Creators / maintainers owe us nothing, but I am always slightly bummed when I don't see a reason for the discontinuation.
Can speculate all day of course, and any reason is a good one. Again, I know they don't owe us anything, even an explanation, but curiosity always gets the best of me.
There's an important discussion in the sub-thread by @teddyh that has unfortunately been voted dead, so I thought I would comment on it here instead. I suspect teddyh is being criticized for use of the word "obligation", so maybe I can clarify.
People can create and operate channels on YouTube for free. Yet we frequently see reports of Google acting unreasonably towards people who come to depend on YouTube, often for their livelihood. We expect Google to act morally by providing the bare minimum of human oversight when a person's channel has been banned by an AI mistake. But there is no legal or ethical obligation, because YouTube is "free", and Google just doesn't care enough about morals.
We also see lots of examples of FOSS authors getting burned out when their sense of morality is used and abused by users. That's also not okay. But perhaps we can aim for a happy medium where the "norm" assumes people can be reasonable, mature adults. No one wins when we optimize for the outliers.
> Dead posts aren't displayed by default, but you can see them all by turning on 'showdead' in your profile.
> If you see a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you can vouch for it. Click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch' at the top. When enough users do this, the post is restored. There's a small karma threshold before vouch links appear.
I'm not sure if your karma is sufficient for that action, but it's not a dead comment anymore.
I would argue that they do, in fact, owe us something.
All people who make public announcements are in effect holding a conversation with the public, until such time as they publicly announce its end. A person in a conversation is socially obligated to make reasonable attempts to speak and respond to other people’s questions, comments, and concerns. If they don’t, or suddenly stop, they have abandoned the social etiquette of a conversation. This is not the public “being entitled” (as some like to claim), but is instead the quite reasonable expectations of the public who was led into a conversation with somebody who did not, or ceased to, respect the social rules.
(I should not need to say this, but in addition to being a user of many software projects, I am myself a maintainer of software publicly available – in official Linux distributions, even. I do not think that I ask my fellow maintainers for much – only a smidgen of respect for their users.)
The tax you’re describing is exactly why maintainers burn out and why open source projects die, or worse - they’re never born. The only way to win is not to play.
It is very similar to club activities and volunteer work. People burn out fast when they stop finding value in the work. It is exceptional common with instructors where say parents pay to a club for their children membership, where the parents might not be fully aware that the cost of operation would be significant higher if the people involved were paid employees rather than people volunteering their time. One has to regularly remind people about the social aspects that are the foundation of such activity, and that the activity can only exist when enough people join in and help. When that fails you get very high burnout rates which quickly can cause a death spiral of the whole activity.
Normally such activity comes with one year commitments. Leaving in the middle of things unannounced and without warning would be breaking the social etiquette. No one is forced to work but there are social expectations and obligations in social activities. How much open source project is similar to such activity, and how much social expectation there are will depend on the context. For example, if you are volunteering as treasurer to a large open source project, the expectations are going to be very similar to that of a club, as will the burn out if the person doing the work don't get value from it.
> All people who make public announcements are in effect holding a conversation with the public
No, they're not. Unlike a conversation, a public announcement is a one-way, one-to-many communication.
> A person in a conversation is socially obligated to make reasonable attempts to speak and respond to other people’s questions, comments, and concerns.
In a social setting, with a limited number of participants, sure. But in an internet forum, with an unlimited number of participants, people fail to make reasonable attempts to respond to the entirety of others' comments on a fairly regular basis. And there is absolutely no widespread social obligation otherwise.
But this is all entirely irrelevant anyway, because a software project is not the same thing as a conversation in the first place:
> the quite reasonable expectations of the public who was led into a conversation with somebody who did not, or ceased to, respect the social rules.
Using someone's free software is quite clearly not even remotely the same thing as being "led into a conversation", so there's no reason to expect the same social obligations.
You are mischaracterizing what I wrote. I did not say the entirety of others’s comments; I explicitly wrote only “make reasonable attempts”.
> Using someone's free software is quite clearly not even remotely the same thing as being "led into a conversation", so there's no reason to expect the same social obligations.
