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Nora, dreamer quintet
@noracodes@tenforward.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

> The essence of Free Software is: “When it breaks, you get to keep both halves.” If something doesn’t work the way you want it to, you can change it so that it does. [...] If you want the software to get updated—to have bugs fixed and security vulnerabilities patched—you want something very different. What you want is an ongoing supply of software, not a copy of a specific software artifact. Confusing these two situations is, I think, at the core of the current angst about sustainability of free and open source software.

- Justin Warren, "Open Source Has Too Many Parasocial Relationships" on the PivotNine blog. https://pivotnine.com/blog/open-source-has-too-many-parasocial-relationships/

Open Source Has Too Many Parasocial Relationships

The people who wrote the software you found on the side of the Internet for free don’t owe you anything.
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Fish Id Wardrobe
@fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@noracodes i'm 100% behind this, in that yes, sometimes i want a working snapshot of the code and leave it alone.

… but if this is the case then, when you try and be helpful and report a bug, the devs don't get to tell you to update to the latest version.

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Nora, dreamer quintet
@noracodes@tenforward.social replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@fishidwardrobe ??? Why not?

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Fish Id Wardrobe
@fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 days ago

@noracodes "if you want the software to get updated, then…"

in this scenario, i don't. so i should not be expected to have to update it.

(on the other hand, i should not expect a bug fix. but it's reasonable to expect an answer to a question.)

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