Comment by palata

> Plenty of open source projects consider themselves

I don't think that the article is incompatible with that. If you benefit from an open source project, that's good. If you benefit from more (a community, documentation, support, ...), that's even better! But you are not entitled to any of that.

> And this "us experts vs. entitled users" mentality is cultural poison.

I can't say what the author's mentality is, but after a lot of open source, my opinion is this: users of open source code tend to not understand that they are not entitled to anything at all. I don't say it in a bad way: they just aren't.

If you read the discussions here, it's obvious: many users of open source genuinely believe that it is not enough to share work for free: if one feels like sharing their work for free, they somehow "should have the decency to share even more work for free" (like documentation, support, reviews). But that is wrong! Again:

- If someone shares code for free, it's nice.

- If someone shares code for free, and documents it for free, and reviews PRs for free, and offers support for free, it's even nicer.

That's all there is. Maybe that someone is an asshole. You don't have to like them, you don't have to use their code, you don't have to engage with them. It's not a good thing to be an asshole. But still, you are not entitled to anything. Just take whatever you want from what is offered to you, and don't complain about not receiving even more.