"You are the primary manager for this project"
Yes I'm. But also:
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Background
A month ago I got an e-mail from a development team on a big company using a meta-layer that I do maintain. They needed guidance and had some specific corner case that they had some trouble with.
That is fine and not very unusual. I spent some time looking through their configuration and logs but saw nothing obvious. To be able to help, I needed to reproduce the problem myself in order to troubleshoot the problem.
I made an offer to spend 6 hours of my weekend solving their problem. This includes:
- Setting up an environment
- Build everything
- Find the problem
- Come up with a solution.
I did not even include the ~2 hours of free work I already spent communicating with them - just the time I need to fix it.
Most companies spend far more that 6 hours before even asking for help and this is something that can take significantly more than 6h for someone who is not an export in the field. A pretty good deal I think.
The response I got was:
You re the primary manager for this project.
Free beer with obligations
I love the idea of Open Source and that is also the single biggest motivator in my technical career. It suits my philosophy and my ideals.
But not everyone share this philosophy. Have you heard the expression "Free as in freedom, not as in free beer".
Not enough that this company considers Open Source as in free beer - it's also someone else's responsible to remove the fly that got into their free beer.
It is about attitude
The problem is an attitude problem. The delusion that Open Source should be free and that it comes with guarantees. I understand why companies don't want to pay for something like that.
The problem is, that is not how it works.
It is still people's time and commitment that means there is something the company can use at all. These people are not free labor that can be used however you like.
Summary
I don't mind working for free for a few hours here and there on things that interest me, that is how it usually is. In fact, helping people is also one of my biggest motivators and people are usually grateful when I do.
But when large international companies almost demand that I work for free because I maintain software they use for free, it's not okay. Be better than that.