Happened to me too! Guy posted asking kinda rudely whether I was going to fix a bug. Told him I'd be happy to accept a PR for a fix. Never got a PR (project has been dead for some years now - just lost interest).

Auto-reply with the LICENSE.

I don’t understand what the downside of this is. That’s hilarious for them to expect, and you’re free to ignore them, take their suggestion and work on it, help them.

It can't be helped either way if it's public, but I was reminded of this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26192025

Reminds me of "Jia Tan" using sock puppets to bully the maintainer of a critical infrastructure project.

I literally got bullied by people who called themselves "the community" because they weren't happy with my copyleft license and the fact that I wasn't implementing their feature requests for free.

Ah yes I put in my code of conduct that complaining about copyleft is forbidden :D

I'm sympathetic to FOSS developers but struggle to understand this, maybe because it hasn't happened to me. But, why is this a mental drain? Is there not a simple solution? Reply with the license, "comes with no warranty," "you're free to fork," close issue and move on? I suppose in aggregate it could be draining.

The assholes outnumber the good ones, and it feels like all of humanity is transactional and extractive.

At first all engagement is exciting and validating. You work nights and weekends to please people you’ve never met, sure that one good turn deserves another.

Then you get your first jerk, then your second, then your third, while your father is in the hospital. You feel pressure to ship a feature you never wanted. Your issue tracker is demoralizing. You get a PR! Maybe someone is coming to your rescue. It sucks. Now you need to figure out how to respond. You’re alone. Your passion project has become your albatross.

Sounds like a hard lesson in boundaries. No-one is entitled to your time but you.

Encourage forks, not PRs