Users are still completely reasonable in expecting something. Consider my hypothetical situation I described in the second paragraph here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38310060>.
> I did not say the entirety of others’s comments; I explicitly wrote only “make reasonable attempts”.
OK, but that's still clearly not the widespread social norm in internet forums. For better or worse, it's quite common for commenters to not make any reasonable attempt to respond to sub-threads.
> Users are still completely reasonable in expecting something. Consider my hypothetical situation
I completely disagree. Your hypothetical situation sounds absolutely like entitlement to me.
> I completely disagree. Your hypothetical situation sounds absolutely like entitlement to me.
Do you mean to say that you think that it would be completely socially acceptable for a maintainer to act as in my hypothetical exaggerated hyperbolic situation? Would you respect anyone who actually did that? Would you remain friends with anyone who did that? Really?
Assuming it's FOSS, then yes, a maintainer is entirely in their rights to stop maintaining their software for any reason or for no reason at all. If you as a user don't like that, you can fork it, that's the norm for FOSS.
As for respecting someone who responded in that specific wording, no, it's unprofessional. But that's orthogonal to whether or not it's entitlement to expect a regular release cadence from a FOSS project that you have no commercial relationship with.
As for remaining friends, likewise, that's orthogonal to the topic being discussed.
Comparing mainainers being socially obligated to respond to questions to actual slavery, is unseemly.
If people don’t want the social burden of being a public person or even the relatively small burden of having a public project, they have the option of not being public.
Or -- stay with me -- they have the option of running their public project in the manner and with the level of effort they want. If you don't like that, you are free to run your own projects according to your own standards.
People “have the option” to say whatever they want – it’s called Free Speech, and it’s an important legal right. But that does not mean that I think that everything people do say is right and proper. I can, and will, criticize people for what they say, and I will also criticize maintainers who treat their users with less than reasonable respect.
You are conflating legal rights with what is socially or ethically right, and I think this is a dubious rhetorical trick.
I don't "keep" doing anything - this is the first and only time I've ever replied to one of your comments, nor have I said anything that a reasonable person could construe as conflating legal obligations and social etiquette.
I'm well aware of the difference between between the two concepts. What I, along with basically everyone else in this thread, is telling you is that this social obligation on the part of open source maintainers you seem the believe in is not a thing. People who give away their software for free do not owe any debt to anyone who might choose to use that software. As I said to the 1 (one) other person who seems to agree with you here, the relevant social etiquette is "don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
> this social obligation on the part of open source maintainers you seem the believe in is not a thing.
Many people do think it’s a thing, though. See my links to past threads, where I am far from alone in my opinion. See also various Linux Distributions’ rules for maintainers.
By other maintainers, yes, but for the benefit of users. Also, if these minimal levels of decency (which I suggest) are in fact so onerous to surely drive all maintainers to burnout (as frequently claimed, even in this thread), why, then, are they mandated by distributions?
> Many people do think it’s a thing, though. See my links to past threads, where I am far from alone in my opinion. See also various Linux Distributions’ rules for maintainers.
Against my better judgement, I read through the first thread you linked to.
If there are any substantial number of people writing there that agree with your position that open source maintainers have a "social obligation" -- or anything similar -- to the users of the software they give away for free, I missed it.
Most of the replies to your comments I saw there were people trying to explain the same things we are trying to convey here, followed by your steadfast refusal to deal with reality. I mean, at one point you responded to a quoted section of an MIT-style license and said:
> That text does not disclaim support, security bugfixes, and future development. On the contrary, all three of those things are probably either heavlily implied or outright stated to be available on the project web site.
... when the first two lines of the quoted license does exactly that. To wit:
> ... PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND ...
... which means the copyright holders disclaim support, bug fixes, and future development. That's literally what providing something "AS IS" means. It is provided as it currently is.
I don't think continuing to engage with you here on an even more nebulous concept ('social obligation') when you are unable or unwilling to objectively deal with written text is going to be a good use of my time. Have a nice day.
