I understand that Zed is not a rando to you. Do you understand that you're not everybody else?
You appear to be arguing that the behavior isn't gross in general, in which case rando definitely is the right measure. Maybe you're only arguing it's not gross when Zed Shaw does it. That seems dubious to me, in that a) most people don't know who he is, and b) many reasonable people differ from you in their analysis of his reliability. (Indeed, many people mainly know him as being a high drama jackass. [1]) Maybe you're just arguing it's not gross to you and when it's Zed Shaw, but even there the neighbor thing is a bad analogy in that your relationship with Zed Shaw is not social, but parasocial. There is no reciprocal benefit serving as a check on his behavior.
> He is framing it in a way that makes it seem Zed will exercise this right unreasonably. At least, that's the way I understood what he said.
You understood it poorly. He said "can", not "will". Contracts are not about giving people the benefit of the doubt. They're about locking things down to remove doubt. If we just assumed good things about everyone, we wouldn't need contracts. So this is analysis of capability, not intent.
Given that the clause is there, I think there are two reasonable interpretations: a) Zed Shaw is an idiot, who puts random clauses into licenses, or b) Zed Shaw is reasonably smart, and put that clause in there because he was thinking of cases where he'd use it. On whom? In what circumstances? The license doesn't say. It introduces a great deal of legal risk, and of doubt. It seems a little rich to me for Shaw to go out of his way to create a great deal of doubt and have anybody expect he should be given the benefit of it.
I'm arguing that he's not a rando because the whole premise of this discussion is based on the idea that you (a user) want to use his work. Yes, that does distinguish him apart as the "28 million randos with a GitHub account".
You seem to be arguing that the analogy is bad because there is no check on his behavior, I don't know why this is a necessary condition, but it's not true anyway, there's the same check as in the analogy: reputation. If I deny access to someone to my pool for no reason or a bad reason, my reputation will suffer in the community. It's the same thing in open source. That is why it is often described by people as a community.
I don't think I did understand it poorly. Using a word like "gross" denotes a certain emotion. They also said, "I would rather use non-free software than risk being sued just for being a user." This makes it sound like getting "sued for just being a user", in other words, unreasonably, is likely. All I'm saying is that I don't think that risk is as high as OP is making it seem, especially if you're not a bad neighbor, which I think is a reasonable thing for Zed to expect.
No, the whole premise of this discussion is that somebody wants to use a piece of open-source software. Very few people do deep background research on the authors of a package before using it. So for the purposes of this discussion, to most people the author is not distinguished from any other open source author.
I'm arguing the analogy is bad because it is not congruent to the circumstance. Zed Shaw does not have a personal, reciprocal relationship with everybody who sees that package and thinks about using it. One does have a personal, reciprocal relationship with the neighbor using one's pool. (Reputation is possibly a consideration, but strongly secondary.)
> This makes it sound like getting "sued for just being a user", in other words, unreasonably, is likely.
No. It makes it sound like a possibility. Which it is, or the clause wouldn't be there. A possibility of an unknown frequency but with significant risk, so worth considering during license examination.
You appear to be arguing that the behavior isn't gross in general, in which case rando definitely is the right measure. Maybe you're only arguing it's not gross when Zed Shaw does it. That seems dubious to me, in that a) most people don't know who he is, and b) many reasonable people differ from you in their analysis of his reliability. (Indeed, many people mainly know him as being a high drama jackass. [1]) Maybe you're just arguing it's not gross to you and when it's Zed Shaw, but even there the neighbor thing is a bad analogy in that your relationship with Zed Shaw is not social, but parasocial. There is no reciprocal benefit serving as a check on his behavior.
> He is framing it in a way that makes it seem Zed will exercise this right unreasonably. At least, that's the way I understood what he said.
You understood it poorly. He said "can", not "will". Contracts are not about giving people the benefit of the doubt. They're about locking things down to remove doubt. If we just assumed good things about everyone, we wouldn't need contracts. So this is analysis of capability, not intent.
Given that the clause is there, I think there are two reasonable interpretations: a) Zed Shaw is an idiot, who puts random clauses into licenses, or b) Zed Shaw is reasonably smart, and put that clause in there because he was thinking of cases where he'd use it. On whom? In what circumstances? The license doesn't say. It introduces a great deal of legal risk, and of doubt. It seems a little rich to me for Shaw to go out of his way to create a great deal of doubt and have anybody expect he should be given the benefit of it.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2008/01/01/zed-shaw-puts-the-smack-do...