Hacker News Reader

Comment by gingerlime | Hacker News Reader

No, there is no obligation. But there’s a thing called courtesy. And as humans there are certain social norms.

If someone spams me, I will ignore or retaliate by reporting as spam. If someone sends a low effort question, I might politely tell them to rtfm. If someone makes an effort to articulate a problem, even if I disagree, I’ll try to give them a reasoned response.

And if I genuinely have no interest in any interaction I’ll make sure to disable issues/comments or otherwise communicate this intent.

View on HN

So you agree that there is no obligation, then assert a set of social obligations that should be respected.

Do you see the contradiction here?

You are simply being pedantic.

He said there's no "absolute" obligation, but there are some by virtue of us living in a society.

I’m not saying this to be pedantic. And I’m not denying that there is some social expectations when living in society.

If you say that there is no obligations, but also that you should follow some social expectations, then you’re contradicting yourself. It’s just a nicer way to say that people should behave according to what you consider to be acceptable.

Btw, which society rules do you mean? Because you have a lot of differences in different places regarding politeness and other social obligations.

Ok, so the problem here is that “obligation” has two meanings, and they’re being conflated here. One is pretty close to “being courteous to others” and the other is “you must do this”. When people say “maintainers have no obligation to anyone”, the point to the license where it usually says something like “THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS-IS WITH NO WARRANTY” and you can tell that it’s the legal “must” definition because it’s in all caps and written in a way that nobody actually would write. So that means that nobody can sue the maintainer when they don’t do something or the other. All good, right? Well, now the question being posed above is “does this mean that the maintainer can also be rid of their obligations in the sense of courtesy, not legality?” And now since there is a difference in the definitions it is not contradictory to want to say “yes” to the second question. And yes, you are correct to say that these differ based on circumstances and location: that’s OK, we don’t judge them in a court of law. We do, however, judge people for their failings to meet societal obligations, based on our personal judgements.

I don’t think there is a conflation before your own comment. There is no reason to discuss legal obligations because that part is covered by licenses.

The entire discussion is at the level of social expectations.

> There is no reason to discuss legal obligations because that part is covered by licenses.

Correct, I think we agree on that.

> The entire discussion is at the level of social expectations.

No, this statement:

> No, there is no obligation. But there’s a thing called courtesy.

Is actually “No, there is no legal obligation. But there’s a thing called courtesy.“ And here the contradiction falls away and the discussion turns to whether there is a social expectation to be courteous. On that point my (and the above commenter, I suspect) would say that yes, of course there is an expectation of social courtesy. There’s one in every other setting too, so why not here?

You are not "gingerlime" who said that, I understand the original as "moral/social obligation" and not "legal obligation" but you seem to be putting the word "legal" on the users' mouth by saying what they "actually" mean?

As a Spaniard living in Japan, what social rules should I use to apply my social courtesy on Github?

I am gingerlime. I simply meant obligation as MUST and social norms / courtesy as SHOULD. So I guess technically you’re correct that it’s not a legal obligation, but I think the GP’s point is valid.

> No, there is no obligation. But there’s a thing called courtesy. And as humans there are certain social norms.

In my experience, there are no objective social norms or definition of "courtesy". What's polite in one culture might not be in another. Projecting your own values onto others isn't helpful.

Most cultures share some general social norms, such as courtesy to others. I would say it’s actually more unhelpful to dismiss norms entirely just because they have variance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com