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Complaining about the lack of a feature in a FOSS project that you haven't contributed to is kind of a dick move, though, and it's extremely discouraging to dev
by tomtheelder 10y ago
Complaining about the lack of a feature in a FOSS project that you haven't contributed to is kind of a dick move, though, and it's extremely discouraging to developers. If they violate community standards or put users at risk (breaking semver, insecure elements, malware, etc.) then you have the right to complain, but otherwise you really ought to remain civil and positive.
Politely requesting features is fine, but complaining about a lack of features in software that you don't contribute to with effort or money is extremely rude and pretty much a slap to the face for the developers who work on the project.
- JetSetWilly 10y agoAtom is developed by paid professionals at github, it isn't really a community led project like emacs. Not that that matters, because nothing is immune from criticism, free or otherwise. It is a useful service to provide criticism, in fact, it can be useful to the developers and also useful to potential users - although it doesn't have to be.
- Klathmon 10y agoyes but "look at how long it took them to add X feature!" isn't useful critisim, it's a put-down. The product isn't going to improve because the developers felt worse about finally getting a requested feature in.
- FooBarWidget 10y agoThere is a difference between providing useful, constructive criticism and rude complaining.
- JetSetWilly 10y agoPointing out that the technology platform chosen makes features simple elsewhere into multi-year odysseys seems fine to me. I think maybe atom users are too close to it, so have heard such things before and react very negatively to it. For me it was interesting to learn it took significant work to provide this support.
- erikbye 10y agoA lot of FOSS work is done by "paid professionals", that does not change the fact that you get the software for free.