"Owe" is a very strong word and can quickly get people into trouble once you start trying to break down human interactions into transactions where certain things are owed. Part of this is because to owe something is to indicate some level of force to cause a person to comply. It touches on topics of forcing a person against their will. I'm not saying that it is wrong, but that it makes people extremely uncomfortable and can even lead to people attacking your character for trying to do such a breakdown.

I think what we are running into here is a matter where different groups have different expectations of what is owed and why it is owed, but due to the difficulty of talking about what is owed to others makes it hard for us to verbalize or sometimes even concretely conceptualize what we are talking about. There are also different extents one can owe something (legal being the most extreme, as you will be forced to by the courts with possible violence if you don't).

If a one of the parents tried to get a court to order you to teach the class on penalty of contempt of course, would you find that reasonable? This sounds quite extreme, but there are plenty of cases of owing someone something that the court does enforce in a similar manner. My guess is that you would find such an reaction unreasonable to an outrageous degree, but would find far less extreme enforcement measures (such as being disappointed) as being reasonable. I would even go a bit off topic and say that this level of being owed is proportional to the payment you receive. As a volunteer you likely get no money, but are still 'paid' in social recognition.

So you can owe something on the level of being disappointed, but not on the level of court order. So what level does a project maintainer owe others and why. And what do those others owe them in return?

Linus is paid to carry that responsibility. Others are not.

This is factually correct statement while apparently downvoted. Linus Torwards is paid for his effort. Which is also actually right state of things, not an insult.

True, but for the reasons I detailed above, it's not the payment that matters. Linus could also probably make more money on a different project, but he's committed to Linux.

> but there'd probably be a couple weeks of chaos. Does Linus bear zero responsibility because he's a volunteer

Linux Foundation would appoint somebody else on his place and have him sign similar contract. It would be likely a person that is already employed in similar capacity - one of current paid maintainers. No fork would be needed. Linus Torwalds is not a volunteer at this point.

Linus Torwalds will leave linux one day. He wont stay there forever - most likely to retire, but possibly to do something else.

Also, Linux is particularly bad example, because most contributors are paid for their effort by someone.

It is a bad example but most major open source projects are in that regard. However, the community driven ecosystems (Rust, Go, JavaScript ..) have significant components in that particular unpaid maintainer situation. And that is a problem.

Go is done and maintained by google employees. JavaScript specification has syndicate behind it. Rust has clear governance, through I cant find who pays for it all.

Any big enough project will formalize relationships at one point or another - latest when they need to raise money or organize conference. These projects are too big to be run over the weekend, they do have to pay regular staff.

I think there's a huge distinction you're missing here. As a volunteer teacher or facilitator, you've made a personal commitment to a group of individual people. I think there's a difference between that and sharing code with the faceless hordes of the internet. Personal interactions differ strongly online vs in person. It would be quite unusual for a large group of people to start screaming at you in person but this happens commonly on web forums etc., as was described in TFA.

If Linus is truly a volunteer, then he owes me and the rest of us nothing beyond what he's done already. I haven't sent him any money and have no relationship or agreement with him; he owes me nothing. The chaos will resolve itself and the world will go on.

In this case there's nothing to prevent someone else from forming the code and moving forward with it, until they also tire of the abuse this poor fellow experienced.

I thought I was going crazy when nobody seemed to express this point of view. These are exactly my feelings about this. Perhaps maintainers get the brunt of entitlement and lack of appreciation, and don't have any interest after all that in stepping back and seeing it from this perspective. I think that there may be a disconnect in understanding of words such as "owe", "expect", etc.

I think that we could use some norms around this. Perhaps there could be an EXPECTATIONS.md in each project where we lay out exactly what to expect from the author, if anything. Maybe even specify a monetary incentive to take things further. And then the rest of us know exactly what to ask for if things aren't up to expectations. But no matter what, make sure to show appreciation to everybody who does what they do as a volunteer.

I partially agree. I _do_ actually think that you have a certain obligations to your users.

For Rust, my personal mantra was always that _usage is contribution_. Why? Because we have a high interest in adoption. It's literally one of our top-priority goals.

But not everyone taking part in these discussions is a user or someone I have some kind of relationship with. And a relationship goes both ways.

To take your example: if a kid showed up and was _constantly_ loud, didn't respect you or showed no interest in learning? What if _most_ of the kids were like this?

Would you still like to go every Saturday?

I do teach in similar settings (RailsGirls, RustBrige) and a crucial part of the experience for me is that many attendees have a progress that they are thankful for. The deal and the relationship works, even if it is just short.

My big frustration is that the debate is often "Maintainer vs. Users", but I don't believe that boundary is as hard as people make it to be. Still, user entitlement exists and is _very_ rampant and this is what people are up against, even if they put it less nuanced. (maintainer entitlement also exists, but that's a story for another day)

I think you're missing a point. If you promise something, people will get upset if you don't deliver. There were no promises made here. If you want to compare it to your example, it's more like your "primary teacher" would ask you to cover one week after other and after 3 years you'd say you just won't do it anymore - should anybody be upset at you?

I don't know enough about the specifics of this situation. My point is, I don't agree with the idea that volunteers inherently owe nothing.

And to focus on a different part of the analogy for a moment—if somebody looks more closely at what I'm teaching students, and sees that I'm actually showing them how to use flamethrowers, yeah, they have a right to be upset. Again, it doesn't matter that I'm a volunteer, they've placed a significant degree of trust in me.

People should still audit their dependencies, just like people should observe my teaching. But it's also fair for them to have expectations.

He's the author, not a voluneer. He didn't promise/volunteer to do anything.