This attitude is what's wrong with the open source software. It is important to him, but not that important to spend time getting to know code base in a language he might not be familiar with in order to implement it himself. Or he just might not be a programmer.
If you want actual users for your project, not developers, than either implement what they ask for or say you don't want to. If enough people complain, it is a good sign that you are missing important features that prevent adoption. Build it yourself is not an answer to those users, and is just plain annoying.
If you want to be able to answer with "send me a pull request" then just stop creating end users software, and build some library instead that is used by developers.
This seems to be what's wrong with the consumer culture when it comes to open source software. It is a sense of entitlement. If you want a feature, request it. The correct reply from the developer should be "thanks for the feedback, it's been noted, in the mean time you could add it yourself and send me a pull request". Done and done. It's not up to the developer to implement everyone's request. That has nothing to do with "end user software" if so far you are the only one requesting it. If there's no community demand for a feature, feel free to do it yourself. Don't blame the developer for not implementing your feature if 1) there's no community demand outside of yourself and 2) you have no plans to make it happen yourself.
What would be interesting is if issue trackers allowed users to pay actual money for features. Many times I find myself saying "I care strongly enough about ____ that I'm willing to pay ____ but it's not worth my time to read the codebase of ____ and fix it myself"
I'm in no way sure who you replied to was the owner, so your entitlement rage may have been aimed incorrectly.
That said, maybe the software isn't targeted at you? One of the beautiful things about open source is that contributors get to contribute on their own terms. Unlike many commercial products where targeting anyone and everyone willing to purchase it is the goal, having a completely free product allows the author to do away with all of that if they desire.
This isn't the market you are used to. You, as an end user may have very little power. I understand that the complete change of being catered to by commercial products and then ignored in an open source product can be frustrating. Just keep in mind, that frustration is built by your own misunderstanding of your place in the open source ecosystem. The sooner you accept your place, or change it, the better.
As a "potential" end user you have a complete right to complain about the missing feature, as much annoying it can be for the developer of the open source thing. The developer has the same right to just answer "send me the patch". In the end of the day, patch won't be sent, and feature will still be missing. Other users might also miss that feature, and not become users. If that's fine to the project authors, it's also fine for me. Just wanted to say, maybe not that clearly, that "send me the patch" is perfectly appropriate answer to developer, and not a good answer to the end user. And you can't just assume that everyone complaining about the feature is the developer.
That's a good attitude to have. I just wanted to point out that open source projects don't have to follow the normal market economics of regular, for sale software, so the developer/user relationship can be very, very different. There seems to be friction when the users don't notice this, and think they are still being courted as possible sales.
>Just keep in mind, that frustration is built by your own misunderstanding of your place in the open source ecosystem
And what place is that? A place from which asking for features is inappropriate?
You know why I hate the "feel free to submit a merge request" kind of response? It's because most of the time it doesn't mean what it says. What it usually really means is: "Either write the feature yourself or shut up!". And knowing that most people do not have the time or the skills to actually add the feature, it boils down to "Shut up!"
And that is not an adequate (first) response, because it is disrespectful and hurts the open source movement.
Entitlement? That's abusing the term. Users are within their right to ask for features, and within their rights to throw their hands up in the air and say "WTF" when a dev turns around and snaps "Well make it yourself"
After all, go read never said "The is MY rss reader"
it's tagline is "this is an rss reader." rss readers normally don't require single sign on.
Users are well within their rights to do just about anything, including insult the developers mother. The issue isn't what their rights are, the issue is with etiquette.
Politely requesting features from developers you are not paying is not a breach of etiquette. Saying "No." in response to those requests is not a breach of etiquette. Making demands of developers that you are not paying is a breach of etiquette.
The GP was extending a specific instance to open source projects as a whole, and making a statement about common problems with them. My comment was in response to that.
Narrowing my argument to a single specific case is unconstructive. I have no interest in speaking for the author of this software. They should be capable of doing that themselves.
If you want actual users for your project, not developers, than either implement what they ask for or say you don't want to. If enough people complain, it is a good sign that you are missing important features that prevent adoption. Build it yourself is not an answer to those users, and is just plain annoying.
If you want to be able to answer with "send me a pull request" then just stop creating end users software, and build some library instead that is used by developers.