Think of it as a non-profit club. If you volunteer to be the treasurer, are you then free to ignore everything and do whatever you like, just because you aren’t paid? Of course not. It’s the same with being a software project maintainer; you have willingly taken on some obligations.

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themaninthedark 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

If you volunteer, sure.

If I put some code out on the internet and some other people find it and start using it, they message me we talk and I start adding things they suggest and working with others to improve this code. Then one day I wake up and don't want to do it anymore. At what point did I become obligated? When I published the code? When I first started talking to others about it(building a community)? When I coded their suggestions? When I worked with other coders?

Who get to decide where the line is?

	▲	teddyh 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		If I strike up a conversation with you, and suddenly I don’t want to talk to you anymore, then what, if any, obligations do I have? Can I just stop talking mid-sentence and begin to completely ignore you? After all, I did not promise you a complete conversation. Or did I, by engaging in a civil conversation with you, implicitly promise to abide by the normal social rules of etiquette, as far as I am reasonably able? It is similar with software. If you, say, put up a web site (or even just a README.md) containing blurbs about how useful your software is, extolling its virtues, you are implicitly promising future updates and support, to the best of your (limited) ability. If you need to step away from the project, you are expected to do so in an orderly fashion (again, to the best of your – possibly limited – ability), announce it publicly, etc. If you have no web site, but you have given similar indications in conversations, the same principle is applicable, but you have fewer people to notify. > Who get to decide where the line is? If a user can reasonably feel let down by your actions, or can reasonably feel that you have misled them, then I feel that a line has been crossed.

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teddyh 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

(Many people disagree vehemently with ascribing any obligation at all to software maintainers, as discussed previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43143176>)