If you’re unwilling to engage in debate, then you should refrain from making these drive-by personal snipes. But, I forget, you don’t believe in the concept of social oblications or politeness.
I have no problem debating people who have positions grounded in reality and who appear to be acting in good faith. In this thread you’ve:
* Instead of addressing the substance of brudger’s argument[0], you attempted to tone police his comment and then set up a false dichotomy.
* Accused me[1] of “conflating legal rights with what is socially or ethically right, and I think this is a dubious rhetorical trick.” when I had argued no such thing, and it was in fact you who were engaged in dubious rhetorical tricks[2] as all I had written at that point is that people have the option of running open source projects on their own terms.
All of this in support of the position that people who give away their labor for free have a further obligation to give away more free labor because…checks notes… you say so.
2 - see, I do believe in social niceties. Isn’t it much nicer to say someone engaged in “dubious rhetorical tricks” than to say what you actually did in that comment, which is lie?
When Forest Gump said “I’m pretty tired, I think I’ll go home now” was he breaking an obligation to keep running just because others were following him?
Why only two options? It seems limiting the options of engagement only serves to create a false dichotomy for the purposes of supporting your argument.
If the only two options are to become obligated to the public or not to engage at all, what a sad world this would be. Thankfully, there are many, many alternate options in the reality we share, even if not in your imagined reality.
I could write a lot about this but you may be too dug in to hear it. The obvious rebuttals are "caveat emptor", don't judge a book by its cover, don't buy a product just because the box looks professional, etc.
But you are actually arguing for something different. You are insisting on an implication where the rest of us don't see one. If a project has nice documentation, an up-to-date license, etc. you believe that there is ethical/moral implication that the maintainer will fulfil some responsibility.
This isn't just about misrepresentation (which is almost a side-effect), it is about a proposed belief in duty, almost like a chivalry that goes beyond gentleman-ness.
I tend to think of Postel's law in those circumstances, liberal in what I accept and conservative in what I do. I've heard it said that the happiest cultures of the world have low expectations.
The social etiquette is set by the license the code is distributed under, which says things like "THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE" in all caps.
That social etiquette indicates that maintainers don't owe you shit.
That’s the legal warranty disclaimer. It has nothing to do with support, security fixes, or future development, and certainly does not speak about simply being reasonably responsive when being contacted by users.
Also, and this might be hard for overly rules-obsessed people to understand, this is not a legal matter. It is a matter of social etiquette. I of course agree that nobody is legally owed anything. But this is not about legality.
> It has nothing to do with support, security fixes, or future development, and certainly does not speak about simply being reasonably responsive when being contacted by users.
Actually, if you re-read the GP, all of those points are covered. You just don't like the answer.
I think a lot of open source maintainers start before they have found their favorite languages. And now you have a problem if you see that the language you wrote your library in creates a bunch of make-work problems that you can solve by switching languages. How do you retire without it sounding like an insult to the ecosystem and the people who helped you make the product good?
If he keeps pushing commits, I won’t place bets but would say don’t be surprised if they’re in a new language.
> How do you retire without it sounding like an insult to the ecosystem and the people who helped you make the product good?
I would think it’s fairly simple. Announce your retirement from the project, and assign the project leadership and commit rights (or whatever GitHub uses) to whoever you feel would be a good fit, or the most frequent contributor, or simply to the most recent one. But most anything would be better than locking the repository and vanishing without a word.
Thanks for mentioning Fort. I've never heard of it but I'm an avid user of Simplewall. Looks like I will need to take a close look now. Thank God it's not another crapp written in Electron.
I would recommend Fort, back when i ran windows i tried all the available firewall and simplewall ended up being buggy after some times.
Fort worked perfectly, it had more settings and once you took the time to set it up you could just save the rules, the configuration and export it to another computer.
Windows Filtering Platform (what Simplewall is based on) is simultaneously one of the most powerful network access management APIs that exist, and also the most frustrating to use. The way it works in practice doesn't always match the documentation.
I wonder if there is change afoot in the way those APIs are designed and interacted with?
