[foxglacier]

It must be having their mindset set wrong for the situation. Are they a business out to make money? Then suck it up and accept they have to smooch their leads to convert them into paying customers. Or are they trying to build a community of altruistic developers and helpful users? Then just ignore any support requests that are too much. It's pretty common for open source devs to just leave issues sitting around without even acknowledging them or to close them without any comment.

I might be biased though because I enjoy helping users. I also sell commercial support for my software and sometimes both paying and unpaid users have big niche requests that go too far for my liking so I stop helping them on that. Sometimes I do feel bad that I spent so much energy on them but it's not bitterness and I blame myself for not saying "no" sooner, not the customer for simply asking. People are allowed to ask for things.