It's great feedback for people who are interested in attracting more people to their project, which is clearly (to me, at least) the manner in which it's intended.

It's pretty good marketing advice for many things. "How to market your open source project" might be a nice, less linkbait title. I guess it worked, though:-/

Perhaps but he's preaching against the very attitude you have which is "you're getting this for free so you'll take what you get and like it"

If you're someone writing an open source project you're wasting your time if it goes completely unused. So even as an open source developer you're still trying to sell your project to people. You're just giving it to them at a VERY reasonable price.

So what he's saying is all the same "selling a product" rules apply even if it is open source. You can't just throw it out there and expect people to use it

> you're getting this for free so you'll take what you get and like it

That's putting words into my keyboard. I think most of it is reasonably good marketing advice, and some of the items listed are horrible reasons to not use something.

The title is the problem, really. If it were something like "how to help people find your open source project" it would all fit into place much better.

You are not wasting your time if you learn something.

Not intended that way, in fact, that's the purpose of the article - how to build that community. Even if the code is good, it takes time and there are practical steps you can take.