MS did indicate during the CrowdStrike DOS that they would work towards opening up or at least documenting those APIs and some other aspects of the kernel to help improve the situation for vendors.
I believe there might have also been antitrust concerns about the way they deliver Defender as part of the OS, but simultaneously offer premium cloud platforms? Don’t recall the full story.
It might be the hardest proof to expect, but there is an unarchive button and people archive for reasons like moving rather than stopping a project permanently.
the UI is garbage. Talk about unintuitive. Where it's simple it to simple and when it's advanced it's not intuitive and the relvant info is scatterd to the point of disfunction.
Creators / maintainers owe us nothing, but I am always slightly bummed when I don't see a reason for the discontinuation.
Can speculate all day of course, and any reason is a good one. Again, I know they don't owe us anything, even an explanation, but curiosity always gets the best of me.
There's an important discussion in the sub-thread by @teddyh that has unfortunately been voted dead, so I thought I would comment on it here instead. I suspect teddyh is being criticized for use of the word "obligation", so maybe I can clarify.
People can create and operate channels on YouTube for free. Yet we frequently see reports of Google acting unreasonably towards people who come to depend on YouTube, often for their livelihood. We expect Google to act morally by providing the bare minimum of human oversight when a person's channel has been banned by an AI mistake. But there is no legal or ethical obligation, because YouTube is "free", and Google just doesn't care enough about morals.
We also see lots of examples of FOSS authors getting burned out when their sense of morality is used and abused by users. That's also not okay. But perhaps we can aim for a happy medium where the "norm" assumes people can be reasonable, mature adults. No one wins when we optimize for the outliers.
Exactly, yes. Thank you. I have explicitly, every time I mentioned the word, been referring to a social obligation, i.e. specifically not a legal one.
> But perhaps we can aim for a happy medium
Unfortunately, there is a vicious cycle leading to extreme attitudes from both sides, which I described in the second half of this comment: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38301710#38310514>
> ... in the sub-thread by @teddyh that has unfortunately been voted dead ...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
> Dead posts aren't displayed by default, but you can see them all by turning on 'showdead' in your profile.
> If you see a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you can vouch for it. Click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch' at the top. When enough users do this, the post is restored. There's a small karma threshold before vouch links appear.
I'm not sure if your karma is sufficient for that action, but it's not a dead comment anymore.
Yes I see that now, thanks!
Youtube the relationship is largely bidirectional where both sides are profiting
FOSS often times consumers are profiting and maintainers are not (and many times maintainers are investing/spending instead)
> Creators / maintainers owe us nothing
I would argue that they do, in fact, owe us something.
All people who make public announcements are in effect holding a conversation with the public, until such time as they publicly announce its end. A person in a conversation is socially obligated to make reasonable attempts to speak and respond to other people’s questions, comments, and concerns. If they don’t, or suddenly stop, they have abandoned the social etiquette of a conversation. This is not the public “being entitled” (as some like to claim), but is instead the quite reasonable expectations of the public who was led into a conversation with somebody who did not, or ceased to, respect the social rules.
(I should not need to say this, but in addition to being a user of many software projects, I am myself a maintainer of software publicly available – in official Linux distributions, even. I do not think that I ask my fellow maintainers for much – only a smidgen of respect for their users.)
(Previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38301710#38304918>, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22073908#22074287>)
The tax you’re describing is exactly why maintainers burn out and why open source projects die, or worse - they’re never born. The only way to win is not to play.
It is very similar to club activities and volunteer work. People burn out fast when they stop finding value in the work. It is exceptional common with instructors where say parents pay to a club for their children membership, where the parents might not be fully aware that the cost of operation would be significant higher if the people involved were paid employees rather than people volunteering their time. One has to regularly remind people about the social aspects that are the foundation of such activity, and that the activity can only exist when enough people join in and help. When that fails you get very high burnout rates which quickly can cause a death spiral of the whole activity.
Normally such activity comes with one year commitments. Leaving in the middle of things unannounced and without warning would be breaking the social etiquette. No one is forced to work but there are social expectations and obligations in social activities. How much open source project is similar to such activity, and how much social expectation there are will depend on the context. For example, if you are volunteering as treasurer to a large open source project, the expectations are going to be very similar to that of a club, as will the burn out if the person doing the work don't get value from it.
