[growse]

In my experience, "RTFM" is often a manifestation of the frustration that the person asking for help hasn't even begun to do the most basic thing to try and help themselves.

It's extremely wearing having to deal with people with a problem who have apparently put precisely zero effort into figuring the problem out on their own.

"RTFM" isn't always a useful response, but I have sympathy with people who express it and its friends ("Have you read the manual?", "What have you tried to do to solve this problem before asking for help?").

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Well that's what you sign up for when you ask people to use your software.

[roenxi]

That foolish sway dev, angering his paying users?

RTFM is not going to make for happy users, but volunteers for free projects have the luxury of being able to ignore disgruntled users. If they don't want to maximise their user count then they have the luxury of being able to do whatever they like up to and including not having a bug tracker and literally hurling abuse at people who ask them questions.

We aren't entitled to professional and comprehensive support just because the project happens to look well run.

[kelnos]

"Ask"? Of all the open source work I've done, I never ask anyone to use it. I put it out there with the hope that others will find it useful. I never go around pushing people to use it.

No one is entitled to anything, including free support. Many open source developers provide free support, but don't have the patience to deal with users who won't even do the bare minimum to help themselves.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> I put it out there with the hope that others will find it useful. I never go around pushing people to use it.

Which is fair. A lot of FOSS devs, however, do. And then they still try to pull "it's free" as an excuse for a poor product.