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Given the recent uproar about AI usage in rsync a PSA: maintainers owe you nothing
(mikemcquaid.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
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Maintainers signed up to maintain. If they don't maintain, no one owes them kind words and encouragement.
You are implying that maintainer is a service job and not them simply putting their work into the world for people to use. With foss if YOU dont like the maintainer YOU fork and continue.
They own nothing to anyone. They didnt have to make their code available and doing so is no contract.
Its not that community isnt important but "require" "owe" and even "should" arent applicable to freely given work like this.
The fuck are you taking about? Yes a maintainer is a service job. Their role is to be a good steward of the project they maintain. Accepting good submissions, coordinating QA, cutting releases.
If they do a bad job, then they’re liable to be criticized which is what I actually said and I won’t dignify your strawman with a response.
And FYI, a license is a contract.
when people say "job" they don't typically mean unpaid gigs. and an open source license is a contract for what you're allowed to do with their code, not what they're required to provide you (other than the code itself). it explicitly does not include liability, service guarantees, or warranties.
A maintainer position is a profession position — unpaid or otherwise. It isn't a "gig."
And I can't run my computer with "good intentions."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1vTGN52MCc
They didn't sign up for anything. Read their software licenses.
What? Someone forced them to be maintainers?
Their point is that the maintainer did not sign a contract that requires them to perform maintainer duties. They can choose to stop doing it at any point. They can choose to axe a feature that you deem essential. They can choose to rewrite the project in COBOL for the fun of it.
You may not like it, but that is how it is.
The only legal document involved is the license and any open-source license I've seen so far, has stated that the program is provided as is.
This is the license under which rsync is provided: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html
See sections 15 and 16.
The only way you get to have a say in the matter, is by forking and becoming a maintainer yourself.