> All people who make public announcements are in effect holding a conversation with the public
No, they're not. Unlike a conversation, a public announcement is a one-way, one-to-many communication.
> A person in a conversation is socially obligated to make reasonable attempts to speak and respond to other people’s questions, comments, and concerns.
In a social setting, with a limited number of participants, sure. But in an internet forum, with an unlimited number of participants, people fail to make reasonable attempts to respond to the entirety of others' comments on a fairly regular basis. And there is absolutely no widespread social obligation otherwise.
But this is all entirely irrelevant anyway, because a software project is not the same thing as a conversation in the first place:
> the quite reasonable expectations of the public who was led into a conversation with somebody who did not, or ceased to, respect the social rules.
Using someone's free software is quite clearly not even remotely the same thing as being "led into a conversation", so there's no reason to expect the same social obligations.
> respond to the entirety of others' comments
You are mischaracterizing what I wrote. I did not say the entirety of others’s comments; I explicitly wrote only “make reasonable attempts”.
> Using someone's free software is quite clearly not even remotely the same thing as being "led into a conversation", so there's no reason to expect the same social obligations.
Users are still completely reasonable in expecting something. Consider my hypothetical situation I described in the second paragraph here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38310060>.
> I did not say the entirety of others’s comments; I explicitly wrote only “make reasonable attempts”.
OK, but that's still clearly not the widespread social norm in internet forums. For better or worse, it's quite common for commenters to not make any reasonable attempt to respond to sub-threads.
> Users are still completely reasonable in expecting something. Consider my hypothetical situation
I completely disagree. Your hypothetical situation sounds absolutely like entitlement to me.
> I completely disagree. Your hypothetical situation sounds absolutely like entitlement to me.
Do you mean to say that you think that it would be completely socially acceptable for a maintainer to act as in my hypothetical exaggerated hyperbolic situation? Would you respect anyone who actually did that? Would you remain friends with anyone who did that? Really?
Assuming it's FOSS, then yes, a maintainer is entirely in their rights to stop maintaining their software for any reason or for no reason at all. If you as a user don't like that, you can fork it, that's the norm for FOSS.
As for respecting someone who responded in that specific wording, no, it's unprofessional. But that's orthogonal to whether or not it's entitlement to expect a regular release cadence from a FOSS project that you have no commercial relationship with.
As for remaining friends, likewise, that's orthogonal to the topic being discussed.
A person in a conversation is socially obligated to make reasonable attempts to speak and respond to other people’s questions, comments, and concerns.
Slaves and servants and subjects have the obligation you describe.
It is the nature of their bondage.
Asking questions and complaining and unsolicited opining are hallmarks privilege.
To the extent a social contract is a contract, it requires both parties to receive consideration.
Comparing mainainers being socially obligated to respond to questions to actual slavery, is unseemly.
If people don’t want the social burden of being a public person or even the relatively small burden of having a public project, they have the option of not being public.
Or -- stay with me -- they have the option of running their public project in the manner and with the level of effort they want. If you don't like that, you are free to run your own projects according to your own standards.
People “have the option” to say whatever they want – it’s called Free Speech, and it’s an important legal right. But that does not mean that I think that everything people do say is right and proper. I can, and will, criticize people for what they say, and I will also criticize maintainers who treat their users with less than reasonable respect.
You are conflating legal rights with what is socially or ethically right, and I think this is a dubious rhetorical trick.
I don't "keep" doing anything - this is the first and only time I've ever replied to one of your comments, nor have I said anything that a reasonable person could construe as conflating legal obligations and social etiquette.
I'm well aware of the difference between between the two concepts. What I, along with basically everyone else in this thread, is telling you is that this social obligation on the part of open source maintainers you seem the believe in is not a thing. People who give away their software for free do not owe any debt to anyone who might choose to use that software. As I said to the 1 (one) other person who seems to agree with you here, the relevant social etiquette is "don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
> I don't "keep" doing anything
Fair; I have edited.
