Do you understand that what you are saying is directly and perfectly antithetical to Free and perhaps even merely Open Source, software?
(the Wayland people apparently didn't, that's for sure)
(the Wayland people apparently didn't, that's for sure)
But also, I have no obligations to like or respect what they do either. I think they're going the wrong way and I can say so. The freedom works both ways, and I don't think we should shield them from criticism.
basically, ask yourself: is your response friendly and helpful and likely to motivate the developer to consider your issue, or are you venting your frustration. if it's the latter, then please just don't.
see here for example:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31945618
i made a similar comment a few weeks ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31679373
users should be free to be critical of it
absolutely not. you can say: "unfortunately, i have this problem, so i can't use this, i am going to go use something else". but that's about it.
criticism is the bane of our society. criticism hurts peoples feelings. criticism causes burnout. FOSS maintainers are volunteers and absolutely do not deserve that kind of criticism for just developing software. (that doesn't put them above any criticism. if they are rude or mean to their users, then that may well be criticized. but not if they ignore a problem or are unresponsive. they may well have other things in their life that are more important than to care about your software issue) (and if the developer is paid, direct any criticism at the company, but don't beat up the employee who may not have the freedom to choose what issues to work on)
Being open source doesn't mean nobody should dare criticise you
if you didn't pay for it, it means exactly that.
Now, it's true -- I absolutely have no legal or physical recourse to materially affect them them and because it's open source, I shouldn't. They should never be sued or anything like that.
But you can get out of here with the silly idea that it also shields them from me COMMENTING, even HARSHLY.
Look, I didn't talk about their mama's, I talked about their product.
Your idea that "FOSS developers should be shielded from criticism because they'll stop sharing" is as absurd as "Never boo a musician because THEN THERE WILL BE NO MORE MUSIC."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31977136 Why criticism lasts longer than praise (bbc.com)
Because I said complaining wasn’t productive?
This far after adoption, I don’t think it is. Fedora isn’t going to see this list and drop Wayland for X. They went to Wayland 7 years ago. I think they’re happy enough, they had plenty of chances to change their mind.
But hyperbolic titles like this one (“Think twice before abandoning Xorg. Wayland breaks everything!”) are unhelpful. HN later changed the title here to something much less inflammatory and more fair.