Eh, this kind of project is begging to be forked, and the original branch deservedly forgotten about. If the intent was to make money out of fixes to the project, it’s absolutely going to backfire instead.
I’m not so sure. I think he has a point that if someone forks, he can still merge those changes back in and still work on things for his paying customers too. I think the number of people who are willing to write patches is a lot smaller than the number who are going to complain. He seems to welcome forks anyway (I’m sure his attitude would be, “let them provide the free support!”). This post is two years old, it might be interesting to see how his project is doing and how many forks there are.
There are a lot of users of open source projects who do act as if they are owed a resolution to every issue they encounter. While I don’t agree with the nuclear option I can’t really blame him.
To be fair, it looks like he’d be much happier writing proprietary software in the first place. His goal is evidently to get a source of sustenance first, and to help the community with code second if at all. And in proprietary software it’s already customary to expect no support whatsoever (sometimes not even patches to existing, already paid software) unless you pay for the privilege.
Generally open source has very good support, with fantastic documentation, and nearly every possible issue described either in the documentation or bug trackers. If you find something new, reporting it to the bug tracker will quickly get you help from someone very knowledgeable on the software. But you have to remember these people are unpaid volunteers, and if you waste their time, they will not help you. Read the documentation and search the bug tracker before bothering someone. The devs have no obligation to put up with your bullshit.
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