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9 Comments

When you use open-source software you are not entitled to anything!

submitted this link on November 11, 2022
  1. 2

    I'm experiencing exactly this with my open-source software. I'm going to start sending your article to users who don't seem to understand that i'm NOT getting paid to deal with their demands.

    1. 1

      Agreed. I would never demand anything from an open source project, be it a bug fix or feature. If you want something... either pay up, or write it yourself and contribute to the whole project.

      1. 1

        It's because of these open-source projects that we can come up with great solutions and use their projects for "free". Hats off to all open-source developers.

  2. 1

    100% agree! :-)
    i work for an open source project, distributed under MIT license
    we really care about our users and their requests, anyway sometimes you have to set limits in order to maintain and improve your overall project
    it's important to define and share clear support policies, here an example
    on other hand, to have an organised feedback loop, it's really useful to provide to your community tools like community forums to squash bugs, request support and/or new features

  3. 1

    You mean we can't just copy code from SO and "expect" it to work?

  4. 1

    me too experienced exactly this with my open-source software

  5. 1

    Exactly, you put the right words through this article to open source software. Even though, for every minor application or design you have to pay for it. I have experienced it for this site. https://paintballnest.com/

  6. 1

    It's true, but open-source wouldn't work without maintainers that care about their users. There are projects that I use but to which I will never contribute code, because I don't have the skills or the interest to acquire them. There are also projects where I could contribute, but don't want to: I have to find the relevant code, figure out how to build it, check that my change works, learn their test system... A task that may take me 5 hours could take someone familiar with the project 5 minutes. I wouldn't demand that someone else does it, but I would create an issue and simply wait for someone else to do it.

    And writing patches is just a small part of maintaining a project. If someone doesn't want to review PRs or respond to issues, that's fine, but I would simply never use that project. The best projects do all of these things, which makes users expect that all projects do these things.

    TL;DR: Maintainers don't have to do anything. But that isn't how a project becomes successful.

  7. 1

    Haha, this is so true. The entitlement of people using open source is mind-boggling. Glad you've put this into words so coherently.👍

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