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.
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.