Well y'know... you're kinda being paid for that. That literally is your job. You're given money to deal with that.
It is not a matter of "empathy" for a FOSS maintainer to do your job for you.
OSS coders doesn't owe you anything if they don't want to be collaborative. you already getting the code for free. you are paid to deal with these Open Source software. you can always buy the commercial software if Open Source is not doing what you want.
> not a “fuck you, pay me” environment
i don't understand. if OSS coders offer an pay option. why shouldn't they get pay? you get paid to deal with Open source software by your employer, no? you get to eat 'cause you get paid to deal with Open source software, no? why shouldn't OSS coders get to eat too? only you get to eat but not them?
Someone who uses an open source project in the course of their paid employment doesn't have standing to accuse volunteer maintainers of being overly motivated by money.
Where you're mistaken is in not understanding the difference between FOSS and Enterprise OSS. You're describing a collaboration environment that can and should be present in FOSS. (but sadly often isn't) With OSS... you better have your checkbook ready. It very much IS a "fuck you, pay me" environment, and if you don't have the cash, you really shouldn't be messing around with Enterprise OSS. Use, and support, Free, by that I mean copylefted, Software. Build on Proxmox, not on K8s.
FOSS is a software commons, Enterprise OSS is a giant collection of walled gardens. You have to pay me to maintain Enterprise OSS. I'd maintain FOSS for free. You can't apply the dynamics that underpin FOSS to Enterprise OSS. Enterprise OSS is not written for you. You're not its target market. Enterprises want as much as possible to offload the massive costs, so they fund software foundations like the CNCF and the Apache project to do the core dev work so that teams like mine can have a stable base to build on and relative career stability.
This is a gross misunderstanding of what open source is. Please read the licenses that come with the OSS software you use. The authors and maintainers do not owe you anything beyond what the license says.
> OSS is supposed to be a collaborative environment
OSS is supposed to be what the OSS authors and maintainers want it to be for their project while satisfying the terms and conditions of the license they have chosen for their project. It does not have to be a collaborative environment. Yes, it will be great if it is. Many authors just don't have the time to do collaboration after they have made the initial few releases. But that does not stop others from collaborating on it or forking it and improving it.
I am sorry if this sounds cynical. That's not my intention at all. I genuinely like that the open source licenses gives a lot of rights to the user while also including disclaimers that the author is not responsible for troubles you face with the software. Far from being cynical, I find it very beautiful actually. It allows the authors to be creative and publish software when they can without worrying too much about support and maintenance. Of course it would be nice if the authors also support and maintain the software and many authors do but it is good to know that it is not necessary and the licenses say so too.
Silently trying to plow through problems of these magnitudes will cause the project to be late and still cost the same. It's bad for everyone
Of course, if you included a dependency because you thought it was a good idea, and it turns out to not be a good idea, then that's a different problem. You'll have to let management know that you'll need some time to refactor the code to remove the dependency. That could be a difficult conversation, but the answer is still not "hassle the maintainer to fix my problem"
Who is proposing that it's a good idea to hassle the maintainer? Most of these interactions go awry when someone decides to be an asshole. The tone of the article which says "fuck off" demonstrates the interpersonal impulses at play here.
Choose who you rely on wisely & try not to get into bad situations. If the maintainers of project x have an ill disposition toward the community, then consider it a red flag.
I am also somewhat puzzled how we are having a discussion about this on HN, where adherence to open source licenses is usually a virtue. Only as long as our work is not negatively effected, I presume?
There are a lot of people on this site. Some of them may think differently than others, there is no way to fuse them into a single persona.
The spirit of hn has clear biases and it's not equally open-minded towards all ideas.
And this is assuming there is no point manipulation at play, which is not the case for any popular site. In my opinion points alone can't be taken for more than a slight grain of salt.
In fact, at every company I've ever worked for, damaging the company's reputation by doing that would have lead to far more serious issues at work than just finding a workaround and documenting it well - and then, if suitable, contributing back to the project with something helpful.