Did maintainers make any promise? Even so they can break promises made for some reasons (especially sickness, accidents, etc.). Whatever type of contributions (money, work, feedbacks, etc.) doesn't make maintainers owe any work to contributors unless previously mutually agreed upon.
Be prepared to DIY (PR, fork, other forms) if you are willing to but you don't owe anything to other people unless you choose to and express that explicitly, and that's the same for maintainers.
I put my software in the open with a license which I think is fair, because I hope someone might find it useful, with a completely neutral stance. On the other hand, I set my expectations with the license I assign to my codebase. If nobody cares about what I do, I'm also fine with it. At the end of the day, I wrote that thing for myself in the first place.
If somebody decides to contribute something back, my primary responsibility is to act as decently as other party allows me. They can report a bug, send in a fix, or ask something.
If the proposed change is favorable to both of us (i.e. it also fits into the design/role I have in my mind for that codebase, or doesn't disturb it), why not work together and make something better?
If the change makes the software unfit for me, but fit for the other party, they're free to fork and maintain their fork as they fit, as long as they honor the license. This is why is this thing is in the open.
But, if the requester wants me to implement their changes to make the software fit for themselves, while making it unfit for me, and want to pass the burden of maintenance on me, then sorry, we can't cooperate.
Plus, who decides which codebase I open to the world, and in what way?
I wrote that if you build community you have responsibility. If you don't want to build a community be clear about it.
My beef is with people who build community for "fame" and for "money somewhere along the road" - that are getting burned out because money are not there. Where we have loads of libraries by genuine people.
Can you give out some examples of projects that function(ed) on this principle?
That's where I believe you misunderstand open source, and that's the point of the article.
Because I make my project open source does not imply anything other than the terms of the licence. Of course it's okay to report a bug (it's even nice) or to open a PR. But asking "is this maintained?" as part of the decision process before depending on a project just shows some misunderstanding about how open source works, IMHO.
Having the standard website/readme with a bunch of claims about how awesome your software is as a way to entice other developers to get excited by it, start using it, and even (gasp) depend on it absolutely implies something more than the mere terms of the license.
Put elsewise: if you don't want the expectation of feeding people, haven't put any thought into how you will actually make that happen, and are just going to get defensive when people are annoyed at how you don't own a grill, you have no business inviting everyone to a BBQ.
https://imgur.com/a/chris-pratt-barbecue-gDL2O
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/3v8svx/barbecue_at_c...
Because it's irrelevant to my point. My point being that if you don't sign a contract with me where I commit to do something for you, then I don't owe you anything.
If you misunderstand open source and have wrong expectations because of it, then you will get frustrated. My point is that it is important for you to understand that open source just means that the author shares something for free, no strings attached. Maybe the maintainer is super responsive today, and that's great. But you have to know that they may stop responding tomorrow. And you should be ready to handle that if you depend on their project for something important.
> But also one should not pull dependencies willy-nilly especially if one is building business on top of that.
If you're building a business, you want to avoid all such dependencies as much as possible, open source or not. The big advantage to using open source code, though, is that you don't have to rely on someone else -- not even the maintainer -- to keep things going for you. You can maintain it in-house and eliminate that external dependency.
Most free-beer software state "Provided as-is with no warranty expressed or implied." somewhere in their readme or licensing terms.
Of course, fucking noone reads readmes or licenses.
If the software isn't being sold, it presumably won't be legally required to be fit for purpose in any sense. The no warranty provided text is just stating this explicitly. (Usual disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.)
A worker's time is worth their wage. If you're paying nothing, nothing is owed. If you pay nothing for a creation, the creator owes you nothing. That's the contact.
And property and grocery goods aren't even the same category as IP - You can't consume the same cabbage repeatedly.
> That's the contact.
I think you mean contract, but you are ignoring the social contract here. A "worker" isn't going around advocating their own project(s).
My code is open source, at a minimum it’s there for your own perusal to be copy-pasted. I don’t owe you anything.
I have a nitpick on that take. If maintainer was actively building community and advocating use of his project (for whatever reasons but usually to gain audience - money is not the only value exchange that there is) they still do owe users bug fixes or reviewing bug fixes made by community. Especially if there were other community contributions, cash on hand is too specific.
If someone doesn't want to owe users anything, don't make project open source or make it clear "don't use this or fork for yourself, please" in read-me or something.
But also one should not pull dependencies willy-nilly especially if one is building business on top of that.