[dreamer_]

From a fellow maintainer of open source software (currently not being paid for the work at all) - I agree 100%.

Users are always demanding things: new features (which sometimes are very bad ideas), merging patches (which sometimes were never tested), expecting answers for questions that were asked and answered thousands of times before…

> It's just that if you don't like something, you need to step up and do something about it to improve the situation, instead of just complaining.

Exactly. Users who want to say on X (for whatever reason) should start contributing instead of spending time blaming the devs. If they want to switch to Wayland, but are missing something - they should work towards fixing it instead of dragging everyone else back.

[Veen]

But then the only users who get the features they want are programmers, who are a fairly atypical type of user. I understand that you don't owe users anything, but if you don't want to create software that's useful and pleasing to them, why bother creating open source software at all. You could get the same enjoyment from coding for profit or doing logic puzzles.

[sergeykish]

Hire, we have money for that specific reason.

> why bother creating open source software at all.

I create features for myself, I share it for free, that's gift, not pleasing.

[dplavery92]

> expecting answers for questions that were asked and answered thousands of times before

I don't mean to seem ungrateful for the work that open source maintainers do every day, but I think this sort of complaint is usually a symptom of a problem with either the documentation or the interface being unclear. These pain points are usually an opportunity for improvement in the product. On the other hand, there are probably more such opportunities than there are available maintainers...