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Comment by henning | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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."

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