Comment by sundarurfriend
10 months ago
That is why I absolute love the quote from FFmpeg maintainers towards a drive-by complainer:
Talk is cheap, send patches.
https://x.com/FFmpeg/status/1762805900035686805
I see a lot of FOSS maintainers continue to engage and defend themselves against people who have demonstrated themselves as unwilling to contribute in any way, yet expecting that free work be done for them. I wish more open source devs will keep in mind that FOSS work is a gift they're sending out into the world, and it's a common good that anyone can contribute to. That is not to say ignore all criticism or user requests, just that you hold absolutely no responsibility to placate emotionally draining people - the project is just as much their responsibility as yours.
Yeah, 100%. Large successful FOSS eventually needs someone like Linus who can just brush away arguments that can bog down the project. It's almost like a military operation -- armies need to move forward instead of bogging down. And in the case of Linux that's perhaps even more true, because the world literally runs on it.
I don't agree with Linus all the time (mostly because I don't have the technical knowledge to agree with), but I 100% agree to his attitude. I hope other large FOSS project maintainers have the same mindset.