Adventures in Linux and KDE

But what is the FOSS social contract?

Like the definition of “derivative work”, it’s unsatisfyingly fuzzy and nebulous. But like a cloud, even if we can’t contain 100% of it in a jar, we can probably identify many of its features. So here are some pro-social behaviors that I hope we can all agree are squarely within the “FOSS social contract”: Using FOSS If you didn’t pay any money, appreciate what you’ve gotten for free. It’s a modern miracle.

Are software developers responsible?

Software devs wrote the software. The software broke. End of story. If only life were that simple! Having been on the receiving end of thousands of un-actionable bug reports about old versions of KDE’s software in discrete-release OSs for issues that were fixed months or years ago (but not backported by the OS distributor!)… I can tell you it’s very frustrating.

Are distributors responsible?

If my car breaks, I blame the car company — not the vendor who sold them the part that broke. (well, maybe I blame them too if I’m a car nerd, but that’s the exception!) Ultimately OS distributors are the car company here, assembling the final product. It’s their job to do adequate QA and work with their vendors (upstream software devs) to make sure that final product sparkles.

So what’s the solution?

As a distributor, I think you need to sort out what kind of relationship you want to have with the developers of the upstream software you ship.

What’s not the solution?

Package 2+ year-old frozen releases of as much upstream software as you can, and then ignore the upstreams, their bug-fix releases, and their complaints about this. This is the worst of all worlds!