by lytedev | 2025-05-02 16:55:36+00:00
I don't think I've claimed that ignoring the author's request is factually wrong. I'm debating on the internet because I _do_ believe the license makes more allowance than you give credit, but I definitely would not say that what I'm doing here is objectively "in the right". I've reached out to the author as a result of these discussions, because I do, in fact, value what you are referring to and believe I did make some false assumptions about what the author might have intended.

To say that the license doesn't supersede the author's words is your opinion. It does, in fact, supersede the request both in law and "socially".

If any requirement or request need be laid upon the software and its use, there are mechanisms for doing that available today and the author willingly chose to try something new. This doesn't negate their request, but it does bring into question the "social contract"; people have certain social expectations of software, particularly when licensed like this, that you seem to ignore or consider null in this argument, which seems unfair and one-sided.

I do believe that this situation is not as cut and dry and morally wrong as you seem to be stating. What of a user that deploys the project without ever reading that specific page of documentation?

Perhaps you and I are debating towards different end states here. Myself towards what a fleshed-out approach to this kind of permissive-license-plus-social-request open-source might look like and you towards ignoring the request of another human being implying an eventual complete breakdown in society.

It's simply untrue that every request from every human being (regarding something they have made or otherwise) must be respected and followed above all else and to think otherwise trends towards its own breakdown of society. Intent and requests are not the be-all-end-all of ethical cooperation that you seem to be arguing for. Does this imply that anarchy and chaos are the answer? No, of course not! As I have tried to indicate, there is more nuance here than your argument makes room for and indeed the lack of nuance in your own argument as you tighten it down further results in its own ethical problems which you seem to be trying to argue into impossibility.

Alas, we humans on an individual and group level will always have mutually exclusive goals and opinions and working through those is part of the human experience - relationships take communication, work, nuance, understanding, and compromise. Absolutism such as you are calling for is the kind of thing that results in societal collapse as well.

In summary, I agree with you that asking the author is the right thing to do here as I _did_ read the documentation thoroughly and I should have done so and not assumed that my little personal git forge was "exempt" from the request. As a result, I have reached out to discuss as requested. I also would say that anyone else that opts to interpret the license literally would also be in the right, though. I also disagree that this issue is as cut and dry as you make it out to be. I also believe the status quo around "open source plus restrictions" (if you can say there is much of one) can be greatly improved and is a discourse worth having.