The email he ignored was a random sales pitch. Nowhere did the author mention his actual problem.

When Marak sent me the email, I read it as a "Hi, I built Faker, might you be interested in acquiring it?". I responded with a "yes, that could be interesting, give me a day to work on this". In the end, we decided that acquiring Faker didn't make sense, and I'm sorry to Marak for not sending a follow-up email telling him we weren't interested. In this case, the content is different (i.e. we are potentially abusing OSS), which is why I’m responding to this.

(FWIW, I typically receive 50 - 100 sales emails every day. I do try and reply to the ones that look interesting, but I do forget to follow-up sometimes if we're not interested! This does not excuse my behavior in this particular case, and I’m sorry to Marak for not following up.)

I wasn't convinced by this reply either, then I went back and read the actual email. It doesn't mention the problem at all, it's a straightforward sales pitch. Even I ignore tons of those regularly, it's kind of dishonest on the part of the developer to say "oh they caused me a problem, I emailed them and they didn't reply" without mentioning that he didn't mention the problem in the email at all!

Frankly the author of Faker seems like he went into this project with the clear intention of profit, but by releasing it for free, and then pressuring people into giving him money. It's almost predatory.

Especially since Faker.js doesn't do anything that much useful which can't be replicated in trivial time. You use it because it's available, like we all do with MIT licensed libraries.

Uh, but he followed up with you a week later and you again decided not to reply.

Yes, people cold emailing you to sell you things often follow up.

His explanation was that he “forgot” to reply. Just be honest then and say he put him on ignore after evaluating.

> I do try and reply to the ones that look interesting, but I do forget to follow-up sometimes if we're not interested!

Chances would be that I would recognize the sender and then immediately archive the email and not even read it...

This really doesn't sound convincing at all.

For a counterpoint of equivalent value - I'm fairly convinced.

He promised to look into the possibility of buying faker. The initial email said nothing about the gripes in this article. In fact, the author of the article did absolutely nothing to resolve this problem before writing the article itself.

C'mon, give the guy a break - people get busy.

Is there even any duty to respond to unsolicited sales pitches? I would assume it is fine to ignore those.

Not at all since no one owes "you" anything. It's "your" duty to pursue it (e.g. endless follow ups, get connected through others)

Because now it’s public he failed to respond