Another thing that annoys me to no end is locking threads because it’s “heated”. Just accept the grief and venting, people deserve it. It’s toxic positivity.
> Just accept the grief and venting, people deserve it. It’s toxic positivity.
Absolutely not. No one is entitled to vent at a project, and no maintainer deserves to have that directed to them.
a project's issue tracker is first and foremost for the maintainers, any "community" that builds up there is secondary.
Maintainers do not owe you this, in addition to maintaining the software that you can use for free. You're entitled to be upset, and they're just as entitled to say "please go somewhere else to vent, we're busy".
_This_ is the sense of entitlement that people (rightly) disparage.
You're completely right, though obviously they didn't lock it because it was "too heated" despite what they wrote. They locked it because people were writing negative comments about them.
Frankly I think they're totally justified in this. They need to eat. The things they should have done differently are:
1. Confront the issue at the start rather than waiting months and just hoping it would go away.
2. Less bullshit corporate speak response. They could have been honest that they didn't want to give this away for free otherwise they'd go out of business, and that it's open source so the author is free to maintain their patch/fork if they want. Most reasonable people would understand this. "It doesn't align with our vision" is just vomit-inducing weaseling.
There’s still value-add in eg source-available products. So there’s a meaningful spectrum of openness, assuming the decision makers are willing to explain their commitment upfront and stand by it.