[allendoerfer]

I do not think that every blog post about a piece of software has to have actionable advice for the maintainers. Sometimes you just want write a review and tell other people that something sucks.

It is true, that this is a community where people are working for free and I would personally try to consider that, when I say something online. It is generally good advice to assume, that other people are intelligent, too, and assume "there are valid reasons for this" before "they had other things to do" before "they are stupid".

Doing something for free however does not free you from criticism. Imagine a studio releasing a movie. Critics hate it, because it sucks. If the studio now sets the price to zero, does that automatically mean all critics have to be positive and friendly? No it does not. If something sucks, it sucks and you are allowed to write about it.

[dandelany]

The thing is, a Hollywood movie is qualitatively different than a FOSS library. In the former case, you are a passive consumer who paid money for a product. In the latter, you are an active member of the JS community, benefiting from the shared work of other developers for free - the only thing they're asking for in payment is a bit of kindness, respect, civility and ideally the occasional contribution. Plus, if there's something wrong with the FOSS project, you have ultimate power to change it as you see fit.

IMHO reviewing FOSS projects as if they were shitty products you purchased is extremely destructive to the FOSS community.

[allendoerfer]

> The thing is, a Hollywood movie is qualitatively different than a FOSS library. In the former case, you are a passive consumer who paid money for a product.

Not in my example. Not even talking about Hollywood. Could also be indie and crowdsourced, just like FOSS can be sponsored by the biggest companies on the planet.

> In the latter, you are an active member of the JS community, benefiting from the shared work of other developers for free - the only thing they're asking for in payment is a bit of kindness, respect, civility and ideally the occasional contribution.

Sure, and that would be the right thing to do. Still he mentions, that he has stopped working on a project for being criticized for ASCII art. I do not know the specific case and mostly I do not care enough, but it annoys me, too, when developers try to be exceptionally funny and clever inside code - especially when they fail. So I think you are allowed to criticize something like that, if you want to.

> Plus, if there's something wrong with the FOSS project, you have ultimate power to change it as you see fit.

Does not apply to criticism about design decisions.

I think reviews (sometimes) have a value in itself for the reader and help to create a working market of FOSS, where the best library gets the most users. I get the developers point of view and can imagine how he feels, but playing devils advocate here lets me conclude, that saying something sucks is okay.