Comment 347 for bug 1084

Revision history for this message
In , Schneegans (schneegans) wrote :

>>but since I cannot contribute
anything (money, code, technical advice...), I don't think I have a right to
complain about it.

Pardon me if I do not agree with you, but IMHO open source developers do not have only the rights to work for the fun of it, but they also have duties.
Let me explain: when a commercial developers put a product on the market and get money for it, we consider as normal that they offer some waranty that the product will work as advertised, and that bugs will be corrected.
When some other developers put an equivalent product on the market for free, they simply kill other commercial products.
In that sense, I say that open source developers do not only take some other commercial product's market, they should also assume the responsability of providing the same kind of service.
Open source developers do not contribute by altruism, they do it because first they have fun, secondly they have the time to do it.
And if people like you and me use their product, it is not just to thank them because they are nice enough to give away their work.
It is also because they have wiped other products off the market.