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GMoromisato parent
I don't know if this is what the author meant, but the "moral weight" appears for me when someone starts relying on my stuff.

This is why so many open-source maintainers burn out: they create something that people find useful and suddenly, almost inadvertently, incur the obligation to keep users happy. That is both the best part and worse part of creating software.


matheusmoreira
> the "moral weight" appears for me when someone starts relying on my stuff

Yeah. These feelings of guilt are terrible. I once threw something out there and forgot about it. Woke up one day and realized users had found it somehow, they even built new stuff on top of it. Someone asked for help on how to use the thing and I didn't even notice because I had notifications turned off.

In these situations I repeat the license terms to myself like a mantra. The software is provided "as-is", in the hope it will be useful, but without any warranty.

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