Bastien Guerry

Computers and freedom

The Software Maintainer's Pledge

"All entities move and nothing remains still." – Heraclites, quoted by Plato

I won't break your user experience.

  • I won't remove features.
  • I won't remove features by pretending to "upgrade" them.
  • I won't break anything that lives in your muscle memory.
  • I won't force you to update your configuration.

I won't break your user experience, even in a nice way.

  • I will let the UI tell you what changed at the right time.
  • I will let the UI ask you whether you accept new defaults.
  • I will give you simple tools to update your configuration.
  • I won't lecture you on why the new experience is better.
  • I won't force you to read stuff you don't want to read.

If I break your user experience, I won't give lame excuses.

  • I won't use semantic versioning as an excuse.
  • I won't use software correctness as an excuse.
  • I won't lecture users about why they are wrong.

So, who's in?

Inspired by Brian Goetz's talk Stewardship: the Sobering Parts, Rich Hickey's talk Spec-ulation and years of trying to maintain softwares.

Oh, and this is both Valentine's day and "I love Free Software" day.


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