[blihp]

I don't see a problem: any given author / contributor has their own reasons for providing something... and you and I are most likely not one of them. We can choose to tag along for the ride or not. If it is of value and we have issues or need missing features, we can contribute to the project to make it better. For many people, that is often one of the reasons they even bothered to open source it to begin with: to get help.

If one lacks the skills to or time & interest in helping, the two most productive courses of action are either to move along or throw money at the problem. Now maybe your issue is the developer/maintainer themselves. i.e. the project has value but you don't want to deal with the author(s)/maintainer(s). That's fine: fork the project. If enough people feel like you do, the original project will likely die due to these open source 'market' forces. That's a risk any author takes making the project open source to begin with.

I have absolutely no problem with a developer saying 'this is my project' or 'I'm not interested in your problem' as a default answer. It is their project/time and my problem after all. Assuming I don't have the time/skills and really want their help, I can offer to throw money at them and many will develop an interest in solving my problem. If that doesn't work, I can offer to throw money at someone who will.

Note that none of these issues are unique to open source: try to get Apple/Microsoft/Google to fix a longstanding bug or add a feature that you really want or need. Odds are, you don't have the order of magnitude of money to get them to care. And you usually don't have the source either, so you're out of luck.