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I’d like to see some nice analysis on this because my experience was completely the opposite.

I don’t work on open source much (a few lines over 20 years), but the only patch I made was super welcoming and a dev bent over backwards to teach me how to diff and submit patches. I just assumed this was common.

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This is also my (limited) experience, though one does find... less than welcoming maintainers. :) It depends a lot in how you approach the project though. Being humble and careful not to waste maintainers' time more than necessary goes a long way. Remember, it's their free time they are donating to you, so make sure that you went extra mile to really prove that the bug is in the project and not in your code.

> Remember, it's their free time they are donating to you, so make sure that you went extra mile to really prove that the bug is in the project and not in your code.

This is kind of what I'm trying to address, which is the belief that the creator of the project is owed something and thus also free to be a jerk. Most users are not going to donate money, but some of us do so on occasion. I usually donate when a project is in dire straits just because I don't have a lot of cash floating around for myself, though over the decades this has added up to thousands of dollars donated.

However, when I see a project has been rude to users, or even actual experience see a project desperate for funds that was rude to me, I don't donate a thing no matter if I use it a lot. I don't believe in treating users like doormats and won't support it.

Open source means that you can pay anyone you want to work on it. You don't have to donate to the original maintainer. Although if you like the person and they are clearly stressed out and suffering and lashing out at people, it may be in your interest to help them deal with that first, rather than ignoring them and letting the project flounder. If you don't have the bandwidth to give money then that's fine, you can help in other ways. But I don't think it is wise to dismiss maintainer stress and burnout, or view it as a personal attack against you. Unless of course, you are burnt out yourself and need some help too, in which case, there's a lot you could do, but you probably have heard all the generic advice already. Personally I always try to remember that the goal is to see the project succeed, NOT to try to punish someone for perceived bad behavior.

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