I’m no fan of vibe coded apps but rsync is literally free software with a free licence… forking it seems like less work than harrassing the guy who maintains in the hope that he capitulates.
It’s up to them how they develop their completely free software. If you’re not happy with it and can’t stop using it, you can fork it. If you can’t do it yourself, you pay someone else to. If it suddenly seems like paying for 50% of your FOSS is too much, then consider that the FOSS devs themselves pay for most of it with their largely uncompensated free time and probably want to have a bit more of said free time back.
What I see: A world class software engineer (Samba, rsync, linux, and more) is learning how to use the latest tech that is vastly changing the industry he works in. It would be both foolish and irresponsible to not learn it and embrace it responsibly. If anyone is in a good position to direct and judge the output of LLMs, it will be engineers like Andrew who have spent their life applying critical thinking and good judgement.
And on the opposing side, we see a bunch of droll jammerlappies, pitching tents on the side of a highway, waving their fists at the world zooming by.
It honestly sucks that the #1 requirement to being an effective FOSS maintainer (above even coding talent) is the skill of enforcing healthy emotional boundaries.
tldr: it isn’t that he just decided to start changing things using claude and broke a bunch of stuff; the bugs he introduced recently are side effects of security fixes for the onslaught of security vulnerabilities which other people are finding using LLMs.
So you don’t have the capacity to create something yourself but you seem to have a lot of capacity to pile on and bully someone who is literally working for free.
I can’t wait to see how this strategy pays off. I’m sure your “hard work” will pay off!! 😉
I am advocating for having some sympathy for the guy working for free, and pointing out that your capacity for saying “just fork it” most likely does not translate into capacity to actually fork it.
The current maintainer, Andrew Tridgell, is one of the two original authors, and was dragged back into maintaining this in 2024 because rsync is so important and nobody else was stepping up to replace Wayne Davison, who was the primary maintainer from 2002 to 2024.
If this project had people eager to fork it, that probably wouldn’t have happened in 2024.
I’m no fan of vibe coded apps but rsync is literally free software with a free licence… forking it seems like less work than harrassing the guy who maintains in the hope that he capitulates.
We dont have the capacity to replace like 50% of all open source devs. We just have to hope that they get their shit together again.
It’s up to them how they develop their completely free software. If you’re not happy with it and can’t stop using it, you can fork it. If you can’t do it yourself, you pay someone else to. If it suddenly seems like paying for 50% of your FOSS is too much, then consider that the FOSS devs themselves pay for most of it with their largely uncompensated free time and probably want to have a bit more of said free time back.
How do they make money? Like they’re consultants and make plenty of money and then spend some free time maintaining OSS projects?
Usually they’re just regular software engineers who spend some of their free time on FOSS. Very few projects earn enough in donations to pay salaries.
I don’t see anyone here quietly hoping
Indeed.
What I see: A world class software engineer (Samba, rsync, linux, and more) is learning how to use the latest tech that is vastly changing the industry he works in. It would be both foolish and irresponsible to not learn it and embrace it responsibly. If anyone is in a good position to direct and judge the output of LLMs, it will be engineers like Andrew who have spent their life applying critical thinking and good judgement.
And on the opposing side, we see a bunch of droll jammerlappies, pitching tents on the side of a highway, waving their fists at the world zooming by.
Worse even because they’re not waving their fists at “the world”, they’re waving them at a person.
Honestly I would not be shocked if years from now we discover these harassment campaigns are funded by Thiel.
OSS maintenance is a thankless job for the most part and the reaction in this thread proves the point.
It honestly sucks that the #1 requirement to being an effective FOSS maintainer (above even coding talent) is the skill of enforcing healthy emotional boundaries.
maintaining a fork is a lot of work and currently there is nobody even helping review commits in the mainline version.
i am also disgusted by the use of discord but i recommend reading tridge’s messages yesterday in this log of the rsync discord for some context about recent events.
tldr: it isn’t that he just decided to start changing things using claude and broke a bunch of stuff; the bugs he introduced recently are side effects of security fixes for the onslaught of security vulnerabilities which other people are finding using LLMs.
So you don’t have the capacity to create something yourself but you seem to have a lot of capacity to pile on and bully someone who is literally working for free.
I can’t wait to see how this strategy pays off. I’m sure your “hard work” will pay off!! 😉
I think you’ve misunderstood me :)
I am advocating for having some sympathy for the guy working for free, and pointing out that your capacity for saying “just fork it” most likely does not translate into capacity to actually fork it.
I didn’t say it did, I’m saying help or get out of the way.
Bitching and moaning and making demands of a volunteer until they do what you want them to is not going to produce the results you want.
The current maintainer, Andrew Tridgell, is one of the two original authors, and was dragged back into maintaining this in 2024 because rsync is so important and nobody else was stepping up to replace Wayne Davison, who was the primary maintainer from 2002 to 2024.
If this project had people eager to fork it, that probably wouldn’t have happened in 2024.
you’re absolutely right the only solution remaining is to harass the dev harder🙄