As a user, I feel pain when I use something free that seems like it should work, and I invest a lot of my time in making it work, and then I run into a bug, and

As a user, I feel pain when I use something free that seems like it should work, and I invest a lot of my time in making it work, and then I run into a bug, and report it, and the bug isn't fixed because there's no investment in it. I know it's my own fault for trying to use something without paying for support. But I get upset anyway, probably because I wasted my own time, and believed the unconscious lie that I told myself that using this thing [without support] was a good idea. (And even paying for support isn't a guarantee a bug will be fixed!) I develop open source projects too, so I'm intimately familiar with both sides. It's a bizarre feeling when I realize I am acting (as a user) the same way other users act towards me (as a maintainer). I think being a maintainer is a healthy reminder that I should lower my expectations as a user of free stuff. The reason I create open source stuff is there was a problem I wanted to solve, and I want to share my solution with others so they don't struggle with the same problems. I try hard to make it easy for people to use my solution, and I hate the feeling that someone might be inconvenienced by using it. I really do want to fix all reported bugs. But at the end of the day I have a life (and a job) that gets in the way. I feel bad about any bugs, but I don't feel bad about taking a long time to fix them, because my quality of life is more important.