OK - I live in a place that's snowy for a lot of the year. I shovel not only my sidewalk but my neighbours' several houses on both sides. People are really happy and grateful. Over the years Mr. Johnson the senior on a fixed pension next door loses mobility and is really appreciative I keep his walk clean. The couple next to him has a new baby and a clear sidewalk helps them load up all the accompanying gear into the car. My snowbird neighbours are happy that their walk is accessible when they're out of town. The dad who walks several kids to school is happy there's less snow to trudge through twice a day (in both directions). The mail carrier is less likely to slip and is grateful. Dog walkers and (crazy) winter joggers don't even consciously realize the improvement but still benefit.
Then I decide to stop. It doesn't really matter why, I wasn't getting paid or had not made any sort of formal agreement or promise, I just don't want to do it anymore. Now I shovel my sidewalk to the property line exactly and that's it. Hey, that's my legal obligation; I don't need to do any more! Mr. Johnson now has a lot more trouble getting out of his house; we see him a lot less. The baby is crying while new mom slips around trying to load up strollers and diaper bags and a car seat. The snowbirds just got fined by city bylaw for not clearing their walk. That dad's school trip is just a little longer, colder and unpleasant.
Hey, this isn't my fault! All those people took my effort for granted; I never promised to shovel their walks! They have no basis to judge me! But you better believe that this decision reduced their assessment that I'm a "good neighbour". Community is built mostly on implicit agreements, norms and conventions that are established through practice & conduct over time. You're arguing the right/wrong of this in the face of legal formalizations, while others are just saying it is a fact, not weighing the benefits and obligations.
We had some neighbors that used it throw a big Halloween celebration. They gave out drinks and snacks, dressed up in very elaborate costumes, setup movies on outdoor projectors, and do hayrides.
They didn’t do it last year. I was disappointed, but I’m not angry at them. I realize that they were spending a lot of time and energy and maybe they are just burned out.
I’m sure there are people who are angry and judge them. But those people are spoiled, entitled brats.
The distinction is that it is entirely fine to be disappointed. It’s not fine to get angry.
If people were depending on the party for very important things, and the neighbors encouraged it, and gave no warning, then it would be fine to get angry.
If you’re depending on the party for very important things you need to ask the neighbor how long they promise to keep throwing the party. You don’t just get to assume they’re going to do it literally forever and get mad when they stop.
In this analogy, you ask and they decline to promise anything concrete about the future, just saying that they currently have no plans to change. Their statement is the same any time they're asked, with no early warning via that method.
And, reminder, they keep encouraging people to use the party as an important foundation for their own efforts.
Does that help explain why a sudden stop is causing harm to people that weren't being greedy? At which point anger is not an inherently bratty behavior.
If someone says “we have no plans to stop hosting this party, but we can’t promise anything concrete” and you decide to depend on that party without a backup, you’re behaving like an idiot.
This analogy has been tortured to within an inch of its life though.
People could keep using the old docker images while they trivially build their own.
If you want to make the example fit it’s more like “hey we’re still having the party but we aren’t gonna to put up any new decorations. If you want to put up the new decorations we left our garage open, but you have to do it yourself“.
The docker users do generally have a backup. But being shoved onto a backup sucks, and with no warning it's even worse.
That level of promise is what you get with 95% or more of products and services. It's not like you can avoid it.
I understand the impulse to say that these expectations are unreasonable so nobody should get mad. But when companies cultivate those expectations on purpose, it stops being unreasonable to get mad.
>But when companies cultivate those expectations on purpose, it stops being unreasonable to get mad.
On the one hand I get that. But on the other hand, I see the exact same anger when it’s just some guy or a 2 person company that decides to stop doing some work for free.
If you limit your argument to it’s scummy for a company to offer something for free with the goal of creating a dependency that they can exploit by removing the free version and then offering a paid version, then I agree.
They can delay getting new versions for a few hours with no issue. But when they stop entirely it's a problem.
> On the one hand I get that. But on the other hand, I see the exact same anger when it’s just some guy or a 2 person company that decides to stop doing some work for free.
Well I'm not defending the anger in all cases. If it's that small they deserve a lot more slack. But they should still give a warning period and/or put in some effort to finding a new person from the community to put in charge.
> If you limit your argument to it’s scummy for a company to offer something for free with the goal of creating a dependency that they can exploit by removing the free version and then offering a paid version, then I agree.
Once the dependency exists, it's bad to cut it off without warning, even without an exploitative goal.
> They can delay getting new versions for a few hours with no issue. But when they stop entirely it's a problem.
If they can delay getting a new version for a few hours they can delay getting a new version for a few months.
> Once the dependency exists, it's bad to cut it off without warning, even without an exploitative goal.
It would be nice for them to do that, and it’s fine to be disappointed if they don’t, but anger is uncalled for unless it was malicious.
But ignoring that, it isn’t like they are shutting of a live service without warning. They’re just no longer offering an image. You can keep using the images that you had saved indefinitely. A warning wasn’t necessary.
Actually, in your analogy the reason why you stopped matters a great deal. For example, if you stopped shoveling snow because you are sick/injured, or because you are caring for a family member, nobody would think less of you as a neighbor. It's only if you stopped for a selfish reason that people would negatively judge your neighborliness. So to the extent that the analogy is instructive as to how we should think about MinIO's actions, we would have to judge the reason why they did this and decide whether that is worth thinking less of them.
There is an important point you are missing. Attitudes like this discourage people from doing nice things for others in general. Because you are saying that one nice deed or nice deeds for a period of time mean you are bound to have to do that deed forever for free.
This is the tragedy of the commons but not just for a field of grass, instead its for all human altruism. You really need to think about the consequences of this attitude because it doesn't lead where you seem to think it leads. In fact, it leads to exactly the opposite set of human behaviors.
PS The neighbors could easily just contract someone else to do the shoveling in the future and instead of being salty about having to pay, looking at it as how much money they saved in the past.
I mean, fair, but again, notice you're trying to actually, idk, understand the situation, use empathy.
I see GGP's comment attitude all too frequently on the internet ("nobody is entitled to anything") as the default. Which is such a nasty connotative strawman, it's kind of absurd. But hey, that's the internet for you.
Then I decide to stop. It doesn't really matter why, I wasn't getting paid or had not made any sort of formal agreement or promise, I just don't want to do it anymore. Now I shovel my sidewalk to the property line exactly and that's it. Hey, that's my legal obligation; I don't need to do any more! Mr. Johnson now has a lot more trouble getting out of his house; we see him a lot less. The baby is crying while new mom slips around trying to load up strollers and diaper bags and a car seat. The snowbirds just got fined by city bylaw for not clearing their walk. That dad's school trip is just a little longer, colder and unpleasant.
Hey, this isn't my fault! All those people took my effort for granted; I never promised to shovel their walks! They have no basis to judge me! But you better believe that this decision reduced their assessment that I'm a "good neighbour". Community is built mostly on implicit agreements, norms and conventions that are established through practice & conduct over time. You're arguing the right/wrong of this in the face of legal formalizations, while others are just saying it is a fact, not weighing the benefits and obligations.