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szatox
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Joined: 27 Aug 2013
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 Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2024 11:57 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | There are many organizations that do have an obligation to me, and to whom bitching seems entirely reasonable. I include anything in that category that is funded by my taxes |
That's a good point, unfortunately, those organizations would rather spend your money on professional bitchers to create an illusion of a consensus putting you in the minority than actually do the job than is allegedly the reason for their existence.
In the end, that one point alone doesn't change much by just being good. Gotta go out to get enough points in line to keep the problems out of your yard.
| Quote: | | I don't think it's (necessarily) being trendy or wanting to vent; I honestly think people just don't understand the implications of their actions. |
Those were examples, not an exhaustive list. I think we're talking about different aspects of the same thing.
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flexibeast
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Joined: 04 Apr 2022
Posts: 472
Location: Naarm/Melbourne, Australia
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| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2024 12:59 am Post subject: |
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| szatox wrote: | | Why legalese all of the sudden? It's not about contracts, it's essentially politics. |
Because a lot of people whose behaviour indicates a sense of entitlement to others' time / energy / resources act as though there is some underlying contract which gives them a right to make such demands.
There are contracts involved in FOSS - licensing. As a developer, i release things under certain FOSS licenses, which creates a contract with users - i give users the right to do certain things they wouldn't otherwise legally be able to do, such as distribute copies of my software, and make changes to it and distribute the software with those changes.
The licenses also express limitations as to what rights users have, such as that my work comes with no warranty or guarantee of fitness for a particular purpose except to the extent required by local law. The licenses i use give my users no right to demand i support the software in whatever arbitrary ways they want.
Part of the reason FOSS licenses explicitly put limitations on what users are entitled to, via "no warranty" clauses, is that it would have a substantial chilling effect on people's willingness to release software publicly if people said "I used your calculator program for my engineering project, and the program didn't do the maths correctly, and the building collapsed, and now i'm suing you for gazillions because this is all your fault."
The point of my footnote was to say: "Point me to the places where people have entered into an agreement - a contract - which means they're entitled to demand time / energy / resources of various people."
And yes, people then say "Well there might not be any actual legal contract, but by releasing this software, you created an ethical contract which gives me the right to harangue you to meet my demands." Which can also have a chilling effect, as people get burned out by the haranguing. More on this below.
| szatox wrote: | | Humans simply are pack animals by nature, some more, some less, but we all have circuits for influencing others and being influenced by others. Make enough fuss and people will change their minds. Yes, bitching is annoying, but it is low effort and works often enough to be expected to work, and if it doesn't, it was at least low effort. Some do that consciously, some do that because it's trendy, some just want to vent. |
Sure. But people also need to be made aware of the consequences of their actions, which in this context includes devs and maintainers getting burned out - particularly when they're volunteers - and no longer able to do the work. Here's a few relevant posts:
* "The Internet Was Built on the Free Labor of Open Source Developers. Is That Sustainable?" -- https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-internet-was-built-on-the-free-labor-of-open-source-developers-is-that-sustainable/
* "Let’s talk about open source sustainability" -- https://github.blog/open-source/social-impact/lets-talk-about-open-source-sustainability/
* "It was no longer about discussing possible future features or hunting bugs, but about supporting users who are not able to use their brain and/or use google and/or read the arch wiki and/or read the readme of aurman." -- https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/9aotjr/deleted_by_user/
The cost of burnout due to constantly having to deal with entitlement and demands and haranguing isn't just to the individual devs and maintainers, it's a cost to pretty much everyone, including the people left to continue doing the work, because there are now fewer people to do the same amount of work.
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pingtoo
Veteran
Joined: 10 Sep 2021
Posts: 1284
Location: Richmond Hill, Canada
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| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2024 1:08 am Post subject: |
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Do we need to split again?  |
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lars_the_bear
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Joined: 05 Jun 2024
Posts: 529
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| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2024 10:48 am Post subject: |
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| flexibeast wrote: | | [And yes, people then say "Well there might not be any actual legal contract, but by releasing this software, you created an ethical contract which gives me the right to harangue you to meet my demands." Which can also have a chilling effect, as people get burned out by the haranguing. |
Off-topic, perhaps, but I think about this a lot, and I don't really know what I believe.
