I’ve been working on a moderately successful Vim plugin for a while, called ALE. All the while, I’ve been musing about what my responsibilities are, having written a plugin that people like, and where people create issues on GitHub asking for new features, or reporting bugs. Owners of GitHub projects are expected to merge pull requests from others, fix bugs, and make the software better. However, this social expectation is the opposite of the legal obligations, or the lack thereof, presented in software licences. Allow me to explain.
The Legal Language
To understand responsibility for fixing bugs and providing new features, you need to understand the language around warranties. ALE uses a 2-clause BSD licence, which is very popular. Let’s look at the full licence text.
Copyright (c) 2016-2018, w0rp <devw0rp@gmail.com>
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
- Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Here are the important points.
- The software copyright is assigned to my pseudonym, that I represent.
- The licence permits people to do basically anything they want, as long as they give credit for it.
- The very, very long text at the end explains warranty.
More specifically, what the warranty text at the end explains is that any “express or implied warranties” are “disclaimed.” In legal language, “disclaimed” means that they are “repudiated” or “renounced.” This is a roundabout way of explaining that there are no express or implied warranties. This affords important legal protections for free software developers. The developers of software cannot be held liable for any accidents that arise because of software they wrote and put online, or any modifications thereof, giving developers freedom to put new ideas out there, free of consequence.
The legal language is also very similar in other licences. I believe the language is perhaps easier to understand in the MIT licence, which is as follows.
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.
The legal protections might not be as strong because the licence doesn’t use the special magic keywords that the BSD licence does, but I wouldn’t know. I’m not a lawyer, I just write software.
You Fix It
The licence for my software, and for most free software projects, clearly explains that I, as a copyright holder and project manager, am not under any legal obligation to maintain that software, fix bugs, or to provide new features. The social obligations ought to follow the legal obligations. Once this is understood, it changes the way you think about free software projects and GitHub issues.
When you create an issue on GitHub for a free software project, you are either reporting a bug, asking for help, or asking for new features. Your expectation should not be that others help you. No one is under any obligation to help you, or to do what you want. When someone does write some code for you, they do it either for their own entertainment, or because there is mutual benefit involved. Your first thought when creating an issue should be that you should try to resolve it.
Free software is liberating precisely because the control over software belongs not to any project managers or a computer system, but to you. You are able to modify and redistribute the software as you see fit, and you are encouraged to tinker with software to your heart’s content. I firmly believe this is why free software projects are more likely to survive and continue to be useful far into the future. Laziness, inability, disability, death, pride, and any other variety of circumstances on the part software managers, for a free software project, will not prevent anyone from modifying software and redistributing it.
When you create an issue on GitHub and after several months ask, “Why hasn’t this issue been resolved yet? It is really important to me,” the answer is simple. The answer is that you haven’t fixed it yet.