Author here. As pointed out in the end, in a different paraphrase.
If you take the sofa i left on the side of the curb to bring it home, i am not your supplier.
You found something for free in my trash. That does not make me your supplier. Me being your supplier mean we have a relationship that does not exist here.
Once again, if i leave my sofa on the curb, i am not a supplier. It may happen that someone pick it out. That does not change the fact i am not a supplier of sofas.
Sure. But few go whining back to the original coder when the code is abandoned.
It’s when the code is maintained, bugs are fixed, releases are put together, etc. that people start acting entitled.
A better analogy would be someone who opens a sofa depo, starts giving away “as-is” sofas, then starts building new sofas and improving them. Some people take those sofas and use them in rental homes. Then it turns out that someone planted listening devices in some of the sofas, so the landlords start showing up at the depo and asking questions about supply chain security…
To run with your analogy: It's like offering a near complete strange a lift because you're headed close to where they're headed. Then they start calling you asking for rides. And you say "I am not your driver."
No, not really, it's basically incidental, and actually points to the fact that, pertinently, the word "supplier" has a strong connotation of referring to a business relationship.
Yes, a completely different word, in a now conpletely divorced and radically different context, doesn't work exactly the same as the original word we are discussing. Well done.
In your new example, the phrase "your driver" does not refer to a business relationship, so I guess saying "I'm not your driver" to someone because you don't want to ferry them around is now also poor use of language? Just stop dude.
> But screaming “I am not a supplier” in this context is like yelling “I am not a driver” while driving a car.
Except driving is active. You must take acts to drive, it is a continuous commitment. There’s an expectation that if you’re on the highway driving someone they won’t jump out the window and let you crash. Ideally even they’ll get you where you wanna go.
Sharing some software for free is passive. You can share something and walk away. They can even die and the software is still shared. It’s a single action. Push publish, walk away. There may be an expectation of continued support, but it’s based on historic behavior not on actual commitments.
Entering a business relationship is active, and there should be an expectation of support (based on contracts of course).
Its a one-time action. Its "set and forget". That's pretty passive. Yes, you took a direct action, but its not an ongoing action.
> issuing releases and bug fixes
Again, after each fix, you're done. And to the original point, you're never committing to anything.
To repeat my original point, a maintainer could die and the software would still be shared, and the companies that use it would have the exact same relationship they had prior.
Why even go the route of narrowly defining the term just to say “I’m not that”? It just makes the argument literally untrue even though the underlying points are correct and important.
Okay, let's look at it from a different perspective.
What obligation do I, a person developing FOSS in my free time without compensation, have to a consumer of that software (and especially to a consumer who is likely making money in part due to their use of the software I wrote)?
Absolutely nothing. They have no obligations at all, just like any supplier who provides something as-is. And I agree with the author of the post that it's wrong and unjust for people to think otherwise.
But so what? That does not change the fact that a person developing FOSS supplies something—in fact in most cases they supply a ton of value.
For an analogy, if one of inputs of your business uses trash of others (e.g. for recycling), then the people throwing out this trash are effectively your suppliers and the ones you must consider in your supply chain, because no matter if you have a business relationship with them or not, they do matter in your supply chain, so you have to treat them (and risks related to them) the same as all other suppliers.
Your supply chain involves everything you use and rely upon, no matter if its provided by a business relationship, taken out of the ground, provided by the government, made in-house, or found in outer space.
The word “supplier” has multiple meanings. The meaning in this case is derived from the context of the article. In a business context:
“A supplier in a business is someone who acts as an intermediary between the manufacturer and retailer, ensuring that communication is forthcoming and stock is of sufficient quality.”
This being a business relationship and not an intramural frisbee team implies contracts and money changing hands, does it not?
> “A supplier in a business is someone who acts as an intermediary between the manufacturer and retailer, ensuring that communication is forthcoming and stock is of sufficient quality.”
That’s not the definition used in the article at all.
That's a fallacy. Assuming that an open source developer is a "supplier" just because there are users is a hasty generalization. Important elements are missing for it to actually be a customer-supplier relationship. From a legal perspective, for example, the contractual intent is missing.
I am completely with you on this. It feels like it’s just tricky semantics.
The point of supply chain management is to manage the inputs to production. Analysing this process using tools from other industries is, at least, a defensible approach. It doesn’t, in itself, imply any obligation on the suppliers. It’s just a way of thinking about the world.
If you write code and make the conscious decision to assign a liberal license and build it and test it and update it and make it available, it’s really hard for me to accept that you are not a supplier of that code. Your license specifically excludes any obligation to users of your software. But the whole essay just felt like semantic tricks to protest against the idea that software can be modelled as if it is some kind of industrial process.
Supply chain management is not about telling you what to do, it’s about properly understanding the things one depends on to build one’s product.
Like I said, your (presumed) license specifically excludes any obligation to users of your software. I’ve written free software and proprietary software, and one thing I’ve learned is that the world is full of entitled jerks. Entitlement has zero meaningful intersection with software supply chain management.
I make cad drawings of some product, release them with permissive licence on Internet. Some company or you comes and copies them and starts making the product? Am I the supplier of the design? Do you have right to ask for changes?
By most reasonable understandings I would say no. We have no relation at all.
> I make cad drawings of some product, release them with permissive licence on Internet
This is not right analogy, cad drawings are not the code. It is relatively easy and near instant, to change license (for cad drawings), and prohibit make materialized copies without written permission.
But I must admit, in freedom world, You have rights and freedoms, to be irresponsible, we just need to figure out, how this could co-exist with real life issues, like supply chain safety.
I agree with the fundamental points here. Expecting things like they describe out of open source volunteers is absurd.
But screaming “I am not a supplier” in this context is like yelling “I am not a driver” while driving a car.