Hacker News Reader

Comment by jauntywundrkind | Hacker News Reader

It's open source software, so this attitude of "the work hours have to be spent how I want them to be spent" feels rather icky to me.

There's also a very weak souled scarcity mentality. It feels like you are working to take umbrage, to come up with outrage. Some users do find these features good and useful. That should be celebrated. Demanding features not be present? That's so condescending.

View on HN

OSS is not immune to enshittification, and, in fact, is prone to it. It's not entitled to have the opinion that a piece of software might be heading in the wrong direction. Paying for software doesn't somehow buy you this right. What's icky to me is the idea that the opinion of users who support the author financially is more valuable than of those who don't, which goes against the entire ideal of open source.

Besides, VC-funded OSS often prioritizes the needs of its shareholders rather than its users. If you find these features useful, that's great. But there's no reason that they should be universally celebrated. The authors might want to listen to all viewpoints.

“I want this feature” and “I want this feature to not exist” are fundamentally incompatible viewpoints when applied to any given feature. It seems like adding that feature and making it opt-in is a good middle ground. The people that want it can have it and the people who don’t want it can pretend it doesn’t exist. This outcome seems like the result of listening to all viewpoints, so I’m not sure what problem you’re trying to point out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com