Possibly. I don’t know if it’s always the folks who don’t write software, but any open source repo of a decent size will attract some people who will act entitled and demand you do things at their direction.
Often this does come from people that don't write software. Though some of the more grading experiences in this area I have had did come from people with at least some experience in writing software. Where they used that experience as a sort of argument as to why their demand should be met as swiftly as possible.
Do you know what happens if those "demands" are met with a response of: "I don't like your tone, please rephrase this as a polite request and I'll consider it"
There are ways of setting boundaries around behaviour in real life. Can maintainers use those methods for this?
> "I don't like your tone, please rephrase this as a polite request and I'll consider it"
Phrased like that, I feel like things would only escalate.
But in specific situations like the ones I mentioned, I would go for something like "As you know from your own experiences, software development takes time and effort and this is a volunteer project. I do take suggestions and issues seriously and am happy to discuss them in a constructive way. This discussion at the moment does not feel like such a constructive discussion. I'd be happy to continue the discussion from a more constructive place" and leave it at that. It is a bit more explicit than just "tone" and also makes it more clear as to why they might want to take their behavior more into consideration.
Overall, yeah I think maintainers and the setup of the project do influence a lot of how people interact with them. I actually left a comment about that somewhere else in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41188425