alt Hacker NewsI dislike this essay so much
I can't say whether it accomplished its original intent, but my experience is that it's held up in really disappointing situations which sit counter to my collectivist values
I have a ton of experience with community-building, and what's espoused in this essay is an attack on the values of that world imho.
My take-home is that there are many conceptions of what "open source" is about, and from where its value flows
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If you personally are willing to invest more, to dedicate attention and effort to every user/contributor/member of the opensource community you are maintaining, then that is great, and does not even conflict with the essay at all.
The only point is that all the time that you and other selfless maintainers are spending on their projects is not something that anyone is entitled to; it's a gift, not a duty.
To actually conflict witht the essay you would need to hold that any developer that ever publishes a piece of software is not only duty-bound to maintain it forever, but also to engage with every potential (crackpot) user or collaborator, and that's simply not a defensible perspective to me.
I think "Open source is a licensing and delivery mechanism, period." is a statement that bears repeating.
It comes down to beggars asking skilled people for free labor. If the "community" really wants something, they can send a pull request.
If you want to create and maintain a community that's fine, maybe even great. TFA is just pointing out that the presence of an OSS license is not an implicit signal that the project is interested in any such community. They're separate things, and my read is that the author is frustrated with the constant conflating of the two. It's not an attack on your values at all.