Open source is not about you (2018)

Context and why it’s resurfacing

• Essay was written in 2018 amid Clojure-community debates about governance and “community-driven development,” but is being resurfaced now in light of recent OSS drama (e.g., MinIO, bots harassing maintainers).
• Several commenters note it reads as a frustrated boundary-setting document from a language author under sustained pressure.

Maintainer rights vs user expectations

• Strong support for the core thesis: an OSS license grants use/modify/redistribute rights, not support, features, attention, or governance rights.
• Many maintainers report frequent entitlement: demands for free work, quick feature turnaround, special support, or compliance paperwork.
• Others argue that if you publish code and accept issues/PRs, you implicitly invite interaction and should at least communicate your intentions (e.g., via CONTRIBUTING.md, “no support,” “no contributions”).

Politeness, emotional labor, and scale

• One camp: nobody is “owed” more than what the license states; politeness is optional and can’t scale when thousands of users want “five minutes” each.
• Another camp: while no one is owed features, humans are owed basic courtesy; brusque or hostile responses drive away contributors and poison communities.
• Burnout and a “support DDOS” from low-quality contributions are described as a real problem; contributors are urged to “demonstrate homework” and accept that trust must be earned.

Open source: license vs community / gift economy

• Some insist OSS is “just a licensing and delivery mechanism,” not inherently a community or commons.
• Others frame OSS as a gift economy with social contracts and mutual obligations; they see the essay as attacking collectivist/community values.
• Debate over whether popularity or dependency on a project creates moral (if not legal) duties to users.

Corporate and commercial angles

• Stories of enterprises treating maintainers as vendors (security questionnaires, support expectations) and surprise when told “pay or no.”
• Some maintainers successfully convert such requests into paid consulting; others want zero obligation.
• Several commenters highlight funding OSS, hardware, or prioritization as a healthier model.

Responsibility, harm, and consequences

• A minority argue that publishing widely-used software creates a “duty of care,” analogized to public safety; disclaimers don’t erase ethical responsibility.
• Others counter: legal licenses explicitly disclaim warranty; moral responsibility ends at “don’t be malicious,” everything else is bonus.
• Some users report that attitudes like the essay’s have made them keep patches private; others say if you dislike the governance, you should fork or avoid the project.