensed but static artifact. People are welcome to run their projects however they like, but the entitlement comes from the philosophy that Open Source is more than a contract, and is better when there is participation. Labels matter because they set expectations – Apple does not call their Public Source "Open Source", and people don't complain because they understand the difference.

Agreed that the labels matter and some of them are slippery. Some are made slippery with cavalier intent by influential people, either by redefining or hitching their movement's cart to a better known thing. Stallman and others want to expand open source to be more than what the license says. I am proud of the achievements of that movement, but I regret that muddying labels leads to dilution and confusion.

Apple recognizes the state of this confusion and perhaps wisely uses a different definition to avoid conflict. The Clojure maintainers do not, because they interpret Open Source by its original definition. Just because a collective group is involved does not mean its maintainers are compelled to the responsibilities conveyed by Stallman et al's extension of what open source is.

I am inclined to think this a ‘generational’ issue. For those individuals that were using open source before the explosion of the modern internet, open source software was something we could seek out to then use for our own ends. Also, the people who wrote that software were ‘publishing’ it just to get it out there for anyone to use if those people found it useful.

Conversely, people who started using open source after the internet exploded, and I think particularly, once being an open source maintainer was seen as an achievement and goal, the attitude changed. Individual users of the software were building things depending on the OSS and felt that their use of the OSS code implied a contract for continued development of that dependency. This feeling is made worse by fiscally gigantic corporations pushing ‘oss’ products and those corporations acting like their continuing to support their product is analogous to a solo dev putting a vim plugin on github. The reality of wide spread large ‘oss’ products and the implied (and often maliciously relied upon) personal obligations of producing OSS have led to the current state. That state being users of some OSS assuming that their usage of the software means the author owes them some obligation by virtue of their need.

This whole issue is made worse by large organizations getting social credit and positive marketing by releasing ‘oss’ products. This leads to conflation of individuals releasing code to benefit the commons vs. organizations doing so to capture markets, gain publicity, etc.

People (me included) think that publishing and maintaining software is an implicit guarantee of (or attempt at) some level of proper behavior. When the software doesn't work as it should, people feel that that guarantee has been violated.

Many contribute fixes and actively improve the software, but many post entitled comments.

> People (me included) think that publishing and maintaining software is an implicit guarantee of (or attempt at) some level of proper behavior

Except there is no implicit guarantee.

For example the Apache 2.0 license outright says it, so there is no argument about "implicit guarantees"

https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

7. Disclaimer of Warranty. Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, Licensor provides the Work (and each Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using or redistributing the Work and assume any risks associated with Your exercise of permissions under this License

On the other hand you cannot create and maintain a community purely by contract.

I would bet that 95% of the open source projects on GitHub have no community. Does that mean they are not open source to you?

I agree.

There is no such thing as an "implicit guarantee". Guarantees are affirmative assurances, they can't be implicit.

I admit I chuckled at "You are not entitled to this explanation" while reading the article. How far can it go xD

He's not entitled to me reading his rant, or changing my behavior based upon it. Is this deeper?

You know, I don't think I've ever participated in a conversation that used the word "entitlement" and came away a better person.

I agree, the non-stop one-sided accusations of entitlement didn't seem very productive to me. I wonder if some day someone will write a post about things maintainers aren't entitled to. I can think of several things.

This is in no way exclusive to software. It's people in general. Dealing with people is extremely difficult. At least software developers aren't likely to get sued over these complaints.

Yes, the word "entitlement" is mainly used in response to widely acceptable behaviors, and is almost always a passive-aggressive escalation.

I may not be entitled to be listened to when I speak, but it's still reasonable for me to speak with the expectation that I will be listened to. If I do speak, it's not an aggressive claim that I'm entitled to speak and you must listen.

That sounds like a you problem more than a general rule that using the word engenders unproductive conversation.

>How far can it go

You aren't entitled to know that ;)

> You are not entitled to the attention of others.

I wish advertisers would understand that.

To some extend of being a human you are. Are you entitled to expect things to go exactly your way? No. Are you entitled to get what you want without trade? No.

However, the whole claim of "we are going to do everything we want" and you're going to give us appreciation and some kind of resources (admiration, money, time, commits) is just selfish.

Humans are social animals, what you create and put out is mention to be used by someone. It's not just wankery that is there for people to not get something of it.