It is fine not to like a piece of free software

> And developers should publish or not publish their code, but empathize that other people will potentially use it and might ask for things or point out perceived issues.

I think this is wrong and the problem. Developers really don't owe users anything other than honesty, which can be fulfilled by a generic disclaimer of all responsibility. It isn't "they don't owe you anything, but..."

Three notes:

1) What many FOSS developers need is therapy, because they have boundary issues that allow the criticism of freeloaders to register as a problem. You're already doing enough for freeloaders by contributing an enormous amount of effort to the ecosystem, and if they have a problem with you, they should just fork off. Most of these people are whining for you to fix something that helps them with their six-figure jobs, they're the last people who need charity.

2) A lot of Open Source isn't actually a gift, it's specwork and an act of ingratiating yourself to an industry that mostly hires friends and acquaintances. Which is why it's almost all software useful for big business, rather than at users. If this is what you're doing, be honest with yourself. If this is what you're doing, the demands of strangers are important, because you're cozying up to them with the hope of making money out of it. You're afraid they'll fork, because you're afraid you'll lose your chance. If you can't handle people, maybe find somebody to intermediate between you and the public who has better social skills than you. You're actually doing business, so you might even have to pay this person while not making a dime yourself. Maybe you'll end up a multimillionaire in the end, though, or at least get your foot in the door. That's how investment works, and your time was also money.

3) I'm reminded of stories about the past, some I think that David Graeber used to tell, where feeding someone meant that you were obligated to feed them again, that you'd taken responsibility for them. The debate about what people have the right to demand from FOSS maintainers is the best proof I see of this in life. But accept modernity in this case; you can't regulate beggars, but you can ignore them (or even ridicule them if you like.) I remember him also telling that story about the guy on the road who would rob everyone who came through by simply asking for a share of what they had, and convention meant that none of them could refuse him. Eventually, they all got together and murdered him so he wouldn't ask anymore. That, these days, would be an overreaction. Better to ignore silly conventions, especially ones drawn from communities that were smaller and tighter-knit than the random selection of jerks on the internet.

Lecturing everyone to behave better is a waste of time. They don't care what you think. They're healthier than the victims, which is why the victims are victims.

If you used those mailing lists often enough you had a kill file so you could filter out those who were intentionally disruptive.

I think the negative contribution from Github is the "gamification" of development. Stars, in particular, are emblematic of this problem, as it grants a measure of "apparent quality" yet it's not safeguarded in any way at all so now it just measures "apparent popularity."

The mechanisms you have to employ to be popular are almost diametrically opposed to those you have to do to write quality code.

I think it’s a mistake to broadly think of open source maintainers as vendors of free software, whose “job” is to make their users happy. Maintainers can do what they want. Complaining about missing features is like coming into someone’s house and criticising their furniture.

The most important button on GitHub isn’t “create issue”. It’s “fork”. Use it to fix your own problems.

When “users” and “potential developers” don’t have overlap, the developers often feel pressure to act as unpaid customer support reps. We should normalise telling beggars to move on.

You know you're winning when your commercial competitor drops the ceiling on you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk

Audodesk also has CAD software, Blender is certainly not an alternative to Fusion. It is hard to see in the share value which one is related to 3DS compared to other Autodesk products. In the same way that the share value of Microsoft is certainly not an indicator for the success of Linux. Linux certainly caused some traditional UNIX companies to go down, but it is more likely due to the raise of the cheaper PC architecture in the server space. Also, Oracle did fine despite Postgres, they even ended up buying MySql. Apple with its proprietary OS did extremely well against open source Linux and Android.

It may be a good indication for smaller companies reliant on a single product, but these may not be publicly traded. Big companies usually don't rely on a single product, and have ways around open source competition. They can diversify, buy their competition, sue them, for example using patents, use tactics like "embrace-extend-exctinguish", have good marketing targeted at big customers, or simply invest a lot into making their paid product the best.