I contribute to 100+ open-source projects, some professionally and some personally. I certainly do feel a sense of obligation to fix things that are broken, although I can't say where that obligation comes from. Perhaps it's just professional pride -- I don't like to be associated with crappy work. Or perhaps I have, in some way, assumed a duty of care to people that use my software? I wouldn't have made this software available free of charge, if I didn't expect people to use it. In some sense I must want people to use it, or be gratified when they do. There must be something in it for me, although I couldn't articulate what it is. Does that create some kind of reciprocal obligation on me?
I use a lot of open-source software, again both professionally and personally. I confess that I have occasionally found myself thinking: why did you publish this crap, if it doesn't work, and you don't care? Is that wicked of me? Perhaps it is; I really don't know. I wouldn't be so crude as to beat on somebody for not maintaining software that he is supporting in his leisure time; but I confess to a sense of disappointment when it happens. Should I? Does that amount to looking a gift horse in the mouth?
I'm not a moral philosopher, and I'm not even able to express clearly what my concerns are. But the ethical issues associated with open-source software do trouble me.
BR, Lars. |
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szatox
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Joined: 27 Aug 2013
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| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2024 5:43 pm Post subject: |
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| lars_the_bear wrote: | | In some sense I must want people to use it, or be gratified when they do. There must be something in it for me, although I couldn't articulate what it is. Does that create some kind of reciprocal obligation on me? |
This is not an obligation, but it certainly is a motivation.
Creating something the way you want it makes it personal, so even if the thing you contribute to is utilitarian in nature, I'd say doing things up to your own standards doubles as a form of self-expression, which pushes it into the realm of art.
I've been thinking about various things too 
| flexibeast wrote: | The point of my footnote was to say: "Point me to the places where people have entered into an agreement - a contract - which means they're entitled to demand time / energy / resources of various people." [...]
Sure. But people also need to be made aware of the consequences of their actions, which in this context includes devs and maintainers getting burned out - particularly when they're volunteers - and no longer able to do the work. Here's a few relevant posts: |
Two different things: Dealing with complaints and demands certainly is frustrating. Not everyone wants to or can do customer-service jobs. Frustration is unpleasant, and does affect quality of life etc, but it easily goes away if you can just get a quick mental reset by doing something you actually enjoy.
Burnout is said to mostly affect people working on their passion. The more dedicated to the thing you're doing you are, the harder it will eventually hit, and once it's there, you need a change of course, because recovery takes a few years and is not guaranteed.
So, back to your point:
There is no contract and people are not entitled to your time / energy and so on. You don't have to give them what they want. Likewise, you're not entitled to the world playing nice with you either, whether you lead or follow.
You can say that people criticizing and making demands are annoying, but nothing good will come up from telling them to stop. People yell to be heard. If you tell them to shut up, you'll only hear those who ignored you. You'll be left with only the most annoying ones, whom in particular you wanted to get rid of. THIS is inherently unsustainable, because those rules directly benefit those who break them and punish those, who do try to play nice until they change sides or drop out completely. I've been watching this exact scenario play out over past 2 decades in a different area of life I shall not name right now.
What do you do about the complaints and demands you receive is up to you. You can suffer from them, you can frame them with objective metrics, you can have a friend filer them for you, or just ignore completely (e.g. by not providing a public feedback channel in the first place). Giving them a finger is an option too, but if you make a scene, trolls will happily join your cast.
You might feel it's unfair (and honestly I do sympathize with this sentiment), but practicing stoicism yourself is doable and makes you mentally and emotionally stronger and more resilient, while trying to control the things other people say is doomed to fail and also trains you to perceive pixels on the screen as an existential threat.
