Is complaining to open source project maintainers getting normalized ?

If you are dissatisfied with the free thing I gave you, then I am happy to send you a refund of your purchase price. 🤷‍♂️

That's my preferred strategy.

UPDATE: Before any angry cards and letters, let me clarify. When I reply this way, I learn a lot about the person I'm talking to, including whether they are prepared to have a reasonable conversation about this complex matter. The response I'm hoping for is "Well played.", because that tells me that they recognize how ridiculous we are both being. I can work with them.

If they are merely having a tough time and needed to vent, then they'll notice that and we can move forward.

If they are truly that entitled, then I don't mind what happens next, because they would probably never have accepted any help I could offer them, anyway.

You should charge a restocking fee.
- Convenience fee.

Not only is it normalized, but it's being weaponized. See, for example, the recent XZ backdoor which was equal parts hacking and a psi-op against the maintainer.

Just fyi it’s psy ops, short for psychological operations.

This has to be a troll. They use Tails and do not know how to format an USB drive?

Fair point. An they managed to get their email delivered on that newsletter announce mailing list (Which I expected to be moderated). Not sure how that could happen.
Possibly they bought it from someone on ebay or something?

I don't think I'd ever complain directly to the maintainer. I often do find instructions that are essentially The Rest of the Fucking Owl but you go to the community for help and then give up when 90% of them act like you are an idiot for even asking.

It was always normalized, but recently there seems to be more backlash from maintainers.

I am indeed seeing this with increasing frequency. Just take a look at threads about the Lemmy devs for examples. An increasing number of people seem to feel entitled to be treated not just like customers but as also as stakeholders/PMs for software that was gifted to the community.

As for how to try to change this direction, I think ELI5 on what FLOSS is and how it is governed, as well as how to be a good member of the community, whether as a contributor or otherwise, is probably the way to go.

Who is this little shit who can't Google how to format a USB drive securely? If dd isn't enough, there's plenty of methods documented online.

Fuck such people. Off to the maintainers blacklist they should go

Just ignore them?

People feeling entitled on the internet were always a thing.

"I paid for my internet connection, so everything I find on it should be free and come with support and modifications I request."

Is that you Jia Tan?

What's the issue with just ignoring them? I really don't think making open-source software intentionally obscure because annoying people exist is a great idea. Ultimately we want more people to use FOSS instead of corporate software.
- Cutting off your nose to spite your face.
- It takes time and energy to ignore them and only them specifically. They need to be filtered out, bug tickets closed and cleared out of otherwise useful channels. The alternative is you just ignore everybody interacting with the project, but that's not a good solution.
That could get rather annoying. Imagine if when you installed your distro everything was compiled from source (I apologise if you use Gentoo or LFS), it would take a lot longer.
Also people could still just upload a binary to various package managers (assuming the source is available).
Taking suckless a bit too seriously, are we?

There are excessively clear instructions for tails on how to do exactly what they are asking. You can't help people like that.

God knows no wrath like a slightly inconvenienced and intellectually humiliated liberal.

Ok boomer.

The post's photo conversation seems like feedback moreso than complaining. 🤷

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