What I take issue with is the demands of users, they're not the people doing the work. If I'm doing the work and not getting paid for it, I decide what I work

What I take issue with is the demands of users, they're not the people doing the work. If I'm doing the work and not getting paid for it, I decide what I work on. The users demands are an input, which has a value which is more than 0 but less than my freedom's value which is worth more than 0 to me. We can all expect and want better, the question is the same people with the expectations are not the people doing the work and especially not the people paying. In other words, you can demand whatever you want but if you're not prepared to put any effort into it, why should I? It costs nothing to have an opinion or expectation or demand but it doesn't cost nothing to do the work required of that demand. There's no such thing as a free lunch and work isn't free. Why should I drop everything for YOUR wants and demands? Who gave you that authority? You say that as if the users are doing the worker or maintainer a favour. Objectively, adding users to a project adds more work to a project. The favour is going to the users, not in the reverse direction. I don't like it when people think they're doing me a favour when the reverse is true. Users overvalue their value and underestimate their costs to the maintainer and don't want to pay for their costs. People are difficult. > if the maintainer wants other people to invest time and effort using the software) they'll have to work for it. I take issue with this, you're essentially saying that the maintainer pays again in effort to get users, to benefit users. What exactly is the maintainer getting in return for having users besides users? More work.