How Long Should an Open Source Project Support Users? 272
Ubuntu Kitten writes "Since October the community-generated database of cards known to work with Ndiswrapper has been down. This is apparently due to an on-going site redesign, but right now the usual URL simply directs to a stock Sourceforge page. Without the database, the software's usability is severely diminished but this raises an interesting question: Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users? If so, for how long should the support last? Web servers cost money, especially for popular sites. While developers can sometimes find sponsorship, is it possible to get sponsorship simply for infrastructure and user services?"
Re: How Long Should Open Source Project Support Us (Score:5, Informative)
Not exactly. Here's some examples where a non-technical user might help out, even if it's not in the form of cash:
I have a couple of open source projects that are sorely in need of translators. I don't speak any languages other than English, and a little bit of very broken French and Spanish. If someone wants to provide me good translations of UI strings, help bubbles, messages, dialogs, etc., in their native tongue I'll gladly add good i18n and l10n support to the projects.
Neither of these projects have good end-user documentation. I need someone with good technical writing skills to write the user docs for them. You don't need to any programming, just how to use the program.
Evangelism: one project has existed for two years now, and the other is just about to have its first release. I need people to help get the word out about the projects.
You see what I mean? You don't need to be a programmer to help an OSS project. You just need to care.
responsibility (Score:4, Informative)
I run a free online game. So I'm also on the "provider" side. My take is this:
What I provide free of charge is a present and should be taken as such, i.e. no obligations. On the other hand, I'm a responsible person and my players can count on me not simply pulling the plug one day without prior announcement and saying "party's over, go home".
So how do you answer the "how long" question? You can't. As long as I want to, the stuff I provide will be available, be it my game, my website with its papers, mirrors, etc. - and if I don't want to anymore, I'll be responsible in shutting it down with enough time and ahead warning.
But if you as a user rely on a free service, then you must take into account that it could go away any minute. If your business or your happiness depends on it, make sure you can launch a local copy.
I don't think any free (as in beer) project, Open Source or not, has any obligations to provide support at all, much less for any specific period of time. The people behind it, however, probably want a good reputation, and providing support and not going away suddenly is part of that.
It's a lot of soft factors, and that's why all things considered, I'd say the question isn't adequate.
The Internet Saves The Day! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: How Long Should Open Source Project Support Us (Score:3, Informative)
I think OO.o and Firefox are both bad examples, because they both started life as commercial software, i.e. they came from cathedral-style development. I can't remember if StarOffice was originally "sortof open source" or whether it, like Mozilla, was completely closed but then opened later. Either way, it's not surprising they both look pretty "corporate", because that's where they came from. A more apropos example than Mozilla/Firefox would be KHTML - an open-source project that was good enough that a corporate adopted it and everyone benefited.
Dirac also isn't very typical of OSS, really, and I'm also not yet sure if it actually matters to many people. If you hadn't mentioned the BBC I would've had no idea what you were referring to, and I only recognised that because it was mentioned in an article here somewhat recently.
Re:Where's the dump? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No Obligations, Take What You Can Get (Score:4, Informative)
DSay, where's your local repository of Ndiswrapper's database?
Web servers cost money, especially for popular sites.
This is correct. And by that logic, it may benefit you to send the sourceforge developers a simple message asking them if a modest donation of funds could ail this predicament?
Web servers do cost money but the only real cost of hosting at sourceforge for the project is the domain name (if they feel it's needed). SF.net hosting is free to projects though of course you can donate to OSTG Inc. (a for profit business) who provide the service. SF.net even provide a MySQL database ( http://alexandria.wiki.sourceforge.net/Service+Listing [sourceforge.net] ) so I really can't see any reason why a project couldn't leave up their website and database (at no cost to the project) at "example.sf.net"??
If you can't raise the £9/$9 a year for the domain name (eg Amazon ads, Google ads, donations - ask for donations if none come!) then few want your project that much and you should drop the domain and just use Google Code, Freshmeat or SourceForge, IMHO.
Re:No Obligations, Take What You Can Get (Score:3, Informative)
I think you may be mistaken.
-beav007, Australia (part of the world)