> this social obligation on the part of open source maintainers you seem the believe in is not a thing.
Many people do think it’s a thing, though. See my links to past threads, where I am far from alone in my opinion. See also various Linux Distributions’ rules for maintainers.
Those rules are generally not put in place by users though, they're put in place by other maintainers right?
By other maintainers, yes, but for the benefit of users. Also, if these minimal levels of decency (which I suggest) are in fact so onerous to surely drive all maintainers to burnout (as frequently claimed, even in this thread), why, then, are they mandated by distributions?
> Many people do think it’s a thing, though. See my links to past threads, where I am far from alone in my opinion. See also various Linux Distributions’ rules for maintainers.
Against my better judgement, I read through the first thread you linked to.
If there are any substantial number of people writing there that agree with your position that open source maintainers have a "social obligation" -- or anything similar -- to the users of the software they give away for free, I missed it.
Most of the replies to your comments I saw there were people trying to explain the same things we are trying to convey here, followed by your steadfast refusal to deal with reality. I mean, at one point you responded to a quoted section of an MIT-style license and said:
> That text does not disclaim support, security bugfixes, and future development. On the contrary, all three of those things are probably either heavlily implied or outright stated to be available on the project web site.
... when the first two lines of the quoted license does exactly that. To wit:
> ... PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND ...
... which means the copyright holders disclaim support, bug fixes, and future development. That's literally what providing something "AS IS" means. It is provided as it currently is.
I don't think continuing to engage with you here on an even more nebulous concept ('social obligation') when you are unable or unwilling to objectively deal with written text is going to be a good use of my time. Have a nice day.
If you’re unwilling to engage in debate, then you should refrain from making these drive-by personal snipes. But, I forget, you don’t believe in the concept of social oblications or politeness.
I have no problem debating people who have positions grounded in reality and who appear to be acting in good faith. In this thread you’ve:
* Instead of addressing the substance of brudger’s argument[0], you attempted to tone police his comment and then set up a false dichotomy.
* Accused me[1] of “conflating legal rights with what is socially or ethically right, and I think this is a dubious rhetorical trick.” when I had argued no such thing, and it was in fact you who were engaged in dubious rhetorical tricks[2] as all I had written at that point is that people have the option of running open source projects on their own terms.
All of this in support of the position that people who give away their labor for free have a further obligation to give away more free labor because…checks notes… you say so.
0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43143414
1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43143719
2 - see, I do believe in social niceties. Isn’t it much nicer to say someone engaged in “dubious rhetorical tricks” than to say what you actually did in that comment, which is lie?
When Forest Gump said “I’m pretty tired, I think I’ll go home now” was he breaking an obligation to keep running just because others were following him?
Well in this case, imagine if he didn't say that, or say anything. It would be pretty rude.
Exactly. A modicum of respect is all I expect.
The degree to which you demand obligation is the degree to which you make equivalence.
Why only two options? It seems limiting the options of engagement only serves to create a false dichotomy for the purposes of supporting your argument.
If the only two options are to become obligated to the public or not to engage at all, what a sad world this would be. Thankfully, there are many, many alternate options in the reality we share, even if not in your imagined reality.
I only mentioned two options to simplify. I agree that there are many levels, as I have written about previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19538256>
I could write a lot about this but you may be too dug in to hear it. The obvious rebuttals are "caveat emptor", don't judge a book by its cover, don't buy a product just because the box looks professional, etc.
But you are actually arguing for something different. You are insisting on an implication where the rest of us don't see one. If a project has nice documentation, an up-to-date license, etc. you believe that there is ethical/moral implication that the maintainer will fulfil some responsibility.
This isn't just about misrepresentation (which is almost a side-effect), it is about a proposed belief in duty, almost like a chivalry that goes beyond gentleman-ness.
I tend to think of Postel's law in those circumstances, liberal in what I accept and conservative in what I do. I've heard it said that the happiest cultures of the world have low expectations.
The social etiquette is set by the license the code is distributed under, which says things like "THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE" in all caps.
