I’m not surprised. I’m not a major OSS contributor of any sort, but I am a lead of a closed source product within my company, and if I got the kind of pointless destructive criticism that usually makes it to the top of HN comments on something my team and I worked hard to create it would be beyond frustrating. The only thing that would make it tolerable was the fact that at least I got paid to do this.

I can’t even imagine how terrible it must feel as an OSS contributor or leader who is putting all their effort out there in the open for anyone to see and use and they are deluged by the most awful petty criticisms.

I really think HN comments probably need some sort of “feedback” tab, where the people who are providing what they think is constructive feedback can put their comments in, so the OSS software developers/contributors can choose to tackle the feedback when they are in the mindset to do so.