I think by far the biggest problem with open source is that the user community fundamentally mis-understands the nature of the transaction involving them and the developer(s) of the software they’re using.
I think if we could make everyone sit down, take 10 minutes and just read The Social Contract Of Open Source a lot of people would keep developing OSS software.
Brass tacks: You are being given a gift. The person who gave you that gift owes you NOTHING because… They gave you a gift and by using their software you chose to accept it.
I see it all the time in the open source project I co-maintain, and I have it SUPER easy beacause ours is really just a bundle of configuration files for Neovim.
This one goes to 11 :) seriously though? Good on them. The good guys deserve their fair share of hype too!
Couldn’t agree more.
For what it’s worth I think Brett Cannon wrote one of the best posts ever on the social contract of open source and how Not To Be That Guy :)
https://snarky.ca/the-social-contract-of-open-source/
Should be required reading IMO for anyone ever on Github :P