Guardedly agree, though there's also entitlement risk here. If an author scratches their own itch, and it does what they wanted, and they decide to open source

Guardedly agree, though there's also entitlement risk here. If an author scratches their own itch, and it does what they wanted, and they decide to open source it, then good on them. Choosing to do so doesn't create any requirement to make it useful to anyone else. This is the root of a chunk of angst today: consumer X finds open source project Y, discovers it doesn't do Z, and throws a twitter/issue hissy fit. There's *zero* requirement on the author to fix the perceived deficiency, nor should there be any expectation. If X wants it addressed, then - as noted elsewhere in this topic - a founding principle of open source is that X is free to fork and fix. Now, of course, some authors create open source and actively solicit use by others. In that case, they do need to consider feedback from their users. But again, there's no divine right conferred on users that the author will address their every whim. Fork and fix should be the first option - with no expectation it'll be upstreamed.