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Comment by mixedbit

Long time ago Sourceforge and then GitHub promoted into the current default the model of open source distribution which is not sustainable and I doubt it is something that the founding fathers of Free Software/Open Source had in mind. Open source licenses are about freedom of using and modifying software. The movement grew out of frustration that commercial software cannot be freely improved and fixed by the user to better fit the user's needs. To create Free software, you ship sources together with your binaries and one of the OSI-approved licenses, that is all. The currently default model of having an open issue tracker, accepting third party pull requests, doing code reviews, providing support by email or chat, timely security patches etc, has nothing to do with open source and is not sustainable. This is OK if it is done for a hobby project as long as the author is having fun doing this work, but as soon as the software is used for commercial, production critical systems, the default expectation that authors will be promptly responding to new GitHub issues, bug reports and provide patches for free is insane. This is software support, it is a job, it should be paid.
parent mixedbit 9 months ago

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