In some cases it may be reasonable, but generally it's not at all reasonable. As mentioned in another comment, there is no sense in which it's generous to forsake aspects of a project that people need or rely on in order to instead focus on aspects that you personally find interesting. That's no longer "volunteering" or "helping out" but in fact is actually just taking limited resources away from core project improvements, and is quite a selfish way to interact with a given open source community.
Of course, developers don't have to contribute to an open source project at all. And if they do, it doesn't have to be in a "volunteering" sense in which their work actively offers benefit to others. They are free to choose instead to more selfishly only prioritize contributing in ways they personally want or like. But if they do, then they no longer can turn around and act like others should be gracious for their "generous" contribution to the project.
I guess I would say that developers can ignore the useful stream of +1s in order to more selfishly work on aspects that bring them personal satisfaction, instead of deriving satisfaction from the benefit offered to wide ranges of users. It's not that it's reasonable or unreasonable. It's just literally a particular option they could choose.
If they choose that, in cases where no serious rationale is given to explain why there is some more beneficial project agenda in the short term, then such petty disregard for a massive pile of evidence about what your project users needs are is a pretty strong indication of a bad library/project, with alarming dysfunction.
So in this sense, the +1 stream is a really useful barometer of the project.
Either the core developers say, "whoops, my bad, I had been intending to volunteer time which necessarily implies that my efforts should be focused on whatever the users benefit from the most -- let me switch to work on this hugely +1'd issue I'd been ignoring" ... or they say, "I hear you everybody, but since I'm more familiar with the project internals, let me offer a technical rationale for why we need to delay addressing this in order to work on other stuff first" ... or they say, "Screw you all for bothering me. I'm 'volunteering' my time on this, so I'm going to do what I want. I don't like this big +1'd issue, so I'm going to ignore it and just do whatever."
Either way it gives you a ton of information about the health and reliability of the project.
Of course, developers don't have to contribute to an open source project at all. And if they do, it doesn't have to be in a "volunteering" sense in which their work actively offers benefit to others. They are free to choose instead to more selfishly only prioritize contributing in ways they personally want or like. But if they do, then they no longer can turn around and act like others should be gracious for their "generous" contribution to the project.
I guess I would say that developers can ignore the useful stream of +1s in order to more selfishly work on aspects that bring them personal satisfaction, instead of deriving satisfaction from the benefit offered to wide ranges of users. It's not that it's reasonable or unreasonable. It's just literally a particular option they could choose.
If they choose that, in cases where no serious rationale is given to explain why there is some more beneficial project agenda in the short term, then such petty disregard for a massive pile of evidence about what your project users needs are is a pretty strong indication of a bad library/project, with alarming dysfunction.
So in this sense, the +1 stream is a really useful barometer of the project.
Either the core developers say, "whoops, my bad, I had been intending to volunteer time which necessarily implies that my efforts should be focused on whatever the users benefit from the most -- let me switch to work on this hugely +1'd issue I'd been ignoring" ... or they say, "I hear you everybody, but since I'm more familiar with the project internals, let me offer a technical rationale for why we need to delay addressing this in order to work on other stuff first" ... or they say, "Screw you all for bothering me. I'm 'volunteering' my time on this, so I'm going to do what I want. I don't like this big +1'd issue, so I'm going to ignore it and just do whatever."
Either way it gives you a ton of information about the health and reliability of the project.