I think it’s OK to complain about free software on social media. It’s also OK to tell people that sometimes, if they want something to be better, they might need to be the ones to roll up their sleeves and make it happen. But not everyone has the time or the technical wherewithal to fix every tool they use. I sure couldn’t implement every improvement I ever thought of for free software, I don’t have the time.
But I think It’s still nice, for maintainers and for people thinking about getting into open source, to get a rolling feel for what gripes a lot of people share about open software. If I have a problem and I know a lot of people share my frustration, I’m much more motivated to try to fix it than if it’s something I and no one else care about.
I think it’s OK to complain about free software on social media.
I think it’s like complaining about a free product someone made in their own time and then delivered it to your doorstep.
If you don’t like it, OK, don’t use it. This isn’t something you bought. Using the thing doesn’t help the dev in any way, unless you also donate or contribute.
We live in a time where private FOSS devs of popular projects get buried under AI slop bug reports from multi-billion-$ corporations who use their work without paying, and death threats on social media if they made an unpopular change to the thing they put out there for free.
I think it’s more akin to complaining about the public transit in a city where the public transit funded via donations. Yeah, you could pitch in, and maybe you do, but it’s still a massive undertaking that is also massively underfunded, and even if you have an idea of what you want to change, you might not have the skills to fix it yourself, or even to file an actually helpful bug report. Should you learn how to engage with the process of opensource tool maintenance? Yes! It’s a cool and fun thing to do. Is it hard for most people who aren’t familiar with software development? Also very yes.
To be clear, I don’t think maintainers have any obligation to see or think about whatever gets posted to social media. Trying to stay on top of what the internet is saying is an impossible task. But as a user and sometimes contributor, I like reading about what trials other users are going through, and if a complaint resonates with me I like to chat about it, and occasionally I’ll pull down the source code for a project and see if I can figure out how to patch whatever it is we’re talking about. For most of these cases I’ll give up or get distracted before I have anything worthwhile to contribute, but every once in a while I’ll get a PR submitted that spawned from a random conversation on the internet.
That belongs in a feature request though, not on mainstream social media. I’m not going to comb through feeds to try and figure out what bugfixes or features need priority development.
I would even go as so far to say actually placing the request in the proper place matters more than donations.
I think it’s OK to complain about free software on social media. It’s also OK to tell people that sometimes, if they want something to be better, they might need to be the ones to roll up their sleeves and make it happen. But not everyone has the time or the technical wherewithal to fix every tool they use. I sure couldn’t implement every improvement I ever thought of for free software, I don’t have the time.
But I think It’s still nice, for maintainers and for people thinking about getting into open source, to get a rolling feel for what gripes a lot of people share about open software. If I have a problem and I know a lot of people share my frustration, I’m much more motivated to try to fix it than if it’s something I and no one else care about.
I think it’s like complaining about a free product someone made in their own time and then delivered it to your doorstep.
If you don’t like it, OK, don’t use it. This isn’t something you bought. Using the thing doesn’t help the dev in any way, unless you also donate or contribute.
We live in a time where private FOSS devs of popular projects get buried under AI slop bug reports from multi-billion-$ corporations who use their work without paying, and death threats on social media if they made an unpopular change to the thing they put out there for free.
I think it’s more akin to complaining about the public transit in a city where the public transit funded via donations. Yeah, you could pitch in, and maybe you do, but it’s still a massive undertaking that is also massively underfunded, and even if you have an idea of what you want to change, you might not have the skills to fix it yourself, or even to file an actually helpful bug report. Should you learn how to engage with the process of opensource tool maintenance? Yes! It’s a cool and fun thing to do. Is it hard for most people who aren’t familiar with software development? Also very yes.
To be clear, I don’t think maintainers have any obligation to see or think about whatever gets posted to social media. Trying to stay on top of what the internet is saying is an impossible task. But as a user and sometimes contributor, I like reading about what trials other users are going through, and if a complaint resonates with me I like to chat about it, and occasionally I’ll pull down the source code for a project and see if I can figure out how to patch whatever it is we’re talking about. For most of these cases I’ll give up or get distracted before I have anything worthwhile to contribute, but every once in a while I’ll get a PR submitted that spawned from a random conversation on the internet.
That belongs in a feature request though, not on mainstream social media. I’m not going to comb through feeds to try and figure out what bugfixes or features need priority development.
I would even go as so far to say actually placing the request in the proper place matters more than donations.