That social etiquette indicates that maintainers don't owe you shit.
That’s the legal warranty disclaimer. It has nothing to do with support, security fixes, or future development, and certainly does not speak about simply being reasonably responsive when being contacted by users.
Also, and this might be hard for overly rules-obsessed people to understand, this is not a legal matter. It is a matter of social etiquette. I of course agree that nobody is legally owed anything. But this is not about legality.
> It has nothing to do with support, security fixes, or future development, and certainly does not speak about simply being reasonably responsive when being contacted by users.
Actually, if you re-read the GP, all of those points are covered. You just don't like the answer.
They are covered in a legal sense. But that was not what we were discussing.
Funnily enough, if you re-read it, everything you mentioned is covered. You just don't like the sentiment.
That's not the social etiquette, that's the legal situation.
Correct. The relevant social etiquette here is "don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
I think a lot of open source maintainers start before they have found their favorite languages. And now you have a problem if you see that the language you wrote your library in creates a bunch of make-work problems that you can solve by switching languages. How do you retire without it sounding like an insult to the ecosystem and the people who helped you make the product good?
If he keeps pushing commits, I won’t place bets but would say don’t be surprised if they’re in a new language.
> How do you retire without it sounding like an insult to the ecosystem and the people who helped you make the product good?
I would think it’s fairly simple. Announce your retirement from the project, and assign the project leadership and commit rights (or whatever GitHub uses) to whoever you feel would be a good fit, or the most frequent contributor, or simply to the most recent one. But most anything would be better than locking the repository and vanishing without a word.
I think this is the reason in fewer 0.01% of cases. Languages are not in the top 10 things that make being an open source maintainer difficult.
Agreed. Sometimes it’s personal challenges or tragedy. So perhaps best to let it lie if it’s not volunteered.
FOSS alternative is Fort https://github.com/tnodir/fort
But unfortunately you have to disable core isolation for the time being https://github.com/tnodir/fort/discussions/108
Thanks for mentioning Fort. I've never heard of it but I'm an avid user of Simplewall. Looks like I will need to take a close look now. Thank God it's not another crapp written in Electron.
I would recommend Fort, back when i ran windows i tried all the available firewall and simplewall ended up being buggy after some times.
Fort worked perfectly, it had more settings and once you took the time to set it up you could just save the rules, the configuration and export it to another computer.
Used https://tinywall.pados.hu/ when I was on Windows (at least a decade ago).
Windows Filtering Platform (what Simplewall is based on) is simultaneously one of the most powerful network access management APIs that exist, and also the most frustrating to use. The way it works in practice doesn't always match the documentation.
I wonder if there is change afoot in the way those APIs are designed and interacted with?
MS did indicate during the CrowdStrike DOS that they would work towards opening up or at least documenting those APIs and some other aspects of the kernel to help improve the situation for vendors.
I believe there might have also been antitrust concerns about the way they deliver Defender as part of the OS, but simultaneously offer premium cloud platforms? Don’t recall the full story.
Love this litle app. Author did this once before. I hope he changes his mind.
I would hate to need to look for a replacement.
Since it's open source, the replacement is to keep this software up-to-date yourself.
What's the simplest/best tool to just nix all the Windows/MS telemetry crap?
I'm already running Tiny11 + Win11Debloat, which removes some of it.
Blackbird V6
https://getblackbird.net/
Perfect, thank you.
I recommend https://github.com/pylorak/TinyWall as a simpler firewall management alternative.
Is the archiving of its repo the only "proof" of it being discontinued?
Do you need more? Is the hardest proof you can get
It might be the hardest proof to expect, but there is an unarchive button and people archive for reasons like moving rather than stopping a project permanently.
What is wrong with the Standard Windows Firewall? It is quite powerful.
the UI is garbage. Talk about unintuitive. Where it's simple it to simple and when it's advanced it's not intuitive and the relvant info is scatterd to the point of disfunction.
You can't block Windows/Microsoft traffic
You can block any traffic by IP or process
I'm guessing it has a lot of undocumented features and doesn't behave as expected.