> The maintainer should just

Out of interest: which FOSS projects are you maintaining, and how many users do these have, approximately?

I maintain several FOSS projects, although none as popular as wolfssl and if I want to make a new issue to make it more clean, I usually do it myself, because then I can write it the way I want, and include the information, and only the information, that I think is important. If I ask someone else to do it, there's a pretty good chance they won't write it the way I would like, if they write it up at all.

▲

hypeatei a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Out of interest, how is that relevant? Are we not able to criticize a FOSS maintainers response unless we run a project of scale ourselves? The maintainer is clearly engaging and knows what the problem is but stalls on the "last mile" which is issue creation. Do you agree?

wolfSSL also sells commercial licenses so it's not like they're going uncompensated for their work. Regardless, we shouldn't put people on pedestals because their title is "FOSS maintainer"

▲

phoronixrly 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Unless you're paying you are not entitled to anything apart from forking and fixing it yourself.

You are especially not entitled to bullying maintainers as has been unfortunately the standard in infosec.

Open source is not about you.

https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...

IMO more projects have to explicitly state this for example in a terms document, like https://github.com/mhoye/maintenance-terms/blob/main/MAINTEN...

▲

perching_aix 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> Open source is not about you.

You know a social movement went full circle when a criticism that is so scathing, you couldn't have possibly come up with it and make it trend before, even if you gave it your all, is now a motto and a point of pride for those who follow it.

This is happening at the same time where hundreds of millions of regular variety consumers are being fed propaganda daily about how it's "finally time to switch to Linux", because it's so much better for them, the individual. If only they knew it's apparently not actually about them, never has been, and never will be.

▲

phoronixrly 7 hours ago | parent [-]

When exactly is 'before'? Before Github existed to put front and center your code and its issues? Before it became an expectation to have a a rich Github profile when you're considered for a job position?

Of course I wouldn't have been able to come up with this statement because the perverted view of OSS devs owing free work to the users of their software was not so pervaisive.

On your edit: a bit rich saying the calls for switching to Linux propaganda, especially with the downturn of UX of windows and macos... Also why just hundreds of millions.. Go for hundreds of billions if you're just going to pull out numbers. Apart from that - even if Linux is not about the users, it is in many cases better for them as-is. Funny how that works with no conflict.

▲

perching_aix 7 hours ago | parent [-]

> When exactly is 'before'?

"Exactly"? I'm afraid that's not a very physically sound request. But let's say, prior to 2026-02-14T03:46:03Z then. I hope that suffices.

> Of course I wouldn't have been able to come up with this statement

That would make sense, because you specifically I never expected to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you

> Also why just hundreds of millions.. Go for hundreds of billions if you're just going to pull out numbers

You see, that would be because I did not just pull out an arbitrary number. "How many Windows users there are" is a reported fact you can just search for, and even the total is not "billions" (plural). I know, I was surprised too. From the horse's mouth: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2025/06/24/stay-...

	▲	phoronixrly 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		My first comment on this site pointing out that a FOSS user sounds entitled is from 2021. I've been saying it outside the site for 10+ years, spanning back to the time when it wasnt cringe to have a Github sticker on your laptop.

▲

deng a day ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

	▲	hypeatei a day ago \| parent [-]
		> you probably wouldn't feel so entitled. ...what? Are we living in the same universe? What exactly did I say that makes me entitled? > The user in question does not have a commercial license Do you know that for sure or are you speculating? > We shouldn't shit on other people's work we got for free When did I shit on the work of wolfSSL? I'm saying that it appears they were engaging but got hung up on a small issue. > It's you who needs to get down from that pedestal. Respectfully, you need to get a grip.

▲

pseudohadamard 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's actually impossible to answer. I maintain or contribute to or have contributed to several FOSS projects whose number varies depending on how you want to count them, and neither myself nor anyone else who contributes to any FOSS project has the faintest idea how many people use them, especially if they're included in widely-used distros where the number is anything from zero to $number_of_distro_users.