I've read this sentiment often on this forum, and I suppose it shouldn't surprise me given that most people here share the entrepreneurial mindset. But it still rubs me the wrong way, and I'll write about it again.

What I don't like about this idea that the role of open source authors ends with throwing some code over the fence, relinquishing any responsibility for it beyond what their chosen license dictates, is that it completely ignores the community aspect that forms around software, and in large part, contributes to the success of OSS.

Software is written for people. Open source software explicitly invites collaboration, and sharing of knowledge. When someone sees people asking for help, and making feature and improvement suggestions, as "demands" from "entitled" users, they're completely missing this point of community. When they additionally require or suggest that no work will be done unless these entitled users pay up, it's no different from source available, proprietary or commercial software at that point. Of course your work should be compensated, and you shouldn't be expected to work for free. You are free to choose any number of viable business models to ensure that happens. But demanding this from your users is essentially putting the software behind a paywall. It also signals to users that the direction of the project is dictated not by a community of passionate users, but by whoever pays the most, which is a twisted incentive for any software.

My point is: there is more to OSS than the code and the license. Despite what some may claim, there is an unwritten social contract which is created when software is published in the open, whether the author decides to ignore this or not. Some authors do acknowledge this explicitly[1], which is a large factor in making their projects more successful than those from authors who decide to alienate their user base.

[1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/1997/msg00017.html

> Open source software explicitly invites collaboration, and sharing of knowledge.

The licenses permit that, but they explicitly do not "invite" it; they are totally neutral on that point. Upstream FOSS authors can reject all third-party contributions, and their software is still unarguably FOSS.

> When someone sees people asking for help, and making feature and improvement suggestions, as "demands" from "entitled" users

You're mischaracterizing the situation. It's usually about a specific small vocal subset of users, who are literally demanding things in a rude and arrogant manner.

> Despite what some may claim, there is an unwritten social contract which is created when software is published in the open, whether the author decides to ignore this or not.

"Unwritten social contracts" effectively only exist in cases where an overwhelming majority of people believe in the same set of social norms. That absolutely is not the case in the software industry. There's no broad agreement about what that social contract entails, or if it even exists, and therefore it de facto does not exist for the industry as a whole.

Individual projects can choose their own social norms, but that doesn't inherently extend those norms to the entire industry.