"The only people entitled to say how open source 'ought' to work are people who run projects, and the scope of their entitlement extends only to their own projects.
Just because someone open sources something does not imply they owe the world a change in their status, focus and effort (...)
As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all. You are not entitled to contribute. You are not entitled to features. You are not entitled to the attention of others. You are not entitled to having value attached to your complaints. You are not entitled to this explanation.
If you have expectations (of others) that aren't being met, those expectations are your own responsibility. You are responsible for your own needs. If you want things, make them."
The essay you shared, "Open Source is Not About You", is excellent.
Another one that I highly recommend is "Open Source Is Free As in Baby", with quotes like:
> I think of someone releasing open source software as a gift to the world, not as claiming a responsibility to maintain it for you. Some projects do claim that responsibility, but it’s not automatically conferred just because someone released a project on GitHub. I think much more of the responsibility falls on the person using it. It’s your code that will be using it, your code that will need to be upgraded, and your code that will break.
I do think there is an obligation, but it's one of expectation management. If you have an issue tracker, it affords filing issues - then there is some expectation that those issues will be looked at. If you're visibly giving people an opportunity to talk to you, and then don't respond, that's rude.
In that sense, I advocate documenting your response policy on the top of your README.
>As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all.
If I don't have the right to fork off, then it wouldn't be open source at all. And that might seem like a small thing, but it is a lot more than I get from e.g MS. Otherwise I would still be running WinXP.
it's a weird bouncing effect that open-source was a way to unlease more collaboration by sharing the source but it turned into a MMO-feature-request tsunami.
"The only people entitled to say how open source 'ought' to work are people who run projects, and the scope of their entitlement extends only to their own projects.
Just because someone open sources something does not imply they owe the world a change in their status, focus and effort (...)
As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all. You are not entitled to contribute. You are not entitled to features. You are not entitled to the attention of others. You are not entitled to having value attached to your complaints. You are not entitled to this explanation.
If you have expectations (of others) that aren't being met, those expectations are your own responsibility. You are responsible for your own needs. If you want things, make them."
Emphasis mine:
** If you want things, make them **
From "Open source is not about you" https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...