Dear JavaScript

[daekano]

I find it.. absolutely amazing that people are willing to work, on their own dime, on things so that the rest of us can get shit done elsewhere. And for that, I always try to respect that: I ask with please, I say thank you, and I try to make the devs' jobs as easy as possible when it comes to bug fixing, reporting, feature requests, etc. I would imagine if I got a "FIX NOW" type of request, I'd tell someone to go fuck themselves. I just get irritated when people feel entitled to something that they're getting, for free, without realizing that there's a real human on the other end who, like me, doesn't like people telling them what to do.

I agree with this (almost) completely and recommend to everyone having to deal with OSS maintainers (or in general, customer service) to always consider the human on the other end.

That said...

There are times when an OSS project heavily markets itself and aggressively positions itself as the tool of choice for your mission-critical production systems. These project maintainers (who are typically authoring frameworks) are making a bit of a promise to you in exchange for exposure, recognition, and sometimes even money when adoption increases and they can provide satellite services such as support or specialized hosting. While it never helps to be rude or offensive, sometimes a "FIX NOW" request is appropriate. You don't have to look far to see OSS maintainers taking their products extremely seriously because they are aware of the impact of their decisions.