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eschwartz
Developer
Joined: 29 Oct 2023
Posts: 235
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| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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I would say that in many cases there is a kind of ethical social obligation to... not listen to every user's demands, but to either have the project be in some opaquely defined state of "good shape" or else hand over the project maintenance to someone who will. You see this a lot with the way many projects prefer to be developed by "an organization" with "a lead developer" rather than be a one-person show on a private website.
By publishing software, you freely invite people to use it or not use it as they please, and refrain from complaining about it -- after all, no warranties!  But by *campaigning* to have your software used by others, you make a (non-legally-binding) statement "hey, I'm a reliable person who cares about making this project useful to others. I'm going to stick around! I'm going to respect my users! I'm going to do my best to make this a great project!"
In some cases, there's a considerably stronger guarantee. For example, software that comes from an organization that takes (usually tax-deductible) donations for administration, or pays people for their time working on the project (even if it isn't a full time job, just a hobby bonus).
In some particular examples, you have e.g. GCC, binutils, glibc, the GNOME foundation, the linux kernel... and people are paid full time salaries by major corporations to work on those projects in the interests of that corporation, which often entails becoming (or getting hired because you are already) a domain expert, and ending up with a seat on some kind of board or steering committee. In a very real sense, e.g. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is paying their employees to have, as their day job, "be an expert at the GNU Toolchain and gain the trust of the FOSS community". I would flip out and have some rather pointed demands if for some reason I thought that those developers were turning the compiler into a personal toy for RHEL experiments to the detriment of my own and the broader world of FOSS use cases. (I don't feel that this has ever been a real concern, however.)
But I wouldn't demand specific features from any maintainer of any project -- even if I demand that they engage in good faith to make the project better "for its users", and even if I demand that they not abandon the project.
This state of affairs works out pretty well, for the most part, anyway.
The relationship to Xorg vs Wayland is interesting, because both are indeed large projects that represent industry-wide standards for operating a graphical user interface, with various stakeholders from both FOSS hobbyists and corporate interests, and there are people whose dayjob is (at least in part) to maintain both projects. Do I have a right to insist that RHEL employees improve Xorg on my behalf? I don't think so. But I feel a bit like I do have the right to demand that they keep Xorg in maintenance mode for as long as Wayland isn't a full replacement, that they review in good faith and accept well written patches by the community that advance the goals of Xorg (including adding new features, if the community is inspired to design such things, without rejecting it by saying "no, we don't want Xorg to get better")...
... or that they turn over the project to people who are willing to do that, if that's what ends up being better for Xorg.
I think they are doing their duties admirably, either way. Their arguments in favor of Wayland as a replacement to Xorg are founded in good faith personal belief that Wayland is a better future. They haven't abandoned Xorg, only put it into maintenance mode. There aren't really any exciting new Xorg features, but that's because nobody is offering any. And they are committed to ensuring Xorg remains as usable as it has been up until now, "until future notice".
I'm sure they want to abandon Xorg entirely, and it's likely that someday they will be able to say in good faith "we believe Wayland now solves all use cases from Xorg, there is no reason for anyone to want Xorg anymore", although I doubt that day will come in the next decade given the continuing quirks that make people prefer Xorg.
I *still* expect some people to be very unhappy about Xorg going away, and insisting on continuing to use it, and I think the ethical choice is that the project should hand over the reins to the remaining Xorg enthusiasts and say "go wild, knock yourself out. Enjoy your Xorg, its all your responsibility now". |
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Anon-E-moose
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Joined: 23 May 2008
Posts: 6161
Location: Dallas area
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| Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2024 7:37 pm Post subject: |
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Even if distros quit packaging Xorg*, I'm pretty sure the source code will be around for quite a while.
Grab a copy and work on it, or keep it as is and you can still be using X in 2050 (whether the hardware of the time will allow it, is a different matter)
I find that for many people it's not that wayland won't work instead of X,
it's that they're too set in their ways, to want to learn to do things in a (possibly) different way.
But I've heard the same whining when gtk2 went away, then kde3, then kde4, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
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