> I still really don’t understand what is so entitled about asking for a level of base empathy and care from maintainers.

> People now yell at you that their only obligation is whatever is spelled out in the license they attached to the code.

Let’s turn your implied question around: if a person wants to share code without any expectation of care and maintenance, what should they do? Is the entire concept bogus, and the developer should just keep the code to themselves forever? Or put a “DO NOT USE FOR YOUR BILLION DOLLAR COMPANY” in a README? What communication other than the license could reasonably be provided?

I think the person you’re responding to made a pretty good point that open-source is sometimes the passion of an unpaid 1-person “team” and sometimes the product of a VC-funded attempt to buy goodwill. The idea that asking for more from maintainers is entitled is clearly suitable for the former case but not the latter. Now that Bun has been bought out perhaps they are more deserving of scrutiny.

Textualism is a scam wrapped in academic regalia. It is implausible on its face and arguing that “we only have the text to go off of” sounds nice and is demonstrably not how the law has been parsed.

> What communication other than the license could reasonably be provided?

Nobody encodes everything in text. No law can be fully represented in text. The law is a combination of many things including norms and customs at a moment in time. The law as written is a framework. This can be demonstrated pretty obviously in just how some laws are written intentionally vague because we have human beings to parse them for meaning and context. A legal/justice machine does not and will never exist as long as these are frameworks for human interaction. This is not a computable problem and attempting it to frame it as one is deeply harmful.

I have met a lot of EECS folks who think that the law is just a set of rules to be applied and that a consistent and fair decision will just “happen”. This is ridiculous and anyone who thinks this should be smacked with a copy of the Bluebook.

There is also kind of a spirit vs. letter of the law issue here. The intention and spirit in which this software is given out should and must inform how the law is interpreted. Arguing this isn't how the law works is just wrong. I stress this because it shows just how fuzzy the law really is. I think people want bright lines where they don't exist. I don't know what the obsession with this is, but it is unproductive.

I certainly understand that this desire to return to a more nuanced and more empathetic view of all of this has gradients, but I think I am just deeply saddened how any attempt to suggest that there were and should still be some implied cultural norms regarding expectations and the response from some folks really sounds like an angry Ayn Rand instead of a discussion about what that means. It’s just a blanket rejection for a lot of people here. Software is for people. The consumers are ultimately people. People are the only things that matter.

Like, you start a business and society—through the government and law has said—hey, you can’t refuse to serve people based on certain reasons. This is actively being attacked by some people with the same pathetic argument of, “You can’t tell me what to do. I hate X and it’s my free speech right to tell them to go pound sand. I never agreed to the civil rights acts!” It’s like the stupidest version of Ron Swanson.

With regards to interpreting the laws, I mostly agree with you, although I certainly haven’t delved as deep into the true meaning of law in society.

But I still don’t understand what you actually expect from maintainers of free and open source software. In prior comments you have used words like “empathy” but I’m wondering in more specific terms what you mean. What should be maintained, and what should be abondoned? What should stay stable and what should be updated?

I ask because when you say stuff like

> I am just deeply saddened how any attempt to suggest that there were and should still be some implied cultural norms regarding expectations

I’d feel very differently about that comment based on the “expectations” that are “implied”.

And perhaps your answers might help me out a bit, to be honest. There are plenty of times when I use an open source library and get annoyed by the decisions of upstream developers, but I often wonder if my annoyance should be directed at upstream at all, or at myself.

I'm not arguing against a base level of empathy and care for maintainers.

I'm arguing FOR a base level of empathy and care FROM maintainers WHO CHOOSE to build for-profit products in the open, and that empathy for all parties should be the base expectation from a healthy community, rather than the narcissistic view of "nobody owes their communities anything, regardless of context".

The narssisist view leads to the behaviour of Minio, Bambu, etc becoming an accepted norm; to the abuse, exploitation, and deterioration of open source communities by for-profit orgs.

I am agreeing with you, sorry if that wasn’t clear.

I was just expressing frustration that a lot of people seem to think this is imposing some kind of undue burden on them when I’ve always just thought of it as the cost of existing in society is to…have some empathy?