I don't think that the article is incompatible with that. If you benefit from an open source project, that's good. If you benefit from more (a community, documentation, support, ...), that's even better! But you are not entitled to any of that.
> And this "us experts vs. entitled users" mentality is cultural poison.
I can't say what the author's mentality is, but after a lot of open source, my opinion is this: users of open source code tend to not understand that they are not entitled to anything at all. I don't say it in a bad way: they just aren't.
If you read the discussions here, it's obvious: many users of open source genuinely believe that it is not enough to share work for free: if one feels like sharing their work for free, they somehow "should have the decency to share even more work for free" (like documentation, support, reviews). But that is wrong! Again:
- If someone shares code for free, it's nice.
- If someone shares code for free, and documents it for free, and reviews PRs for free, and offers support for free, it's even nicer.
That's all there is. Maybe that someone is an asshole. You don't have to like them, you don't have to use their code, you don't have to engage with them. It's not a good thing to be an asshole. But still, you are not entitled to anything. Just take whatever you want from what is offered to you, and don't complain about not receiving even more.
It is sane and factually correct.
> Plenty of open source projects consider themselves a community which welcome newcomers, take governance seriously
Rich is taking governance very seriously. Others aren't and give nobodies the right to vote. In any case, he's factually correct. Nothing in open source implies anything about any type of governance, as "Open source is a licensing and delivery mechanism, period".
> Acting like a jerk
Pot, meet kettle.
Everybody is entitled to say (but not dictate) how something should work. Holding and expressing opinions is an innate human right, and the developed world only takes it away in extreme circumstances. Talking about open source governance is not an extreme circumstance.
We are not legally entitled to basic politeness, but politeness is enforced socially rather than morally, and failing to be polite means risking social consequences. If I used Clojure and I read the linked article, I would avoid hiring Cognitech, which is the exact problem Rich mentions.
Calling this offensive and inflammatory can only come from someone who is extremely conflict-avoidant. For my Italian sensibilities, it's quite milquetoast.
Your counter argument to this is to just be contrarian and imply they are a jerk... because, well, you don't agree with them. You didn't add substance to the discussion (facts, evidence, argument seeking middle ground), you just sought to set fire to someone because you were uncomfortable with the dim prospect you might be wrong/guilty of acting like this/be the subject of the criticism.
Do you see how this undermines your point of view/actually re-enforces the validity of the criticism?
It’s actually completely out of line and smacks of the very entitlement described in the piece.
Don’t agree with his views? Go make your own project and run it however you want.
Cultural poison? The truly cultured understand that a monoculture would be the real poison. There’s room for all modes of operation in OSS. Without “jerks”, there’d be no Linux and there would be nothing else of high value either.
If you want to sit around and hold hands then find a project where they do that, or maybe just take up finger painting.