[dragontamer]

You've never had a customer in your professional setting who didn't pay money for goods and/or services? Yet it was very important for your boss (and therefore you, as a programmer) to service their every whim?

Customers are customers. Whether they're paying or not. Not all customers are worth servicing (even with infinite money offered, "firing a customer" is important to keep the community in check).

But this isn't a situation where the RSYNC maintainer should fire the customer. There's a LOT of backlash to this release. Even if this one particular customer is a bit of an ass, there's plenty of good users in that 90+ comment chain (hundreds now?) where this regression has clearly struck a nerve.

[akerl_]

This is not a professional setting. This is an open source project that somebody published to the internet. Using it does not make you a customer, and it doesn’t matter if it “struck a nerve” with users.

[dragontamer]

Well in my professional setting, I deal with non-paying customers all the time. They're still customers and I'm still expected to listen to them.

It was better when a dedicated PM was shielding me from this crap but here we are. Deciding who and who not to listen to is just part of project management.

[akerl_]

Sure. But an open source project is not a professional setting.

[weakfish]

Right. Sure. But this isn't a professional setting.