I spent a good many years managing and developing a popular open source project.
While most of our users were/are good individuals, there were certainly some nasty ones in the bunch. I remember being cursed at many a time simply for politely refusing to implement whatever random feature a user requested.
If a bug were to come up in the software, there were times where threats and/or demands were made that I fix the bug or modify something to the user's liking. (Never physical threats as far as I can recall, but still unwarranted aggression.) They absolutely refused to believe that I didn't directly "owe" them anything. It was a bizarre entitlement feeling some of the users had. It's not like I worked on the project for a living. I had a day job as well.
I finally started transitioning away from the project and handing it off to someone else when I started getting phone calls at my home. A user managed to track down my cell phone number and started calling me in the middle of the night (3am - 4am.) He wanted to talk to me about his "ideas" that I should implement in the code.
That's not to say all of our users were jerks. In fact, it was a very small minority. Out of the hundreds of thousands of users we had, only a handful were dicks. Unfortunately, some took it to creepy levels.
On the other hand, many warm e-mails were received and even on occasion cases of beer for our coding efforts. I still hold a lot of fond memories of that time. Hell, even the legal issues were a learning experience, though the majority of that occurred around the time I was bowing out.
I really don't even know what point I'm trying to make here. I just wanted to share a few brief stories.
Off topic: I had a intermittent crashing bug in libpurple in the XMPP file transfer code. I filed a bug and was more than willing to help patch it myself, but gosh, the development environment to debug Pidgin on Windows or Mac is really something! I just couldn't get it set up to debug properly and the bug is still open 2 or 3 years later :(
I remember when we first started doing windows builds. I had a guy called Herman (I think? I knew him by that name anyway) handle the builds. I didn't always have easy access to a windows machine and it was a pain getting mingw/cygwin going with all the appropriate libraries installed in the correct places.
Though I am no longer really associated with the project, I am curious what the bug is/was. If you like, fire off an email to me off-site and send a link to the report or fill me in. You can find my e-mail in my profile.
I mentioned it initially but went back and removed it. I couldn't decide if the stating the project specifically was relevant or not. I often over analyze what I'm posting here for some reason.
It was Pidgin, but back when it was called gaim. The pidgin transition occurred while I was leaving. I stuck around long enough to participate in deciding on the new name / logo / branding and then handed everything over to Sean officially.
I think adding details like that makes your point more strongly -- too many folk on the internet shoot their mouth off with vague claims, which when poked at completely fall apart. But in this case it only took clicking on your user profile to see that yes, the project you were referring to really was a pretty popular one. :)
People are really strange when it comes to free stuff.
A friend of mine decided one day to buy a bunch of donuts and hand them out to some folks waiting in a long line out in the cold.
Most people were very thankful or even surprised that someone would do such a thing. A small subset of people complained that he only bought one kind of donut, or complained that he didn't also purchase coffee for them.
Great comment. Sums up the full range of humanity concisely - Generous people going out of their way to be awesome, normal people appreciative of someone being awesome, and whiners who manage to find something to complain about anyway.
Actually, if I remember correctly, some studies have shown that people complain more about free stuff than they do about stuff they paid for. The theory is that act of paying for something makes you invested in it, so you're more likely to identify/sympathize with it.
While most of our users were/are good individuals, there were certainly some nasty ones in the bunch. I remember being cursed at many a time simply for politely refusing to implement whatever random feature a user requested.
If a bug were to come up in the software, there were times where threats and/or demands were made that I fix the bug or modify something to the user's liking. (Never physical threats as far as I can recall, but still unwarranted aggression.) They absolutely refused to believe that I didn't directly "owe" them anything. It was a bizarre entitlement feeling some of the users had. It's not like I worked on the project for a living. I had a day job as well.
I finally started transitioning away from the project and handing it off to someone else when I started getting phone calls at my home. A user managed to track down my cell phone number and started calling me in the middle of the night (3am - 4am.) He wanted to talk to me about his "ideas" that I should implement in the code.
That's not to say all of our users were jerks. In fact, it was a very small minority. Out of the hundreds of thousands of users we had, only a handful were dicks. Unfortunately, some took it to creepy levels.
On the other hand, many warm e-mails were received and even on occasion cases of beer for our coding efforts. I still hold a lot of fond memories of that time. Hell, even the legal issues were a learning experience, though the majority of that occurred around the time I was bowing out.
I really don't even know what point I'm trying to make here. I just wanted to share a few brief stories.
`Tis a strange world.