He didn't have to send that email at that moment if he was going through some stuff.

One's having a bad day does not excuse anti-social behavior. Ever.

Someone being rude does not excuse ignoring their legitimate problem.

Yes it does. I'm petty and proud. If they wanted it fixed, they would've taken the personal responsibility to have been born with a brain big enough not to be rude.

This suggests a new attack vector on software projects; if I wanted to cripple a competitor, all I would have to do is to first find a real important bug it their software, but then report the bug rudely enough that the developers then want to punish me personally by not fixing the bug. I would then have guaranteed that the bug in my competitor’s software is not fixed, and people will use my software instead.

In other words: Trying to punish rude users by not fixing the bugs they report is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

This is a super-contrived example, but I could still fix the bug, just not specifically for you, on your schedule. The odds that you'd find an issue that impacts more than the odd crank are so thin that this isn't anywhere near a top concern.

Well then, you fixed my legitimate problem, didn't you? Therefore, my being rude did not excuse you from ignoring it.

Does someone who doesn't pay you at all have a legitimate problem? Producing this product is charity, not indentured servitude

Using that logic, I could just as well argue that since you don’t pay me to debate this with you, you don’t deserve a reply from me, since I am not your indentured servant.

In other words: There exists roles and relationships, with attached obligations and expectations, other than those involving money. Free software development is such a relationship, as is this debate.

If you were to post rude comments in Hacker News, you probably wouldn’t get a response, because it would be delete. It kind of proves the very point you’re opposing - being polite begets good responses, rudeness to being ignored.

I have zero expectation that you’d reply. Most conservations on hn don’t end because they wrapped up neatly but because someone had something more important to do and walked away from the conversation.

There are obligations other than money, but none of those exist here. There’s no contractual obligation. He put out something for free and doesn’t need to take an iota of criticism on it by people freeloading. He obviously can, and if he wants certain goals like increasing his user base it might be the smart move to respond to these type of people, but there are no obligations.

> if he wants certain goals like increasing his user base it might be the smart move to respond to these type of people, but there are no obligations.

That sounds like a social and/or cultural obligation to me.

How does that create an obligation? What do you mean by the term, we may be talking past each other

A social obligation, in short, is something which a person would be rude not to do, but is not required by law. I’m sure you can think of examples. I am putting forth my opinion that fixing bugs, regardless of how rude a bug report is, is a social obligation.

HN is one of the best places on the internet to politely post a critical or opposing view and get a reasoned response though; doesn't that strike directly at your point? Perhaps that's exactly what I'm doing righbt now, because you weren't a rude jerk? ;)

If I have more problems reported every day than I can fix, the only productive way is to work on issues that people actually put time into reporting in a nice and well worded manner. Because usually only those people give feedback if something is fixed to their liking, stick around for long enough to actually test the fix and are reasonable enough to understand limitations or discuss alternative solutions.

If the only issue my application ever had was reported in such a rude manner, there might be a case to be made to fix it, even though it was reported in a hostile or rude manner. It might make the application better for people who didn't report the issue. But maybe it is more valuable to just spend that time on something fun or enjoyable like coding on something else or eating cake. There is no reason to waste your free time on rude people, when they have the option to just be nice and save you all the anger.

I don’t see why the attitude of the reporting user should be a factor in determining the priority of the bug they are reporting. Surely the severity of the bug, and how many people are likely to be affected are the relevant factors. Sure, if the issue is not well explained, hard to pin down, or might otherwise require cooperation from the user, you have to weigh that into your consideration. However, many users do get surprisingly cooperative once you show them that you actually care about fixing the issue they are reporting; many users are used to being ignored, and might start out having a bad attitude merely by habit.

Why not? Would that be rude?

Even worse than rude, it would be unproductive. If you were to recieve a report about a critical security flaw, would you ignore it simply because the reporting user was rude in the report? I should hope not. So why should normal bug reports (and confusing UI/UX issues are also bugs) be treated any differently?

> Even worse than rude, it would be unproductive.

That’s a value judgement man. Not everyone values turning everything into a productivity improvement over all other values

This wasn’t a critical security report.

Please read my entire comment, not merely the first half.

To be excruciatingly explicit: Bugs (and confusing UI/UX) experienced and reported by rude users also affect many non-rude users. If one wants one’s software to be the best it can be, then one should listen to all bug reports; the attitude of the reporting users are irrelevant.

What if he doesn’t care about the “best it can be” because his product is already so widely used? What if he thinks “my product might be a little worse, but I’ll feel a little better”.

I agree that he’d be under an ethical obligation to listen to a rude security report. But it doesn’t follow that he must therefore listen to all rude bug reports.

As a user of some software, I would certainly hope that the developers would prioritize fixing bugs over their own egos.

As a user of free software you can hope all you want, but you have no right to an expectation that this is the priority. Your right end with the decision to stop using the software, which is exactly what Don said to the original email

Well if the developer does choose to prioritise their ego, you can always get a refund.

maybe when we are all replaced by robots that is true, but its not possible for the average person to take abuse constantly and keep a level head. That's not how our brains are wired

maybe not if they're paying for a product or support (which they're not in this case) but even then it puts them at the bottom of my list.

No Jerks cuts many different ways...