If they're paying me (or if they're contributing in some way), I'll accept a certain level of belligerence. It's the assholes who think I'm gonna put up with their crap for free that most chap my hide, and I suspect OSS is unique in just how entitled people can be for something they got for free.

What's interesting is that people who pay or people who contribute are, on average, nicer to us than the people who don't.

> What's interesting is that people who pay or people who contribute are, on average, nicer to us than the people who don't.

This should not be at all surprising. It's often mentioned on HN that you get rid of the worst customers by charging more. This is not peculiar to OSS either.

It being "free", in a certain sense, makes it invaluable—a blank canvas on which the ungrateful have the opportunity to each paint their own vision of its worth. Something priced at one dollar is worth a buck, but at zero it's priceless, so there's no specific psychological cap on the well of entitlement for a certain kind of unreflective user.

> It's the assholes who think I'm gonna put up with their crap for free that most chap my hide, and I suspect OSS is unique in just how entitled people can be for something they got for free.

Some people is entitled. Period. They have the same attitude when they pay, when they get something for free, when they are right and when they are wrong. And these people are the ones that ruin it for everyone.

I think Caddy brought this on themselves by being so heavily marketed and user friendly.

I'll have to clarify right at the top that I have not previously commented about Caddy, and I don't care about one cosmetic header nor the need to compile from source, those sound just fine to me.

Anyway: compare https://caddyserver.com/ to http://nginx.org/ and on the former you'll see way more marketing, logos, testimonials, quickstarts, etc etc ... looks way more like a product than an open-source free-software tool.

I always thought this was a weird trend for open source projects these days. I'm accustomed to debian, gnu make, nginx, apache, samba, cups ... useful tools with zero marketing and support. That's just how it used to work ... and frankly it still seems like it works better that way. A super modern website and easy-as-possible getting started stuff sets the wrong expectations in many many people who are not familiar with this world. They expect to do nothing and get a slick product / solution. They're drawn to the language they're familiar with from startups who get millions in funding and promise the world and then fizzle in a couple of years. That's not sustainable for open source projects.

Open source software is very useful and valuable and democratizing. Just the simplification of no per-user or per-machine or per-anything licensing adds a huge amount of value! The economies of scale of good quality open source software is super high. This stuff is really amazing and effective.

But the support does not scale. This is the one part you have to pay for with your own time. It could take years and years. That's the trade-off. You can't get it all for free, it's not possible.

> Anyway: compare https://caddyserver.com/ to http://nginx.org/

You should probably be comparing to nginx.com.

I never visit nginx.com, it might scare me away ... yup, it's total bullshit.

I'll concede that Nginx does way more of whatever Caddy did that apparently made people upset.

But notice that nginx.org does nothing to attract people looking for a product, while nginx.com is an enterprise product, not a user product.

I just take issue with quotes like

> I do find it ironic that the open source community is so irate about having to compile software from source to customize it the way they want.

while the author does not realize how hard he was working to attract people who are not really the open source community.

I've found the more people pay the nicer they are, having a really cheap product is an easy way to gain a lot of shitty customers.

I've found the same situation, the more people pay the nicer they are. The ones that pay nothing are generally the most vile, and demanding.

Except that users of open source are not paying money and most of them aren't contributing or donating anything either.

So the least such users can do is to be nice otherwise gtfo.

You'd think that, but OTOH, they haven't invested anything so they have no incentive to be nice. You and I may wish people were nice as a matter of course, but sadly, not so much. :-(

(To be clear, I think the really awful users are a just a very vocal minority.)

Investing doesn't give an incentive to be nice either.

This provides some good context. People are used to the model of paying for something and the entitlement that comes with it. It's only natural that they would take that default stance when it comes to OSS.