Thank you for being one of the few projects replacing a POSIX tool which properly sets the expectation that it's for personal use. It causes me no end of consternation that I see many tools introduced which provide only the barest minimum of functionality and skip over extended attributes, ACLs, and fail to keep compatibility with flags, or don't properly separate STDOUT & STDERR.
While these may be sufficient for a naive developer, this oversight then breaks many downstream tools.
Again though, thanks for sharing. Bringing your own spin and ideas into the world can be anxiety inducing and I'm pleased you went about this in a helpful and measured way!
Would you mind listing more common mistakes made by CLI developers?
Julia Evans had an interesting thread recently on “social rules” of the terminal: https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/113540676612640547
This is a good, open-source resource for guidelines on creating CLIs, which goes over some common mistakes.
These days: not building this such that they can be easily spit out as json and/or xml markup.
not behaving the same as robust cli tools. -h and --help and -v and --verbose and --version
If this is causing you any "consternation" at all, it means you expect too much from unpaid free software developers. The repository doesn't even have a sponsor link.
The software is provided as is, in the hope it will be useful, but without any warranty whatsoever.
All free and open source software licenses contain some version of the above statement.
All of this is implicitly for personal use. In the sense that it's not a product, just something people made because they needed a problem solved.
Honestly, what's the point of comments like this? No shit, it's done for a personal hobby, you're not breaking new ground with that idea.
However, this is a website of opinions, and gp's opinion is valid, because this forum is where opinions go. It's not as though gp said to stop doing this project.
This pedantic finger wagging is just so rote.
For what it's worth, I think that both the parent and the grandparent are valid opinions.
One says that open source projects should clearly state when they are not meant as a serious replacement for standard tools. The other says that they disagree and that open source projects don't have to give any warning.
I guess I am a little in-between: if you open source your code, I don't think you have anything to do (it's already nice to put an open source license on it). If you advertise your open source tool (e.g. on this website), then it is polite to set expectations.
The point is expressing my opinion as a fellow free software developer. Mine is just as valid as yours or theirs. And I didn't say their opinions were invalid to begin with.
These hidden "expectations" that people seem to have regarding free and open source software can be incredibly demoralizing. It's something I wish would change. That's why I commented on it.
> These hidden "expectations" that people seem to have regarding free and open source software
Taking this to a logical conclusion; If a plumber/lawyer/<professional> offers services for free, and those services end up killing, or massively damaging someone, can they just say the same thing to absolve themselves of all liability?
I also wish to change things, in the opposite direction. FOSS devs should explicitly mark things as not-for-prod; rather than pushing things as prod-ready when they aren't. I think some kind of change will come upon FOSS in the future so people can rely on it, and sadly I think that change will be adoption by corporates (w/ legal budgets) rather than the FOSS devs/ORGs themselves becoming more mature.
> If a plumber/lawyer/<professional> offers services for free, and those services end up killing, or massively damaging someone, can they just say the same thing to absolve themselves of all liability?
There is a world of difference between what professionals such as doctors do and what free and open source developers do. It's not even remotely the same. I know because I happen to be both.
And even if they were in any way comparable, professionals get paid handsomely precisely because of the liability and responsibility. If people want this out of free software developers, they should start paying them some serious money.
> I also wish to change things, in the opposite direction.
If you want this, hire a professional to do it for you instead of pushing unwanted responsibility and liability onto the rest of us. I've got more than enough of that at my actual job and I absolutely do not want it in my free software development hobby. Adding liability to free software will kill it.
> FOSS devs should explicitly mark things as not-for-prod; rather than pushing things as prod-ready when they aren't.
It already is. Everything under a free or open source software license is already marked as such. The license says so. You use it at your own risk. Up to you to determine if that's good enough for you to use in production.
> professionals such as doctors do and what free and open source developers do
You are right - there is less in the way of personal liability in the case of devs (but for the odd PII here and there), Precisely why I think there will be a disruption coming.
> professionals get paid handsomely precisely because of the liability and responsibility
Devs are, or can also be, well-paid 'professionals'. And all are still capable of free, pro-bono work.
> instead of pushing unwanted responsibility and liability onto the rest of us
I'm not sure what you think I said..
"rather than pushing things as prod-ready when they aren't"
Is wrt the promotion of something as ready-for-production.
I'm not addressing the legal status as dictated by the (unproven) licence, which isn't relevant wrt liability anyway.