Post #2994169

2026-05-31 13:47 UTC

I remember reading an article where the author explained why telling this is free, you can fork, or send a pull request instead of complaining is a form of ableism. An analogy, which is not 100% accurate, which I used to explain it to ither people is, "it is not very different from a carpenter telling you, ‘the wood is here, the tools also, you can do it yourself it you didn’t like what I did’. The point is software development is a skill. Not everyone can have that skill. It takes training and practice to be good in the craft. A user of the product does not need the skill to operate it. Never think it is okay to tell people “just fork it” or “why don’t you send a pull request instead of complaining?”. At the same time, I completely acknowledge that there are some entitled assholes who don’t understand or care about the open source philosophy and how it works. I just wanted to point out that asking to contribute or asking to fork is not the right way to address it.

Replies (6)

@Asetru@feddit.org 2026-05-31 13:52

Except that in your analogy, the carpenter was working on his own passion project for free.

Open ##2994312
@WesternInfidels@feddit.online 2026-05-31 14:41

I like this analogy. One virtue that it has is: Obviously, not everyone can realistically learn to do their own carpentry. It requires a certain amount of time, space, opportunity, capacity for spatial reasoning, and some minimum level of able-bodiedness. None of which are universally available to everyone.

Open ##2995303
@surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 2026-05-31 16:45

That is ridiculous. If I want to paint apples, and you want a painting of pears, it’s not ableist for me to tell you no. It’s not ablist to iterate out your possible options for getting a pear painting either. And that’s what he’s done. Now, the entire painting profession might be ableist in that there are certainly barriers to entry. But it’s not a single artist’s responsibility to fix painting as a whole. My point is, if you truly think the situation with raync is ableist, help develop tools so that more people can program. Enable people to program. Don’t just shout down the guy who said “go program”. That doesn’t help.

Open ##2997655
@wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2026-05-31 15:26

A paraplegic can’t build a house, but can learn to code. Sure there are people with cognitive disabilities who might not be able to do it, but you can’t expect every open source project to be completely accessible even to the most severely cognitively impaired. That’s a great way to kill the open source community. Commerical products should absolutely be required by law to provide reasonable accessibility, because they have the resources and manpower to do so and are driven by a profit motive. Grants should be available to help smaller companies meet these requirements so they’re not disadvantaged relative to the big ones. But using ableism to justify making excessive demands on open-source project maintainers who in many cases are doing it solo and for free as a passion project, is kind of absurd. And where does it stop? Can I post a silly little flash game on a public git repo intended as nothing more than a personal project for learning Lua scripts, and then some internet rando tells me I have to add full interpretive ASL, real-time alternative text, and optional eye-tracking controls? If that’s above my level, does that mean I can’t post my silly little flash game? Also, ability is not the same thing as aptitude. Not knowing how to code isn’t a disability any more than not knowing how to wire a house. I can’t tell an electrician (specifically a hobbyist who works for free) that he needs to rewire my house for me just because I don’t know how to do it. I can learn home wiring, or I can pay a professional. But expecting every hobbyist to serve my needs for free just because I don’t have their skill sets would be insane.

Open ##2998116
@mabeledo@lemmy.world 2026-05-31 20:02

Ugh, chicken? Give me some free steak. Chop chop!

Open ##3001400
@bbb@sh.itjust.works 2026-06-01 12:33

As a disabled open source developer, it’s almost as if the universe guided me toward this horrendous take specifically to annoy me. If you’re trolling, you did a good job of it.

Open ##3021406