Thomas Depierre writes about open source economics, maintainers, supply chain security and developer tooling.
HN commenters often cite "I am not a supplier" to argue maintainers owe users nothing, and call the developer tooling article a great read.
Obligatory article, "I am not a supplier.": <https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/not-a-supplier>
Folks that disagree with a maintainer's actions are generally free to fork the project and maintain an alternative -- that's one of the primary features of open source software. And if end users prefer that new fork to the original maintainer's version, that'll probably be the one that survives.
But maintainers have no obligation to make their end users happy.
> Report any problems found. This makes usage robust and supports open source support and development.
Project maintainers/developers are not free labor. If you need a proper solution to any problem, make a contract and pay them. This idea that someone will magically solve your problem for free needs to die.
https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/not-a-supplier
This is a great read. I think we can learn as much (or more) from the failures as we can from the successes [1].
Developer tooling is also just a very difficult business to be in [2].
[1] https://codecodeship.com/blog/2023-04-19-parker-selbert
[2] https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/economics-developer-tools
Location: France, Jura
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Elixir, Postgres, AWS, Erlang, React
Résumé/CV: https://www.softwaremaxims.com/resume
Email: depierre.thomas@gmail.com
> supply chain security
https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/not-a-supplier
"You are not buying from a supplier, you are a raccoon digging through dumpsters for free code."
2024 (kind of) follow-up:
https://www.softwaremaxims.com/blog/open-source-hobbyists-turf
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39910558