Hug an OSS Developer or just don't be a dick

The product is open source--your "financial/employment" status is never out of your control. The worst case is that you have to fix a bug yourself or pay somebody else to do it. In fact, if you end up hiring somebody else to do it, you have a lot more control over how and when it gets done. Also, there is a good chance somebody else wants the same issue resolved, and would contribute the solution back to the project, so you might not have to do anything at all.

On the other hand, with a proprietary product, you have no control over the software; if there is a bug you're left hoping the company providing the program is willing to work on it. Also, if the company goes bankrupt or makes decisions you don't agree with you're just out of luck.

Some communities do better than others at making it a nice environment for all involved.

For example, post a question on some mailing lists and you'll get flamed or told RTFM noob stfu. On other projects everyone is nice, happy and it's all warm hugs.

If the developers or other community members are getting abused, that is not on. There's really no excuse. However, having developers call their users 'dicks' is also something that should not happen.

There's things that communities can do to make them develop nicer for everyone involved. Community development is a massive topic, but basically people need to work on making the communities nicer. The basics like: managing peoples expectations, being transparent, respecting the time people put into things can go a long way towards making a better environment.

I think bug trackers like Bugzilla don't do an awesome job from the perspective of the bug reporter. Once they report a bug, they have an expectation that someone is going to fix their problem. I think that's the wrong way to get people to think about open source projects, and it sets the wrong expectations - which leads to people getting angry, and frustrated. This post, and others from developers and users show to me that Mozilla has a problem which is being caused in part by their bug tracker, or how the bug tracker is used.

Big communities can often turn out bad too. Which is why growing a community may not be the best thing to do. A famous comedian is asked about where he does his experimental comedy - and he answers that he is not telling, because he wants his little club night to stay small. The comedians who run it do it as an artistic thing, and they don't want too many people coming along and spoiling it. So this famous comedian did not want a plug on the radio show by this journalist, because it would grow his community too big.

Some of the nicer open source communities keep commercial things away from the project because that would spoil the fun. The project could probably be better with more commercial involvement, but some projects choose not to have that happen. Mixing commercial and non commercial development is another hard thing that mozilla does. I mean, why are the bug reporters and testers not getting paid, but some developers are? I know the reasons, and am not saying it should be different - just that can cause tensions.

Open source communities are a very important thing to talk about, and to make better. Especially if people are going to be interacting in them so much. We all have a lot to learn and improve on, since we have problems now.

Oh, and as regards "special treatment"... what sort? The Mozilla Foundation has very little revenue of its own. All revenue coming via the Mozilla Corporation is handled like any other revenue from any other corporation for tax purposes and the like

Either you're a bit confused about what it means to be a "non profit", or I'd really like to see a clear explanation of what sorts of special treatment you think Mozilla is getting here.

(Disclosure: I too work for the Mozilla Corporation, though I've been contributing to the project for a lot longer than I've been employed.)

Here it explains what privileges non profits get: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization

Mozilla Foundation owns Mozilla Corporation, and Mozilla Foundation is a non profit. Non profits get special privileges that companies do not get - and that is all I am talking about, I'm not concerned about it.

Mozilla Foundation and Subsidiary declared $61,501,145 Royalties from search in the 2006 Auditors report.

I mention this, to rebut the point that users are not contributing anything to mozilla - therefore they can't expect anything. Disregarding other ways users contribute to mozilla (donations, testing, etc), this is one way everyone is contributing to mozilla foundation (or at least the people who live in countries where mozilla has foundations).

Even if users were not paying anything, I still think they have rights in open source communities and should not just be ignored or mistreated just because they don't happen to pay money to license the software.

I remember seeing this as well. Wish I could find the link.