[igi3ql]

You need a thick skin to maintain free software, and that's not something that you can grow... either you have it or not. It's not for everybody.

The biggest mistake some software maintainers make is showing empathy for abusive and unreasonable users. Most of them simply deserve to have the door slammed in their faces. If you can't do that, then you'll lose your time and stress yourself.

[wool_gather]

Having empathy for people who are trying to engage with you constructively while denying it to those who are wasting your time is both very important and incredibly hard, in any circumstance.

> deserve to have the door slammed in their faces

Totally, but you need to (try to) be careful not to slam it in the potentially-helpful peoples' faces. There's one very popular open project that I've moved away from due to getting tired of seeing seemingly every single question/suggestion being met with "you don't like it, start writing some code".

Not to say that my decision not to use that project is significant in any way. I'm just one anonymous person. Just a point that it may be possible to be too aggressively self-defensive.

I totally get that I'm not entitled to anything, and you (maintainer) are entitled to do what you choose with your time. It's just that constantly, repeatedly pointing those facts out isn't going to win you much cooperation.