[rolleiflex]

> I've grown tired of continuously defending my inactivity and decisions against trolls on Twitter, the issue tracker, and elsewhere. It's draining and I don't have the patience or energy to deal with it any longer. These same people expect to impose their short-sighted and non-generalized values and goals on a project for which they have contributed nothing and are not willing to maintain. The sense of entitlement from a small but vocal minority that do not understand FOSS and refuse to understand it is very much a concern, and I'm simply not interested in shrugging that off anymore.

In the last three days, I've been accused of my code not being open source and that I should remove all mentions of open source from everything I owned, because I simply haven't pushed to Github in a month or two.

This was joined by another user who claimed that open source license legally forces me to make the 'secret' code I've been holding off public, which, again, does not exist, because the code on the repo was effectively current.

I've been working full time for the last 8 months, on my own savings, to provide a peer-to-peer mass communication tool, and I'm releasing it for free.

To say that this made me feel horrible for the past few days would be an understatement.

[latchkey]

Sorry you feel bad. That really sucks to get messages like that. Personally, I'd just ignore the noise and focus on the good. Remember, it is far easier to be a keyboard warrior than it is to create something awesome.

People in the service industry see this all the time. A 1 star review on a restaurant really hurts. Everyone should know how much effort it is to run a restaurant and how much can easily go wrong... a bad review is really disheartening.

[rolleiflex]

Thank you. I understand these folks are few amongst many, but boy, when you don't hear from the many, only from the few, it makes you think whether this was a mistake.

Regardless, I've removed all mentions of open source from my product (but kept the license unchanged), just so I won't have to deal with this again.

[Crosseye_Jack]

Don't feel horrible.

Just because you wrote some open source at some time doesn't mean you have to open source everything you ever write.

No one can demand what you do with your free time, if they could it wouldn't be "free time".

[Arnt]

Certainly people can demand that. It's easy and simple to make that kind of demand. That's why this is a problem — nowadays we have convenient peer-to-peer communication, and there's a set of people who receive a significant amount of verbal manure, but don't have the professional filter staff of most public personae, so they have to deal with the manure themselves.

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.de/2014/02/why-indie-developers-g... BTW. And https://i.imgur.com/bAHVu48.jpg too.

[Crosseye_Jack]

Ok, I didn’t mean it’s impossible for someone to ask you to do something during your free in a demanding tone. For example Arnt, get over here and make me a coffee...

But we have this word called No. Maybe it’s down to my personality but I have no problem telling people NO or when I’m in a mood to fuck off or when I’m feeling more professional to just reply with “Where shall I send the estimate?” Basically “Fuck you, Pay me...”.

But the ability to ignore the idiots comes probably down to volunteering me free time as a teenager coding and managing player ran games, the players took the game incredibly seriously, to the point I got harassed because I took action on a player for breaking the rules (issued a temporary suspension from the game), on irc, on the forums getting called a bad staff who should be ejected by the other staff got to me a little, until I told the other staff it was they just felt “I was handling it”. Once they knew they reassured me that they had no intention of doing so (kicking me off the team) and if they continued to feel free to delete their account off the game. I learned that they are not worth the stress and so not to give them the time of day, don’t rise to them because at the end of the day, they are not worth it.

So tbese days I just get on with something else or tell them “sure... but you gotta pay.”.

What I mean is, once someone if demanding of your time then you have to get something of worth in exchange.

In a relationship it’s the joy of having someone in your life to share things with and who can help you improve who you are. At work in exchange for being a code monkey you receive monetary compensation.

In open source its kinda a mix of both, it’s joy of helping others, either today for later down the road.

If someone is taking that joy away, they are taking away your incentive to work on that project so in exchange you have the right to change what you are getting out of the deal. Take your estimated time to do what they are asking, multiply by a figure per hour your happy with, multiply that by 3 (as these things always run over and there will always be support requests down the road) add on what the tax man will take off you and quote them that.

If they are happy to pay, awesome, take a deposit, and tell them you will start on their changes next week. If not tell them they will have to wait like everyone else.

If they continue to be an arsehole then handle it just like you would any other child throwing a tantrum, stay calm and ignore the behaviour.

Edit: I’m not saying it’s not stressful or my way of handling it is the best way for everyone just it’s the method I use to deal with such “children”. I understand the mental strain it can cause. I’m just saying that the person doesn’t have the right to demand your time or attention (including the time your thinking about them offline).

[dvasdekis]

Your product is wonderful, and arguably if you'd just had the conversation on Aether instead of Github, the moderation tools you've spent so long building would have prevented you seeing that crap. Respect.

Building is hard. Listening to your customers is hard. But criticism is easy, and it hurts even when it shouldn't - take it from another builder. Deep down you have a massive moral high ground - it's a shame the human psyche can't internalise that against these stone-throwers.

[cmroanirgo]

This. Years ago I had the same problem with people making unreasonable demands within the first week of open sourcing, despite clearly marking it Alpha and versioning it as 0.0.n. I closed the whole project in disgust.

My advice would be to not take the road I took, but to realise that there will always be impatient people desperate for the free solution that you're providing -- it'll be better for your soul to be forgiving (I say this in hindsight). Don't let yourself get caught up in their dramas, but calmly instruct them to what FOSS is about.

[fouc]

Don't feel bad about ignoring stupid emails. Your skin will become thicker.

[rolleiflex]

Not emails, these were public.

[tomjen3]

Could you block the people who posts crap like that?

[rolleiflex]

When you read it, it’s too late. You generally don’t respond, but I didn’t even know I shouldn’t have. I’m very much a beginner at being in the spotlight.