This is not a fair criticism. I can tell someone, "Hey dude, your house is on fire" without having to offer them either a bucket of water or a new house.
This type of argument is frequently used to forestall any criticism whatsoever. Bad supervisors often say things like, "don't give me complaints without also giving me a solution."
It's sloppy thinking, and rejects valuable feedback.
This is true, but bad employees often say "Hey this sucks" without providing any constructive reasoning, and expecting someone else to fix a problem that you've seen but they haven't usually results in a lousy fix.
Sure, it's not their job to fix it, but if you come to me and say 'our art pipeline sucks, it's too inefficient' and then walk away, I literally have nothing at all to work on.
The 'art pipeline' might be something you could work on...
That might be a bad supervisor if they say it to unskilled labor; to professional/analytical staff, the expectation that a problem report to management include a recommended course of action to address the problem is not unreasonable. In fact, since those are the kind of staff that would be called on to propose action to resolve a problem even if someone else reported it, its simply a case of issuing the follow-up assignment in advance to eliminate an inefficient delay step.
Sometimes you don't have the time to find solutions, because you're working on your own stuff.
"I dislike it that the user-friendly software I use (as opposed to TBB) phones home to check for updates and track metrics" isn't valuable feedback. It's stating the obvious without proper qualification. It's ignoring the trade-offs that are obvious. It's not constructive.
You're the person complaining to the fire brigade because they made your house wet.
Really, your post is the kind of thing that must sit framed in every Internet Troll cave. Because that sure is everybodies favorite internet hobby: complain loudly about everything, offer no solutions, and then whine even harder when the authors that are working to make things better (sometimes for free) quit in disgust.
And the entitlement in the replies, you cannot be serious. Yes, you're all entitled to whine, I'm sorry, point out flaws, all day on the internet. Congrats.
He's right: There shouldn't be an "All or Nothing" mentality.
There are times and places where a problem shouldn't be mentioned without a solution...
There are also times and places where bring up a problem is itself important enough to warrant a talk WITHOUT a solution.
Ignoring the fact that both extremes exist is a larger part of problem in having any kind of constructive conversation these days. "If you don't agree with me 100%, you're an idiot, a troll and your mom should be shot" type of attitude is a troll in of itself and a major problem blocking any kind of conversation on a multitude of topics.
Why can't the problem be discussed without forcing the conversation down the "this is the solution..." path?