Thread

1. recursivedoubts · 1790522383 · focus · HN ↗

   They are open source developers, giving away free software as a gift. There is no duty here.

   We can speak, respectfully, of how important backwards compatibility is to us, and ask nicely for them to give more of their time to support it when their free sodftware isn't backwards compatible. Perhaps we can even offer to help implement it.

   But they have no duty to do so or to "care" for their users. (They have already demonstrated they care for their users, btw, by giving them free software.)

   EDIT: I missed an important part of the story, which is that they mutated existing files in a non-backwards compatible manner. That should have been avoided, I understand where the (secondary) author is coming from now.

   1. sdcfgy · 1790523617 · focus · HN ↗

      There is not a duty but there is an image and quality issue. Something many open source projects suffer from and should not.

      And even mentioning that results in "fork it if you're not happy" which immediately turns everyone off who's had to maintain a fork to fix a minor issue in something before. And anyone who can't fork it is being told to go to hell.

      Everyone needs to quite frankly get off their high horse, crank the ego down and listen to users. Because you're damaging open source with the attitude.

      30 years ago, things were better. They got a lot worse, particularly since github appeared.

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