I think it’s important once in a blue moon to have these sorts of “What the fuck is actually wrong with you? We’re volunteers” public shamings of people who actually act this disgustingly entitled to other people’s work.
It’s easy to conflate two ideas, though, so be careful.
I’ve experienced some frustration when a project - ohai, gitlab - makes some colossally stupid decisions - shitty slow editor, the new runner reg automated-but-really-manual mess, continually gluing fat pieces into the mainstream code, etc - and as soon as we suggest, for example, that a shit-slow editor that looks like actual ass isn’t the best idea, we get “well it’s open source, so spend 5 minutes learning the entirety of the codebase and just make your own fork.” As if that’s feasible.
All I’m saying is, sometimes they’re not acting entitled as much as they’re mourning the loss of something they liked as it dies, and they have no outlet to express loss in a manner that does anything.
People can appear like dicks without acting maliciously. I’m the poster-child for that.
Sure, I agree there’s a line as a FOSS contributor and user myself, but this is well past that line. By the time you start telling the maintainers of a FOSS project which you don’t donate to (let alone one which is donationless), which has no income of any sort, which you have never worked on, and which you have no intention of ever working on that they’re “stingy” for not spending their own money on testing your specific use case and to “get off their ass”, you’re well into “PRs welcome :)” territory, and there’s a reasonable argument that they’re even past that into “lol bye *ban*” territory.
I think it’s important once in a blue moon to have these sorts of “What the fuck is actually wrong with you? We’re volunteers” public shamings of people who actually act this disgustingly entitled to other people’s work.
It’s easy to conflate two ideas, though, so be careful.
I’ve experienced some frustration when a project - ohai, gitlab - makes some colossally stupid decisions - shitty slow editor, the new runner reg automated-but-really-manual mess, continually gluing fat pieces into the mainstream code, etc - and as soon as we suggest, for example, that a shit-slow editor that looks like actual ass isn’t the best idea, we get “well it’s open source, so spend 5 minutes learning the entirety of the codebase and just make your own fork.” As if that’s feasible.
All I’m saying is, sometimes they’re not acting entitled as much as they’re mourning the loss of something they liked as it dies, and they have no outlet to express loss in a manner that does anything.
People can appear like dicks without acting maliciously. I’m the poster-child for that.
Sure, I agree there’s a line as a FOSS contributor and user myself, but this is well past that line. By the time you start telling the maintainers of a FOSS project which you don’t donate to (let alone one which is donationless), which has no income of any sort, which you have never worked on, and which you have no intention of ever working on that they’re “stingy” for not spending their own money on testing your specific use case and to “get off their ass”, you’re well into “PRs welcome :)” territory, and there’s a reasonable argument that they’re even past that into “lol bye *ban*” territory.