This is another post in my informal series of Camino public service announcements (yes, I know I promised to post about things other than Camino, but not today).

I see a lot of feedback from Camino users. I read basically every feedback email, Camino forum post, and bug report that comes it, and I answer a fair number of those. Mostly, people are fine, and I don't mind doing it. However, there is a class of feedback that comes from users who are apparently very misguided about the way things work, and there have been enough of them recently that I feel it's worth commenting on. I know I'm far from the first to talk about how not to interact with an open source product as a user, but everyone's take is a little different. I'm not foolish enough to claim to speak for the entire open source community (as in the case of the much-discussed HandBrake post, which makes the absurd claim that no open source software cares what its users want and that feature requests are therefore pointless). I won't even claim to speak for the Camino project; just myself, from the standpoint of one of the people dealing with all the feedback we get.

As I said, mostly people with bugs or requests are perfectly reasonable, and I'm glad to help. However, there are some people who come out of the gate rude, belligerent, and/or with an attitude of entitlement. They seem to be operating under the delusion that they can treat us however they like, and we have an obligation to be friendly and helpful anyway. Nope. If you send me email because you want me to help you, but you start it off by insulting me, I'm not likely to bother.

Since the common refrain is a variation on “do what I want right now or I'm never using Camino again”, I assume the belief is that we are desperate to keep every user. What these users don't seem to understand is that while this tactic may work in the commercial world (although I'd suggest that perhaps they'd have better results there if they started off at least being civil), there's a huge difference between what you can get away with while dealing with someone being paid by a company that wants to keep getting your money, and what someone is going to put up with when they are spending their free time helping you with a product they made in their free time, and give away. While in many cases I probably could be obsequious and calm these users down, convincing them that Camino is worthy of them... why would I? If they stick around after having learned that being obnoxious is a useful strategy, what have I gained for myself and the Camino project? More abuse down the road.

I'm thrilled that lots of people like Camino, and I'm always glad to turn reasonable users with problems into happy Camino users by helping them out when I can—but I couldn't care less how many abusive users storm off in a huff because I wouldn't fall all over myself to placate them. That's not to say I'm abusive to those people in return; stooping to their level is not only pointless, it reflects badly on the project. But anyone who tries to use the threat of changing to another browser as a club to force me to do something for them or as a shield for rudeness shouldn't be surprised when I happily tell them to enjoy whatever browser they choose instead.