Hey HN folks! Author of the post here, wow I didn’t expect this to make the front page. It’s really fun to see all the discussion here around this topic. I’d originally written this post to just have something up my sleeve to send to folks who were being unkind to open source maintainers. I’m enjoying seeing some of the counter arguments too.

The general intent of this post is to try and communicate to folks that if you consume open source software the authors of that software don’t owe you anything. However they all contribute for a reason, whether that is personal enjoyment, presence in the market, user testing, etc. They are excited to have folks use their software and they definitely want to hear from you. But it’s important to remember that this isn’t a commercial arrangement like when you buy Photoshop. So if you want to interact with a maintainer remember to be kind and respectful (you probably should be with all humans anyway). It is up to them where they focus their effort, and if they have a choice between interacting with nice folks or rude folks who do you think they will choose?

I also regularly see folks being rude on the most important issues, which results in maintainers avoiding them and even more folks being rude. It can snowball into having things that are critical to the community becoming a low priority to the maintainers.

TLDR; Be kind to folks who give you things for free.