As bad as the author comes off in that exchange, Mr. Haitzler comes off worse. Nobody should respond to their customers like that, least of all in a public forum, regardless of the provocation.
He is not a customer, he just works for a company that has adopted the (open source) framework.
And even a customer is not some holy being that gets to behave in any way they like and it has to be accepted "regardless of the provocation". What he wrote has FUD and professionally damaging to mr. Haitzler (as a programmer), while also wrong in most aspects.
Nobody should just bend over for someone (even a "customer") "regardless of the provocation". Besides FUD and insults, should the "regardless" also allow for sexual or racist comments from a customer?
And speaking of duties, does the company (Samsung) see well to an employee of them bad-mouthing their OS and choices on some random forum?
To further clarify my position: I believe that rules of decorum, including responses to breaches in decorum, should govern not just traditional customer-business relationships, but user-developer and open-source community relationships as well – particularly the higher up the open-source ladder you go. Good business practice often means good community practice as well, and a healthy community is more likely to attract and retain good developers.
Now I am aware that several leaders of several major open-source communities do not consider such restraint to be necessary or even desirable. They're of course welcome to manage their communities as they see fit. I think it's a mistake though, and I believe it will lead inevitably to serious issues in those communities, if indeed it hasn't already.
I presumed from his post that he had actually developed with the framework in question. In which case, he is a user of the framework, and, as far as I'm concerned, a customer to the developers of the framework.
Unless you have evidence to the contrary...?
> Nobody should just bend over for someone...
There is a world of difference between being assertive (which is fine) and being dismissive and belittling (which is not). Mr. Haitzler went way over the line. He thought that tit for tat was appropriate. It is not.
By the way, given the rather suggestive way you phrased this, you might want to check your own use of sexualized comments before criticizing someone else's.
EFL is open source software, BSD licenced. The original author of the comment is not a customer. It's some uninformed person trashing the good work someone has made available to them for free. This attitude makes me want to stop writing open source, it's disgusting to see.
If even one third of what the original author was complaining is true (and judging by the response, it's way more than that), I don't see how EFL can be called "good work" in good conscience. Bad code and bad design don't get a free pass on account of being open source.
I can't comment on the specific details, I've never used EFL, but in general, when encountering problems with open source software you can do one of two things:
1. Write a long and angry rant about how terrible the software is on a public forum.
2. File issues, participate in the community, ask questions on the mailing list, submit pull requests to improve the docs, try and understand the design decisions behind the software you're using - it's possible that the author knows more about the problem than you, and there are perfectly good reasons for why things are as they are.
One of these things is more productive than the other.
In this case, the rant is not talking about minor bugs that can be fixed with a few (or even a few hundred) lines of code. It's talking about major design defects.
I do have to note, though, that the options are actually:
1. Use something else that's better.
2. <same as what you wrote above>
Based on everything I've read about EFL, including responses from its devs, #1 is by far the most productive choice you can make in these circumstances.
The rant is not really an option as such. It's just a way for someone to vent their frustration, which people occasionally need when dealing with problems like that in order to make themselves feel sane again. You can rant first, but you still have a choice of #1 or #2.
I also have to note that, for the author of the rant, neither was an option, because they weren't working on a project where they had a choice of framework - they were working on Tizen, and had to use EFL, that choice being made for them. I also doubt that their manager would allow them to use some of their work hours to go fix bugs in EFL, even assuming its maintainers would agree that these things are bugs (which they clearly didn't) - they had their own backlog and schedule. So they did the rant because they felt like they needed it, and they didn't really have the option of either #1 or #2 to fix anything.
Having watched more than one of my code babies be slaughtered by my colleagues in my career, I can certainly empathize as well. But I still think he came off poorly in that exchange.
And even a customer is not some holy being that gets to behave in any way they like and it has to be accepted "regardless of the provocation". What he wrote has FUD and professionally damaging to mr. Haitzler (as a programmer), while also wrong in most aspects.
Nobody should just bend over for someone (even a "customer") "regardless of the provocation". Besides FUD and insults, should the "regardless" also allow for sexual or racist comments from a customer?
And speaking of duties, does the company (Samsung) see well to an employee of them bad-mouthing their OS and choices on some random forum?