I don't owe you scala-tools.org

It's about managing user expectations, which David has done rather poorly.<p>People have short memories. When you're going to shut something down, you really should put up a HUGE javascript timer at the top of the page saying:<p>83 days, 14 hours, 23 minutes, 11 seconds until this site shuts down. Contact me if you can take over maintenance.<p>Unless it's constantly in their face, they won't feel the urgency, and so they won't act.<p>However, now that Dave's said "time's up", the urgency is felt, but there's nothing people can do, thus their frustration.<p>You can say "The users should have known" till you're blue in the face, but so long as you fight against human nature rather than guiding them in ways reinforced by their nature, you have only yourself to blame for the fallout. Such is the responsibility that comes with leadership.

This is a great example of why large parts of the open source community are complete clusterfucks. There have been some amazing programs and services that emerge from this model, but by and large all projects have the same caveats: Nobody takes overall responsibility, everybody contributor is an unquestionable Jesus character, every contribution is a donation with strings attached, expecting the status quo to be maintained on a popular project is unabashed entitlement.<p>It's not like his standpoint is wrong, or incorrect, even selfish or unreasonable. Yet it does still damage the community and nobody will take responsibility for said damage. This is why people get paid for things. No matter how altruistic your intentions and actions, if people come to rely on your service then they will be upset and frustrated when it disappears.<p>TL;DR - He's right, he doesn't owe anyone anything. That doesn't make his actions any less damaging though, and simply glossing over this as "user entitlement" is ignoring a systemic problem with unfunded open source projects.

The form letter template for open source abandonware:<p><a href="http://raganwald.posterous.com/form-letter-template-for-open-source-abandonw" rel="nofollow">http://raganwald.posterous.com/form-letter-template-for-open...</a>

I find David's position to be reasonable. Also, if he feels that Haskell (with a little Objective-C glue code) meets his current business and technical needs better than Scala, that is his decision to make, and based on his technical abilities I would bet that he made a good decision.

TL;DR - The internet is full of ungrateful dicks.<p>It often bothers me the vitriol that open source projects get for not fixing some bug or even add some feature that certain user considers important. But I don't see a best course of action than simply ignoring them. There's no upside to wasting your time and mental energy replying.<p>(By the way, I agree with the author. I just think this post is preaching to the choir. The targeted people will just disregard it).

This reminds me of Neil Gaiman's "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch" essay, about reader entitlement:<p><a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html" rel="nofollow">http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.htm...</a>

On the face of it, this guy seems reasonable, just a little harsh. Sounds like he has good reason to be a bit harsh.<p>Seems to me that what we have here is a techie programmer type who does not entirely get customer relations, and hasn't managed to shape the message that well. Which is pretty much as it should be, the two skill sets don't usually collide. And I suppose why companies that can afford it get customer relation advice or employees. Perhaps some of these groups or what ever, should look for volunteers who do understand PR. Maybe they would be looking to bring this open source spirit out side of tech related areas.

The ungrateful comments here just strengthen David's point.

[OT] Scala is definitely the current hot spot for PL drama

Why is he leaving Lift and Scala? What does it say about a web framework whose founder is leaving -- does this mean the death of Lift?

Seems a bit pretentious saying the domain 'can't be priced' while shutting everything down at the same time. He's gonna take his ball and put it in some closet for eternity, and it sounds like he doesn't really care if anybody else wants to play with it. Yes, this is his 'right', it's also pretty lame.

Scala, isn't that the jvm language for type hipsters?

tl;dr:<p>David Pollack created lift. He also created and ran scala-tools.org, a maven repo and documentation host for scala stuff. He's recently decided to transition off much of his scala involvement, in part because his new startup visi.pro uses neither scala nor the jvm.<p>Several months ago he asked for help taking over scala-tools. There was not much response, and amongst the handful of people who stepped up, there was some sort of personality conflict.<p>In response, he temporarily shut it down and is transitioning the site to new hosts and maintainers. The internet is pitching a tantrum. Pollack is put out, since all the whiners where invisible when he was asking for new maintainers several months ago. Also, whiners who neither helped then and aren't stepping up to help now reek of entitlement: what right do they enjoy to Pollack's continued donation of time and money, just because he historically provided something the community liked?

The response to these incidents is depressingly predictable. "Yes he has the right to shut it down, but..." -- no, there is no "but".<p>Consider this: An employee quits his job. Do you say "Yes, he has the right to quit, but..."? No. There is no "but". He has the right to quit, period.<p>Involuntary servitude isn't allowed even when someone <i>is</i> getting paid for it, what the hell makes you think it's acceptable when they <i>aren't</i>, and are even investing <i>their own</i> resources?<p>He's not being a jerk, he's not being harsh. His right in this matter is <i>absolute</i>, and he's already given the community more of an opportunity than was necessary -- legally, ethically, or socially -- to step up. He has no obligation of any kind to keep putting his time and money into it. If you want slavery, build yourself a time machine, don't demand that he do it for you.

The less he is involved in the scalar community the better. Yes he is right no one has any inherent right to his work or his infrastructure. however he treats the site like his gift to us simple mortals. Here is why people are upset ,because that was a maven host for a bunch of scalar software and instead of transitioning it to a new owner he said no its mine now I paid for it find your own domain, ohh and by the way rewrite all your code and documentation and tutorials to point to another site because I want to be paid for the community others created around my hardware and domain name.<p>Again he has every right to do what he is doing its his stuff , but its still a very disrespectful way he went about doing it.