Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

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I think your analogy is just as flawed (and you have not explained why yours applies more than mine, as you do not know the motivation of maintainers), but lets go with it for now.

So your argument is that in compensation for your attention you are entitled to give uninvited criticism, or lets say tell them to play songs you like? Moreover, how do you assume that your criticism or the songs you would like to have played somehow take priority over other peoples interests? If I would be in the audience for some unknown band I certainly hope that people who don't like the music leave instead of heckling the musicians.

You are saying that maintainers have a "social obligation" by giving you something for free, so you are entitled to their time, because that's what it boils down to. To make another analogy (again admittedly flawed), would I be entitled to demand you reply to me, because I have given you my attention in this discussion?

> So your argument is that in compensation for your attention you are entitled to give uninvited criticism

I would maintain that in many cases it isn't uninvited, just unwanted. There are many repos on github that are just somebody's pet project they did for fun or because it filled a need for them, and they aren't inviting criticism because they just shared code in case anyone else could use it or learn something from it.

However, many FOSS projects are very much like the band analogy above in that they aren't content to upload videos of their jam session to youtube but actively seek to attract an audience. They make project announcements on places like HN, they show up in forums and tell people how blazing fast their project is and it's a good fit for someone's use case, they have fancy websites, etc. They ask for your attention, and in so doing invite criticism.

There’s no such thing as “uninvited criticism” in FOSS (or open mic night). Merely by exposing your project to be acquirable by end users, you have invited criticism. And if you go further and promote the project, give talks about it, recommend it, seek sponsorship, seek contributors, then you’ve invited criticism even more so.

Of course you can ignore that criticism - that was never in doubt. But users are fully justified to make the criticism and it would be rude and wildly unreasonable to reply by saying, “if you don’t like it, leave.”

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