> Even when treated rudely, Bram usually responded only to advance his understanding of a problem to solve.
This admirable. Over time I've become a maintainer of one or two somewhat important open source codebases. One of the codebase owners that invited me to maintain their codebase, a very kind Swedish fellow, didn't know what kind of maintainer I might turn out to be, so when he invited me over beers he explained that a maintainer should be gentle with contributors the way a parent should be gentle with a young child when the child shows them a drawing they made. That image stuck with me. I don't know if I would have been a rude maintainer w/o that talk, but I often think of it, and I try to live up to that every time.
This admirable. Over time I've become a maintainer of one or two somewhat important open source codebases. One of the codebase owners that invited me to maintain their codebase, a very kind Swedish fellow, didn't know what kind of maintainer I might turn out to be, so when he invited me over beers he explained that a maintainer should be gentle with contributors the way a parent should be gentle with a young child when the child shows them a drawing they made. That image stuck with me. I don't know if I would have been a rude maintainer w/o that talk, but I often think of it, and I try to live up to that every time.