How Long Should an Open Source Project Support Users?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Thursday November 13, 2008 @02:24AM from the no-implied-support dept.

Ubuntu Kitten writes "Since October the community-generated database of cards known to work with Ndiswrapper has been down. This is apparently due to an on-going site redesign, but right now the usual URL simply directs to a stock Sourceforge page. Without the database, the software's usability is severely diminished but this raises an interesting question: Is an open source project obliged to provide support for its users? If so, for how long should the support last? Web servers cost money, especially for popular sites. While developers can sometimes find sponsorship, is it possible to get sponsorship simply for infrastructure and user services?"

2 of 272 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:When beer is free... by hkz · 2008-11-13 05:41 · Score: 0, Offtopic

RMS, is that you?
For the love of God/deity of your choice... by pongo000 · 2008-11-13 07:22 · Score: 0, Offtopic

...give us back the right to remove story tags from our life!
Do I really have to put up with "smellyvagina" and similar inanely juvenile tags? It's a delicate dance as is to get Slashdot posts through our proxy (filtering comments and 3 and above keeps the filters happy), but if this crap keeps appearing on the front page, I'm just going to give up the fight and get my tech news (some of which is questionable as "tech news") someplace else.