When you're talking to an open source dev, just remember that they are literally giving you their time for free, and they are people who don't like to be treated poorly.
Edit: Just to be clear, I don’t mean any ill will toward the guy. He’s frustrated and he’s just taking it out in the wrong venue at the wrong people, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.
Edit 2: The reinstalling he’s talking about is NPM. So just running npm install. It’s because he tried removing the node_modules directory, which is a reasonable thing to do, but it means you need to reinstall the modules with that command.
It depends on if the first guy is complaining about having to reinstall this specific software, or if the software borked his entire system to the point that he has to reinstall his entire OS. Because that happened to me once. But in the first scenario he is being a dick, and in the second one not so much.
In this case, in trying to resolve the issue, he deleted his
node_modulesdirectory. So he’s talking about having to reinstall everything by typingnpm installand waiting for it to finish.oh man..
People can be such dicks, you have my sympathy.
I’ve been thinking about open sourcing a Node project of mine recently.. concerning that this is the kind of thing to expect
Well, this isn’t usual. This is actually really rare. Almost all of the interactions I have with users of my libraries are great. People are generally appreciative and kind, or at least not rude. This is an outlier, and I try not to let these things sour my experience.
He’s frustrated and he’s being abrasive because of that, but that doesn’t make him a bad person. I try to respond without being rude back, but just stern. Usually when you do that, people will either not respond again or apologize. I’ve never had a user keep being rude, and if I did, I would just ban them.
Sometimes people just kinda forget that on the internet they’re still talking to other real people, you know?
You're taking a far calmer approach than i could ever take.
You're lucky. I left FOSS dev because I got tired of my free time being abused by people like the one in your post
I've had to adopt a two strikes policy towards these aggressive trolls, who treat you like your their personal servant, especially since they make up like <1% of ppl on issue trackers. After a warning, if they don't play nice, then they're out.
It's the only way to keep the coding experience enjoyable, and not suffer from burnout.
Wait till they realize that's literally the solution to a lot of Node related issues. It's in its own folder for a reason.
I disagree, in neither scenario the open source dev owes him anything. You get to use and modify the software for free, but the flip side is you are entitled to nothing.
Malware is free too
Malware is not usually open source.
@[email protected] not open source is usually malware
You are entitled to the truth. If the dev knows their software could have very damaging effects then that should be front and center on the software page.
Usually it is? But ultimately it's still your own responsibility. You did not pay the dev, the dev does not ask you to pay them, ergo the dev owes you diddly squad.
Let's be decent with each other, I don't think my expectations are outrageous. I consider decent to make sure that the person that will use your software is aware of the dangers. And the best person to know those dangers is usually the dev.
No. It's provided without warranty nor guarantee that it'll work or even leave your system intact. That's the core of most opensource licenses. Dev owes nobody nothing.
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I didn't say anyone owed anyone anything. I was saying one level of frustration was understandable, one was not. Anyhow, my case happened twenty years ago when creative commons barely existed.
Then you're right. The frustration would be understandable, the expression thereof towards the developer, not.
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what's with the link in every comment? just curious
It's a non-commercial copyleft licence for the comment in case the case against Microsoft's CoPilot is won.
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I don't quite understand, why would Microsoft sue you for a lemmy comment?
Just to be sure, is this a serious question or a troll?
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serious question... not everyone on Lemmy is a computer expert, lol
🙂 my bad
No, not sue me for lemmy comments. AI is trained with lots of data. The world wide web is full of publicly accessible data like our comments. However, not all publicly accessible data may be used without a license. Examples thereof are news paper articles, videos, still pictures, etc. Normally, if you want to use those commercially, consent has to be given by the license holder and a in some cases a fee has to be paid.
Microsoft Copilot is an AI model to help people write code. However, it was trained mostly on opensource code (code made publicly available) which was very often licensed. And it is done so in such a manner that commercial use is allowed with the obligation to make that commercial code publicly available too. Microsoft does not make the code for Copilot publicly accessible and uses code licensed in many, many other ways - and it does so without asking for consent.
This is often a double standard as companies that hide their code fight very hard to keep it secret and/or pursue those in court who do not get a license to use it. However, they will happily use licensed consent to their benefit without consent nor potential payment.
With some clever tricks, AIs have been duped into revealing their training data (often licensed, sometimes very private e.g addresses, birthday, health information, etc.). Lawsuits have ensued (against the AI owners like Microsoft) and are currently active with a pending verdict. Until the verdicts come, I add the license link to my comments. Who knows, maybe it will have an impact, maybe not.
Hopefully I could explain the situation in an understandable manner for you.
Have a good day.
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I see - thanks for taking the time to explain the backstory, very interesting.
You're welcome. Thank you for reading :)