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this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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I've seen this on a few repos and it never came across too harsh, the posts tagged with it were deserving. Wish I'd noted the repo names..
I'm fine with it tbh. FOSS devs need to squeeze every bit of enjoyment out of working on the project to keep motivated. If they (or mods) can drop a helpful reply and close an issue as 'skill issue' and get a little chuckle while they give their time for free answering poorly-written queries or bad bug reports then that's a reasonable trade to keep them from burning out.
Sounds like a skill issue on the dev’s part.
Yeah, users might get a bit upset about "abrasive devs" but like, as you said, it's devs that give their free time and energy into developing the project. Users honestly ought to respect that a lot more
Whats with the whole obessesion on "giving their time for free"? What does money have to do with this? It always comes across as a copout, implying you cant disagree with FOSS devs because they work for free. Just because they aren't earning money off off of it (aside from donations) doesnt mean they aren't earning some sort of reward for their work, whether its personal or social.
Besides that, its pretty common to include that type of work on a resume, which is sort of turning that work into future earnings if it helps you get a high paying job.
I appreciate what FOSS devs do, I just hear this victim narrative come up a lot in posts about them. I'm not even sure its FOSS devs posting that type of stuff on here, it might be other people defending them.
Anyone contributing to open source either does it:
Most FOSS devs are in position two. By a large margin. They could be relaxing, or earning more money doing freelancing to make ends meet, but instead they are trying to build something they want to see happen. That requires focusing on the important tasks and that often means not having time to spend on poorly reported bugs that are actually users just not RTFM and opening issues. It wastes the devs time, and projects with too much of this have development stagnate and are frequently shuttered.
And devs that just do this to get a better job stop contributions once their new job takes over their life, and then the project suffers.
Users need to appreciate FOSS devs more because some of the most important projects we need in 2025 are developed only because they want to see them happen.
You forgot unempl*yed teens
Is "unemployed" an offensive word now?
What the frick are you doing? Do you want to be ba*ned???
I can't believe you casually dropped a n*w in there at the *nd too!
Are you kidding ??? What the **** are you talking about man ? You are a biggest looser i ever seen in my life ! You was doing PIPI in your pampers when i was beating players much more stronger then you! You are not proffesional, because proffesionals knew how to lose and congratulate opponents, you are like a girl crying after i beat you! Be brave, be honest to yourself and stop this trush talkings!!! Everybody know that i am very good blitz player, i can win anyone in the world in single game! And "w"esley "s"o is nobody for me, just a player who are crying every single time when loosing, ( remember what you say about Firouzja ) !!! Stop playing with my name, i deserve to have a good name during whole my chess carrier, I am Officially inviting you to OTB blitz match with the Prize fund! Both of us will invest 5000$ and winner takes it all! I suggest all other people who's intrested in this situation, just take a look at my results in 2016 and 2017 Blitz World championships, and that should be enough... No need to listen for every crying babe, Tigran Petrosyan is always play Fair ! And if someone will continue Officially talk about me like that, we will meet in Court! God bless with true! True will never die ! Liers will kicked off...
Who said they were victims? I said I don't see any harm in devs being mildly abrasive as long as it helps keep their passion for the project alive.
How many projects do you pursue in your free time for no compensation that benefit strangers all over the world, whom can file complaints about your project, asking you to remedy or change it?
FOSS dev work is not a victim-generating machine, it's just entirely misunderstood and underappreciated. They make a project for them, then they m0ake it free to all.. and the code, and the support. But, you ask them what they dislike the most - it's the support. The endless poorly-filled tickets, the duplicate tickets the submitter didn't search for, the user errors that are explained clearly in the documentation. That part is thankless work. That burns people out. But if they use a joke tag on a support ticket when they close it, it's suddenly "omg, devs are so rude".
Ah yes, FOSS work should be its own reward because they can say they did it. Sort of like how interns should work for free at big companies 'for experience', and young artists/techs/small businesses should help influencers for free because they're 'working for exposure'. Now that attitude is a cop-out.
I think the way you frame it is absurd. They aren't making things for themselves. If they were they wouldnt share it, or if they did they at least wouldnt maintain it or claim ownership over it. If devs open the door to allow outside help in, they really can't act like they are victims when they have to socialize with other people.
The fact that you focus on compensation really shows what's important to you anyways, and betrays the whole spirit of FOSS in my opinion.
^ See this is a great example of completely misunderstand FOSS. The vast majority are personal projects.
The whole point of making them open source is to share the software they've created for others to enjoy/use, and share the code for others to learn from or utilize in their own projects. Its not to "open the door to let outside help in" as though they're the ones gaining from the arrangement, lol.. the vast majority of FOSS code on npm for example has a single maintainer. Open Source Security Foundation discussing npm stats of almost 60% of all projects having a single maintainer, here: https://github.com/ossf/tac/issues/101
That you read my comments and focus on compensation, as though I haven't spent 90% of the commentary on other aspects is weird. I'm done responding, but feel free to shout into the void.
I'm sure all those single maintainers aren't complaining about all their unpaid work. Not sure where that opinion even comes from, but you sure seem ready to defend it.
If you think its okay for maintainers to complain about unpaid work, then we just disagree. If your point is that most of them don't do that, then good, that's fantastic.
I agree in general but I don't read the message you're responding to as being a particularly victim-oriented narrative. It's the internet, if someone wants to do some light trolling of people who kind of suck and it helps keep them working on a project great. It's not like it's the most positive thing in the world, but neither is writing an incomprehensible bug report because you followed some tutorial online and think you know how to use a computer.
I'm not opposed to handling bad reports in a cheeky manner, just the part that comes up constantly about them working for free. Its always used as an excuse, when I'd rather people just admit its more fun to take the piss out of someone sometimes and maybe everyone should lighten up a bit.
Again, I'm not sure its even devs themselves making the "work for free" argument themselves, as the FOSS community has many advocates who aren't devs.
Yeah that's fair
I think if you view the work you're doing as working for free you've already lost the plot a bit. I mean people can do stuff for different reasons but it'd be like a die hard capitalist working to make buses free. It's just weird.