Open Source Maintainers Owe You Nothing
mikemcquaid.com
This post is heavily inspired by my experience over the last ten years participating in the open source community and eight years as a maintainer of Homebrew (which I’ve maintained longer than anyone else at this point).

For those outside the loop: rsync starting using AI agents to handle the influx of AI security reports to improve the test suite and fix bugs. It introduced a few CVEs and people who never contributed in any way started firing shots at the maintainer.

rsync maintainer’s response to the people getting pissy about his usage of AI: medium and the related post on programming.dev

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
      3·
      23 hours ago

      Their point is that the maintainer did not sign a contract that requires them to perform maintainer duties. They can choose to stop doing it at any point. They can choose to axe a feature that you deem essential. They can choose to rewrite the project in COBOL for the fun of it.

      You may not like it, but that is how it is.
      The only legal document involved is the license and any open-source license I’ve seen so far, has stated that the program is provided as is.

      This is the license under which rsync is provided: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html
      See sections 15 and 16.

      The only way you get to have a say in the matter, is by forking and becoming a maintainer yourself.