this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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What we're talking about is a complete free and open source project that's built and maintained completely through volunteer labour.
There are zero obligations towards the people actively using the software.
While I agree that the functionality should exist, the devs can literally do whatever they want. Nobody is paying them.
Edit: you're also seeing only a single instance of a conversation. I can guarantee that the devs have been dealing with asinine and demanding users for a while now. There comes a point where your patience wears thin.
Yes, there are, and that obligation is to not publish something as production ready if it is illegal to use because of how it's built.
I'm a software developer, I understand exactly how frustrating user demands are, that was still a completely and utterly unacceptable way to respond to a very politely worded request for software that literally just doesn't break privacy laws to run.
As the commenter pointed out, if you don't want to fix it, fine, but then you absolutely have a moral, ethical, and professional obligation to document that clearly in your README.md.
No, there really isn't. Do I feel that project owners should follow good practices for maintaining clean code that also allows users to keep things legal? Absolutely I do.
But that is not the same thing as an obligation. If there was a single cent exchanged between the devs and anyone else (donations do not count) then this conversation would be entirely different.
I don't agree with the devs' stance. But it is 100% their prerogative to say no. It's their project, not ours.
As am I.
I agree.
No, you absolutely do not. Although I do somewhat agree on the professional part, but it's still not an obligation. It's completely unprofessional, but that's different than it being an obligation.
The word obligation is not as narrow as you're using it:
Does he have a contractual obligation? No, no contracts were signed. Does he have a legal obligation? No, the license file in the project absolves him of legal liability.
But he absolutely has a moral, social, and professional obligation to do so.
If you want to apply such a better definition, then you have an obligation to learn Rust and submit a PR to bring the project into compliance. You have a societal obligation since you are aware of the issue and use Lemmy.
You owe it to your fellow Lemmites. Lemurs? Lemmings? Whatever the term for a Lemmy user is.
All I have an obligation to do is give back to society, and I do so through taking care of my parents and grandparents, volunteering teaching classes every weekend at the community center, volunteering to upgrade and maintain an app for a non profit, donating to charity, open source projects and news organizations, helping my elderly neighbours with their snow and leaf clearing, etc.
And if you find one of my open source github projects will cause a user to violate a local law, kindly file an issue and I'll immediately update the README.md and take it down until the issue is fixed.
100% your prerogative.
Nope, it's my moral, ethical, and social obligation as a person, my professional obligation as a professional software developer, and if I had bothered to file the paper work for my engineering license, would also be my legal obligation as an engineer.
Again, 100% your prerogative. No one is forced to use any of your software. The only time you must fix it is if you have a contract that outlines those conditions or you are selling licenses to customers in the EU.
Again, you are narrowing the definition of "obligation" to just legal and contractual.
If you just want to think about yourself and how you interact with the world through legal and contractual terms, good luck, it will be hard and miserable and you will be disliked. Otherwise you do have moral, ethical, and social obligations for everything you put into society.